Tag: Fast Food

REVIEW: Wendy’s Pretzel Baconator

Holly 13 Comments

Over ten years ago, I was driving back to Tallahassee with my boyfriend, and we decided to stop and grab a bite. Wendy’s had just introduced a new burger with a pretzel bun, and I wanted to try it. I remember it being fine. The bun was a little tough, making biting through it hard. A decade later, that boyfriend is now my husband, and we, once again, shared a pretzel bun burger from Wendy’s.

Wendy’s has released various burgers and chicken sandwiches with the pretzel bun, but this is the first time pulling its wildly popular monster menu item, the Baconator, into the mix. Since its introduction in 2007, the Baconator has remained an in-demand item. For me, it shines in its simplicity. With so few ingredients (beef, cheese, bacon, mayo, and ketchup), the burger has to stand on its own and not hide behind special sauces or wild toppings.

In fact, there has only been one official variation of the Baconator (Spicy Baconator) in its 16 years of being on the menu. Before you grill me in the comments, I personally do not consider the Son of Baconator or Breakfast Baconator variations of THE Baconator. I consider them to be more in the “spin-offs of TV shows you know are spin-offs, but stand on their own,” like Frasier and Mork & Mindy. Also, some people list the Big Bacon Cheddar Cheeseburger as part of the Baconator Universe, but it doesn’t seem to be canonically accepted by Wendy’s.

The Pretzel Baconator simply swaps the standard bun for a pretzel one. As mentioned before, the bun was extremely tough when I tried it a decade ago. I would bite into it, and it was like bread taffy. Initially, I hesitated about trying the Pretzel Baconator, but it’s been a decade, and a lot can change.

The bun was soft but held firm. I was able to get a whole bite of burger without issue. The intense flavors of the savory beef and salty bacon, followed by the sweetness of the ketchup and tangy mayo, dominated the bite. I took a sip of Sprite to cleanse the palate and dove in for my second try. Again, the bun offered a great textural addition, but the pretzel flavor was non-existent. The familiar yeasty flavor was there when trying just the bun, but it was extremely subtle. What it lacked in taste, it made up for it with its structural integrity, as it did hold up to the sloppy fillings better than the standard bun.

If you want a strong pretzel flavor to accompany your Baconator, you will be disappointed. It’s still a solid menu item, and dare I say, the firmer bun serves the burger better than its standard bun. I enjoyed it, but it just doesn’t deliver the pretzel taste in the way I expected.

Purchased Price: $9.29
Rating: 7 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: 1050 calories, 71 grams of fat, 27 grams of saturated fat, 155 milligrams of cholesterol, 1630 milligrams of sodium, 43 grams of carbohydrates, 3 grams of fiber, 6 grams of sugar, and 61 grams of protein.

REVIEW: Jack in the Box Iced Coffee and Milk Tea with Boba Drinks

Marvo 4 Comments

If you traveled back in time and told me a year ago that Jack in the Box would be selling boba drinks in 2023, while I was drinking a boba drink, you would have boba flying towards you from my spit take because that would be extremely surprising and laughable. But here we are with Jack in the Box’s Iced Coffee and Milk Tea with Boba.

The iced coffee version features High Mountain Arabica coffee with sweetened cream and vanilla, served over ice with brown sugar boba, while the milk tea one comes with freshly brewed tea with sweetened cream and vanilla, ice, and brown sugar boba. If you’re unfamiliar with boba, they’re chewy tapioca balls that give the drink its other name, bubble tea.

And it’s those dark-colored bubbles in these fast food drinks that make it hard for me to recommend them, especially if you’ve never had boba drinks before. They’re described as brown sugar boba, but they’re more like bland sugar boba because they have a nondescript flavor that’s not even sweet. But I was not too fond of their texture. Chewing on them was like mashing my teeth on clumps of hard raisins, which are too chewy for boba. These issues make them weird compared to other boba I’ve had, which have better flavor and texture.

While the tapioca texture was weird, I will say that the milk tea by itself was tasty, and I wish Jack in the Box offered on its own. According to the app, I could customize it to not include boba, but the price wouldn’t change. It’s sweet, creamy, and tasted like the canned and bottled milk teas I’ve had from Japan. As for the iced coffee, if you’ve had Jack’s iced coffee, it tastes the same, but I prefer the milk tea.

