REVIEW: McDonald’s Szechuan Sauce

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McDonald s Szechuan Sauce

Don’t mention Rick and Morty. Don’t mention Rick and Morty.

On a recent episode of Rick and Morty… Dammit!

Do I need to give you guys a recap of McDonald’s Szechuan Sauce Mania?

Fine.

Here’s the CliffsNotes version – a plot line in a time-traveling episode centered on McDonald’s Szechuan Sauce from the 1990’s. Rick and Morty fans, being some of the most boisterous on the net, demanded Mickey D’s bring it back. They did. It was a disaster. Only some restaurants carried it, and entitled fanboys lined up outside like they were getting Hamilton tickets. Few succeeded. The “lucky” patient few started selling them on eBay for laughable prices, and that’s how I got mine.

Here I sit $375 poorer finally ready to try a sauce that escaped me as a child. Wubba Lubba Dub Dub!

I’m kidding. McDonald’s acknowledged the demand and brought Szechuan Sauce back. You can pretty much get it anywhere for free with your order.

McDonald s Szechuan Sauce 3

The sauce smelled like Asian ginger salad dressing to me, which I’ve always been fond of. I had to remove it from the packet to see its brownish orange color. It also had little black pepper flakes –- more on those later.

My flavor vessel of choice was the McNugget because it seemed like the obvious choice. After a dip, I noticed Szechuan had basically the same viscosity of BBQ sauce.

I apologize for being all over the map of Asia, but the flavor profiles put me in mind of multiple sauces that span different countries. I got mostly teriyaki flavor, a little sweet and sour, while also putting me in mind of that much thinner soy-based sauce you get with an order of shumai or gyoza at a Japanese restaurant.

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There was definitely a little ginger, some tang, and a pinch of citrus which I thought was from something like orange zest, but that’s not a listed ingredient. The major “flavor” lacking here was any heat whatsoever. I figured those pepper flakes would provide a nice kick, but any spice was negligible. That was disappointing.

Overall, it’s a solid McNugget sauce. I haven’t had it in years, and after eating four of them, I coulda crushed a 20-piece without much struggle.

If I had to rank Szechuan Sauce against the rest of the McDonald’s dipping sauce roster, it would land smack dab in the middle. It’s not overtaking classics like BBQ or Honey Mustard, but it’s better than Sweet and Sour. I also don’t care much for Ranch and Buffalo, so keep that in mind.

If McDonald’s decided to put out a Snack Wrap with Szechuan Sauce, it would be excellent. I’m no marketing genius, but McDonald’s should have taken advantage of the hype and released a couple other menu items that featured this sauce.

So yeah, this stuff is good, but not worth the ridiculous hype. Ya boy Rick Sanchez made it seem like Ambrosia but it’s just a run of the mill, solid dipping sauce.

(Nutrition Facts – Not available.)

Purchased Price: $1.29 for the Nuggets – I got 2 Sauce Packets for free. (To eBay I go!)
Size: 0.90 oz.
Rating: 6 out of 10
Pros: Basically a light spin on teriyaki Sauce. A solid dipping sauce. McDonald’s giving the (obnoxious) people what they want. Bonus sauce packet. McNuggets nostalgia. A review 20+ years in the making. I know how to spell “Szechuan: now.
Cons: That entire Rick and Morty fiasco. Not having a Snack Wrap with Szechuan on the current menu.

REVIEW: Chick-fil-A Frosted Sunrise

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Chick fil A Frosted Sunrise

Orange you glad Chick-fil-A parlayed their popular Frosted Coffee and Frosted Lemonade formula into orange sherbet form?

Sorry, couldn’t resist.

Actually, while the concept of the new Frosted Sunrise (a combination of Chick-fil-A’s soft-serve Icedream and Simply Orange orange juice) follows the same premise of the chain’s existing drink/soft-serve mashups, the marketing plan appears totally different.

Take, for example, the listing of the Frosted Sunrise under the “drink” section of Chick-fil-A’s menu and not the “Treat” section. Even the name, Frosted Sunrise, conjures up images of a 100 percent of your daily vitamin C and lasting energy to embrace your eight hours of sedentary office work.

In a word: wholesome.

And, as it happens, the Frosted Sunrise does taste more wholesome, which is exactly the last thing I want in my orange-flavored frozen dairy drinks.

Perennial child of the 90s I am, I just can’t get Orange Flintstones Push-Up treats out of my head. Together with orange sherbet, this tag-team of artificial citrus formed approximately 71 percent of my dessert intake from the ages of 7-10.

That’s not to say I don’t love me a good Florida orange (or a clementine for that matter). But when it comes to combining oranges with cream, there’s a certain level of socially-engrained flavor balance that’s to be expected. Unfortunately, Chick-fil-A’s Frosted Sunrise skews too far toward the fresh-squeezed orange, creating a clashing matchup of full-bodied and slightly bitter orange with a weak soft-serve flavor.