Part of the boba experience is the use of a wider straw that allows the tapioca to be sucked up, and Jack in the Box does provide it. But with my iced coffee one, for some reason, most of the balls had difficulty going up the straw, even after shaking and stirring the drink. Eventually, I gave up and left most of them in the cup.

If Jack in the Box’s Iced Coffee with Boba or Milk Tea with Boba is going to be your introduction to the popular Asian drink, I can’t recommend it, even if you live in a boba desert without a place that sells the drink for hundreds of miles. While the base drinks are fine, they contain the least satisfying boba I’ve ever had in terms of taste and texture.

Purchased Price: $4.99 each
Size: N/A
Rating: 6 out of 10 (Milk Tea), 5 out of 10 (Iced Coffee)
Nutrition Facts: 280 calories (other nutritional numbers aren’t available on the Jack in the Box website).

REVIEW: Jack in the Box Girl Scouts Thin Mints Shake

Marvo Leave a comment

If you can’t wait for McDonald’s Shamrock Shake season in February and March, you can get your green minty shake fill this fall with Jack in the Box’s Girl Scout Thin Mints Shake. The frozen treat features Jack’s ice cream with chocolate mint flavoring and Thin Mints bits mixed with whipped topping and more Thin Mints crumbles on top. Also, sorry, maraschino cherry fans. There is no cherry for you on this shake.

It looks less fun than the bright Shamrock Shake. When everything is mixed up, it has a green-gray color that a paint company would call Aloe Fog, Melted Clovers, or something like that. But it’s as enjoyable as a Shamrock shake with its strong minty flavor. But perhaps it’s a bit too strong. If I drank this shake blindly, I wouldn’t be able to determine that it’s specifically a Girl Scout Thin Mints Shake because it lacks the chocolatey notes that the actual cookies have.

The mint flavoring in the ice cream is so strong that it overwhelms the cookie bits and whatever chocolate flavoring. It also doesn’t help that the larger cookie crumbs provide an additional minty burst without cocoa flavor. Having two types of cookies would be weird, but maybe the chocolate would’ve had a stronger punch if Oreo crumbles were added. It’s an ingredient that every Jack in the Box location has, so it wouldn’t be difficult to add.

Most of the cookie crumbs are tiny enough that they succumb to the milky mess they’re sitting in and become soggy bits or not noticeable at all. But my teeth were rewarded with some crunchiness when they captured more significant Thin Mints bits.

If you want a tasty shake that’ll make your insides as nippy as the weather outside this fall, Jack in the Box’s Girl Scout Thin Mints Shake will help you accomplish that. But if you’re hoping for a bit of chocolate to cut through that mint, you’ll be disappointed.

Purchased Price: $6.69*
Size: Regular
Rating: 6 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: 780 calories (no other nutritional information was provided on the Jack in the Box website).

*Because I live on a rock in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, things are a bit pricier here. You’ll probably pay less than I did.

REVIEW: Arby’s Big Cheesy Bacon Burger

Holly 5 Comments

My post-race routine is fairly simple: shower, stretch, and stuff a burger in my face. I recently completed a half marathon and, due to a series of events after that race, I had to postpone the burger part of my routine. Two weeks later, I was craving the thing I never got. Right on cue, Arby’s sent an email advertising its new Big Cheesy Bacon Burger.

It’s one of the two limited edition burgers currently being offered at Arby’s. The Deluxe Wagyu Steakhouse Burger is the base version (a wagyu blended beef patty, burger sauce, American cheese, tomatoes, red onions, lettuce, and garlic & dill pickles on a toasted brioche bun) with the Big Cheesy Bacon Burger having all the same ingredients but with the addition of Swiss cheese and bacon.

It had some heft when I pulled it out of the bag, but didn’t seem very big. Like a mattress in a box, after I took it out of its wrapper, it seemed to expand. Size-wise, it was reasonably comparable to what I’ve gotten from Red Robin. Taking a peek under the bun, I was surprised at the produce’s freshness. I wasn’t expecting rotten tomatoes or anything, but the two vibrant red tomato slices took me off guard. I’m used to fast food tomatoes looking half the time like someone took a red Sharpie to styrofoam.

Even though it looked good, I was ready to find out if it tasted good. In my first bite, I got a bit of every component. All I could think as I took my time taking it all in was, “Wow, this is a really balanced burger.”

Too often, when fast food sandwiches have a laundry list of toppings, they become a mess of competing flavors. In this case, everything was working together to create something extremely delicious. The balance of the sweet burger sauce, hickory bacon, juicy tomatoes, crisp pickles, salty cheeses, and savory meat created a flavor that I could only describe as the most perfect “burger” flavor.

The meat on its own was a bit dry, but the dryness wasn’t noticeable when eaten with the other components. Multiple times (I assume for legal reasons), Arby’s reminds us that the patty is 51% American Wagyu and 49% ground beef. I can’t speak on the American Wagyu being anything special, but the meat quality was above any other fast food offering I’ve had.

Overall, I was extremely satisfied with Arby’s Big Cheesy Bacon Burger. It was delicious and filling and exceeded my expectations from a fast food restaurant. The high quality of the ingredients is what made it stand out. It’s only around for a limited time, so if you’re thinking about trying it, I’d go sooner rather than later.

Purchased Price: $7.99
Rating: 9 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: 824 calories, 51 grams of fat, 21 grams of saturated fat, 118 milligrams of cholesterol, 2085 milligrams of sodium, 46 grams of carbohydrates, 3 grams of fiber, 15 grams of sugar, and 48 grams of protein.

REVIEW: Taco Bell Grilled Cheese Nacho Fries

Marvo 4 Comments

Taco Bell’s new Grilled Cheese Nachos Fries applies the same technique used with the chain’s popular Grilled Cheese Burrito — put cheese on the exterior, wrap the whole thing in parchment paper, and smoosh it with a grill press for a few moments to turn the white and orange cheese into brown grilled-ness.

But does this fast food kung fu make these loaded Nacho Fries better than regular loaded Nacho Fries? I think it slightly improves it in some ways, but it’s not enough to make me declare on the internet that they all must be grilled henceforth.

The menu item comes with seasoned fries topped with seasoned beef, chipotle sauce, nacho cheese sauce, and a blend of mozzarella, Monterey pepper jack, and cheddar that gets the brunt of the grill press. If you wish for something with a little more heat, there’s a spicy version that includes jalapeño peppers, and if you want something less ground beefy, there’s also a steak variety on the menu. I went with the cheapest and mildest option.

The grilling makes the fries that have cheese seared onto them sturdy enough to withstand the chipotle and nacho sauce’s attempts to make everything soggy. But I wouldn’t say the grilled cheese makes them crispier. The grilling also turned what would’ve been a bunch of individual fries into a slab of spuds that looks like a burnt cheese aircraft carrier. Of course, your results may vary.

While the seasoned beef, chipotle sauce, and nacho sauce have a difficult time compromising the toasted layer’s integrity, they overwhelm the grilled cheese’s flavor. But I’m not going to complain too much about that because those three ingredients, plus the fries’ potato flavor, create a tasty combo. When I got a bite of the fries with just the toasted cheese and very few other ingredients, I noticed some of the same mild cheesiness that I’d tasted with the Grilled Cheese Burrito. The creamy chipotle sauce stood out the most for me flavor-wise, and it added a very slight kick. Its smoky, peppery taste negated the need for one of Taco Bell’s sauce packets.

While Taco Bell’s Grilled Cheese Nacho Fries are a limited time offering, I imagine they’ll be back eventually because it’s a clever variation of its loaded fries offerings. While I enjoyed it, I wished the toasted layer added a bit more crispiness and flavor.

Purchased Price: $4.99*
Rating: 7 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: 530 calories, 35 grams of fat, 9 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 50 milligrams of cholesterol, 1250 milligrams of sodium, 38 grams of carbohydrates, 6 grams of fiber, 1 gram of sugar, and 16 grams of protein.

*Because I live on a rock in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, things are a bit pricier here. You’ll probably pay less than I did.