Overwhelmed by this cognitive dissonance, I trudged on. As I slurped more and more sunrise (note: save that phrase for a future poem) I noticed the flavors being a bit evener. The initial strong natural orange flavor, which in this application was not exactly optimal, quickly dissipated to the point where the milky sweetness of the Icedream became the guiding flavor.

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Childhood sherbet equilibrium obtained, I was content (I also had a brain freeze, although I take full responsibility for that). Still, the fact that the flavor shifted so dramatically struck me as problematic, especially when Chick-fil-A’s Icedream lacks the rich milkfat to tame the initial heavy citrus bursts.

Overall, Chick-fil-A’s Frosted Sunrise does a lot of good things and has elements that will please both natural orange enthusiasts and artificial orange nostalgics like me. However, in doing so, it fails to leave both completely satisfied throughout, making it less enjoyable than Chick-fil-A’s Frosted Coffee and Frosted Lemonade.

(Nutrition Facts – Small – 320 calories, 45 calories from fat, 5 grams of fat, 3.5 grams of sat fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 20 milligrams of cholesterol, 135 milligrams of sodium, 60 grams of carbohydrates, 47 grams of sugar, 7 grams of protein, 25% calcium, and 60% Vitamin C.)

Purchased Price: $2.89
Size: Small
Rating: 6 out of 10
Pros: Strong orange sherbet finish. Healthier breakfast alternative to a milkshake (which technically you can get at breakfast but…) Clean, strong refreshing flavor.
Cons: Natural orange flavor clashes and overwhelms the dairy for half of the drink. Slight bitterness can be off-putting. Not enough richness in the dairy. Inconsistent flavor.

REVIEW: Arby’s Texas Brisket Sandwich

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Arby s Texas Brisket Sandwich

Years of Grumpy Cat and Bad Luck Brian memes has proven that the internet is fertile ground for viral ideas. They don’t even need to be true to spread; I hear Scumbag Steve really got his life on track.

Fast food is no exception.

We’ve all heard that Taco Bell gives you diarrhea, that KFC can’t use chicken in their name because they use vat-grown chickenoids, and that Four of the Guys killed and ate the other to gain his power. We know that no one likes Arby’s.

See what I mean? The Simpsons make a joke twenty years ago, the idea goes viral, and the conventional opinion of a fast food franchise is set for decades.

I like Arby’s. It has a consistently good core menu and often has some interesting limited time items. Plus, any franchise with the guts to serve Bambi on a bun gets my support.

One of Arby’s newest offerings is the Texas Brisket Sandwich, featuring smoked brisket, crispy onion strings, dill pickles, and Texas-style barbecue sauce on Texas toast. Arby’s has had success with its brisket in the past. How does this one stand up?

Upon opening, I’m underwhelmed. I understand that “toasted” often needs to be put in quotation marks when it comes to fast food, but I was hoping that this Texas toast would live up to its name and offer a crispy counterpoint to the soft brisket. At best, this looks like it was angrily glared at by a cowboy who’s had his cattle rustled. Or maybe by a fast food patron who was expecting his Texas toast to at least be thicker than regular bread.

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On the inside, Arby’s is keeping things simple with just meat, sauce, onion strings, and pickles. This can work when the fundamentals are strong, and Arby’s brisket has impressed me in the past, so I was hopeful.

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The first bite is tangy. Very tangy. The sauce dominates every other flavor, and the pickles offer a very unneeded sharp bite at the end. “This is fine,” I tell myself. Any moment now that fatty, unctuous brisket will cut through the sharpness and bring everything into balance. Another bite reveals a mild smokiness, but the brisket itself remains dry and disappointing.

I remember Arby’s brisket being much better than this. Have they changed it recently? The Smokehouse Brisket sandwich was delicious when I had it. Then again, that one does feature copious amounts of cheese and mayo. As a Midwesterner, I admit it’s easy to trick me into thinking that something tastes good with the ol’ add-cheese-and-mayo trick, but I swear the brisket itself was better too.

So, it turns out that Terri and Sherri Mackleberry were right twenty years ago. Arby’s is kinda mediocre, at least with this offering.

(Nutrition Facts – 620 calories, 29 grams of fat, 8 grams of saturated fat, 85 milligrams of cholesterol, 1450 milligrams of sodium, 53 grams of carbohydrates, 3 grams of fiber, 7 grams of sugar, and 37 grams of protein.)

Purchased Price: $5.69
Size: N/A
Rating: 4 out of 10
Pros: Mild smokiness is pleasing when it presents itself.
Cons: Tanginess doesn’t balance with other flavors. Brisket is dry and missing the fatty element needed to balance the sauce and pickles.

QUICK REVIEW: Dunkin’ Donuts Mint Brownie Donut

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Dunkin Donuts Mint Brownie Donut

True story: I had to buy this Dunkin’ Donuts Mint Brownie Donut twice, because I wasn’t sure they gave me the right one the first time.

But they did.

Part of what gave me pause is that the frosting looked nothing like the festive green on the promotional materials. The first was more blue than green. But the second just looked white. If it’s not green, what on earth does mint have to do with St. Patrick’s Day?

Dunkin Donuts Mint Brownie Donut 3

On top of the frosting are crunchy chocolate bits. I don’t mind the crunchiness, but it’s not the texture I associate with brownies. My second donut’s pieces were so small it was almost a powder. When I pulled an Ariana Grande and licked the frosting, it was just plain frosting with no flavor.

Dunkin Donuts Mint Brownie Donut 2

The main part of the donut is a typical yeast dough; you can’t go wrong with it. Inside the donut is a chocolaty filling. Here’s where the discrepancy is between the two donuts I tried. On the first, I couldn’t taste the mint. It reminded me of the oily filling of those Hostess chocolate pies I loved as a kid, but it wasn’t minty.

Dunkin Donuts Mint Brownie Donut 4

The second, however, did taste like a mint brownie, though toned down from most that I’ve had. I liked it.

So, if you go down to your local Dunkin’, I can’t guarantee whether your mint donut will actually taste like a mint donut. If it does, it’s great! It’s an underutilized flavor for donuts. But if it doesn’t taste like it, you’re left with an ordinary chocolate-filled yeast ring.

Purchased Price: $1.09
Size: N/A
Rating: 6 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: 370 calories, 170 calories from fat, 19 grams of fat, 9 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 370 milligrams of sodium, 47 grams of carbohydrates, 2 grams of fiber, 25 grams of sugar, and 4 grams of protein.

REVIEW: IHOP Tuxedo Pancakes

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IHOP Tuxedo Pancakes

Two things I love in this world are pancakes and coffee.

So IHOP nearly broke my heart when it discontinued its delicious Latte Lover’s pancakes. But when I found out about these new Tuxedo pancakes I nearly lost my mind. I promised myself for Lent I’d give up coffee, but this was the loophole I had been waiting desperately for ten minutes after I made that commitment.

IHOP describes the new stack as: “One Chocolate, Chocolate Chip Pancake, layered with our world-famous buttermilk pancake and topped with vanilla bean mousse and mocha mousse and sprinkled with chocolate chips.” Surely, I had thought, this would taste exactly like the mocha cream on the Espresso Mocha Cream pancakes and the vanilla bean cream on the Double Vanilla pancakes, which were both around for the Latte Lover’s promotion.

I was half right.

The vanilla bean mousse tastes nearly identical to the vanilla bean cream. On its own, it has a nice vanilla bean flavoring, but is very subtle. I think I would have been able to enjoy it, but the chocolate chips on top are very distracting, especially once the chocolate mousse gets factored in. The mocha mousse doesn’t taste much like mocha and is missing that bubbly mousse mouthfeel. Instead, it feels more like icing. Compared to the mocha cream I had known and loved, this new chocolate mousse is a lot darker, richer, and sweeter.

If I were to compare it to anything it would be dark chocolate ganache, which is delicious, but it’s not the coffee-infused chocolate mousse I was hoping for. Furthermore, the amount of mousse allocated to a short stack isn’t much. So if someone were to order a full stack of four pancakes, the mousse would definitely leave one wanting more.

IHOP Tuxedo Pancakes 2

As for the pancakes themselves, the chocolate, chocolate chip one is delicious but the original buttermilk is boring and detracts from this overall experience. Perhaps if IHOP had used a vanilla bean flavoring instead of plain buttermilk it would have fared much better, but the buttermilk and chocolate pancakes fail to complement each other and are not something worth returning for given all the other, more interesting flavors to choose from on the menu.

Overall, I am disappointed and bored with this new limited time menu item. Those who prefer more straightforward, simple pancakes might find these more appealing. To me, these are dry, lack any real sweetness, and doesn’t do the Tuxedo cake justice.

As a coffee and sugar fiend, these only leave me wanting a lot more. My caffeine withdrawal headache is still here, telling me that whatever coffee might have been in the mousse wasn’t enough for even the slightest buzz.

But, believe it or not, the saving grace is the mocha mousse. Not because it’s mocha, but because dark chocolate ganache makes everything better as far as I’m concerned and was the sweetest thing about this stack. Next time I’ll see if they can give me the chocolate, chocolate chip pancakes with plenty of this mousse layered between each pancake. Now THAT gets me excited!

(Nutrition Facts – Not available.)

Purchased Price: $3.99
Size: Side order of 2 pancakes
Rating: 4 out of 10
Pros: The mocha mousse tastes like dark chocolate ganache and is very sweet. The ability to now order this mousse on a stack of the chocolate, chocolate chip pancakes without the buttermilk pancakes or vanilla bean mousse getting in the way.
Cons: The mocha mousse didn’t have any coffee flavoring to it, and the vanilla bean mousse was not nearly sweet enough to compete with the chocolate. The buttermilk pancake base did no justice for this stack, it just made it less sweet and flavorful. Felt like I was missing something – perhaps more, or at least a stronger vanilla flavor.

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