- Hi, I'm Parris, and seeing TV commercials this week
for fish sandwiches has made me realize,
that's right, can't have meat on Fridays for Lent,
so fish sandwiches are the big go to
at fast food restaurants for people
who are giving up meat until Easter.
I thought I should find out where you can go
to get a good fish sandwich.
Now we have some good local places here in Austin,
and if you live right on the coast
you probably have some very good fish restaurants,
but for something that's more universal
that everybody has access to
if you're out working during the day,
you go to grab lunch, you don't want meat,
how do the fish sandwiches compare between the big three?
♫ Epic review guys
Yes we've got Ford, Chevy and Chrysler for you here.
It's McDonald's, Burger King, and Wendy's.
They do all have a fish sandwich.
I ordered just the basic fish sandwich, no extras.
No I'm not getting the fries
or the chicken fries with that.
Wendy's and Burger King charge about $4 for their sandwich,
McDonald's is nearly $5.
I'm expecting big things from them.
Let's see what we get for our money,
starting with Wendy's.
I should say here in the interest of full disclosure,
I used to work at Wendy's.
I was 16, 17 years old at the time,
before the days when they started selling fish sandwiches.
The sticker tells me this is premium North Pacific cod.
It's not that South Pacific cod, it's the North Pacific cod.
I did not pay extra for cheese
if they asked you to pay extra,
so I just got the basic fish sandwich,
whatever was included.
Got my bun, got my slab-o-fish.
Got one piece of lettuce, some tarter sauce
and two pickles, is what I'm working with here
from Wendy's.
At Burger King, I did not ask them to hold the pickles
hold the lettuce, even though those special orders
don't upset 'em.
Burger King is oh, 100% white Alaskan pollock.
It's Alaskan fish.
That's gotta be better.
It feels heavier, more substantial.
I'm losing lettuce left and right than my Wendy's burger.
Yeah, lots of lettuce,
shredded lettuce rather than one piece of lettuce.
It's messy.
My tarter sauce is sort of all over the place here
under the bun.
No they got tarter sauce on half the bun anyway.
Lots of pieces of lettuce.
Oh more tarter sauce underneath,
and yeah, no pickles here.
My premium price $5 McDonald's fish sandwich.
Oh it comes in a box.
I did see they were offering a double fish filet,
so two pieces of fish in the sandwich.
Let's see what's in the box.
It's so small.
This was a $5,
$5 for this tiny, tiny.
It hasn't quite matured.
You gotta throw this fish back.
Well there's a fair spoonful of tarter sauce.
Oh, now they didn't go for the cheese, no lettuce,
but somewhere between under 1/2 and 1/3 of this
there's 1/2 or a 1/3 slice of cheese.
On the side of the box, it says,
"The Bering Sea sends its regards,
"wild caught Alaskan pollock."
We have another Alaskan Pollack.
It also says here, "Certified sustainable seafood."
They don't over fish the area.
When they give you pieces this small,
I guess it's easier not to do that.
All right I've got my bags back in the right order.
We've got Wendy's, Burger King, McDonald's.
I'm going to start with the Wendy's burger,
and have a bite.
There's two pickles in here, somewhere.
I would have to say, I think it's fired.
The pickles are not ...
I have a hard time thinking that's gonna be my favorite one.
I don't know what to say about the Wendy's fish burger
other than this, a pack of fries, and a medium drink
will hold you for a few hours.
I can tell you that not one of these
took longer than 30 seconds about
for them to get them to me,
so this was about three in the afternoon.
It wasn't like the lunch rush,
they had them all lined up and ready to serve them.
Quite a bit different from my experience,
because I am not new to the fish sandwich.
It's always been one of my favorites
when we have to go out and eat at a fast food place
would be to get a fish sandwich rather than a hamburger,
but the kids hated it when I did that.
Everyone hated it when they heard me
order the fish sandwich,
because invariably you order a fish sandwich
at the drive through,
it's gonna be a few minutes for that sir.
Would you mind parking over there
in the corner of the parking lot?
Then we gotta wait until they get around
to bringing our food out to us.
Guaranteed, or at least it used to be
if you ordered a fish sandwich.
Messy with the shredded lettuce,
but messy can taste good.
Here we go, Burger King.
I like the tarter sauce better.
Maybe it's that premium Alaskan fish.
This is tasting not too bad.
This one I would actually enjoy eating,
and I'm going to, but it's not hand dipped,
beer battered fish filet made fresh sort of thing,
but it's okay.
Now for $1 more, there's this tiny
little McDonald's fish filet.
Let's see about that.
I'll try not to eat it all in one bite.
I'll even eat the side with the little bit of cheese,
'cause there isn't cheese underneath the rest of this.
It's only on the very edge,
so to give it the most benefit of the doubt,
I'll actually try the part
where they put a little bit of cheese.
No lettuce though.
Okay.
The fish is good.
These two, the fish is so much more flavorful
than the Wendy's fish.
The tarter sauce is kind of bland.
I miss the lettuce or anything crispy like that in there.
The cheese just doesn't add enough
for what not having the other things takes away.
Now I would finish the McDonald's fish filet.
It's good enough, but I would not be finished eating
after one of these.
I would probably have to buy two.
Now I'm looking at $10 for two fish sandwiches.
Here's a cross section view of the McDonald's fish filet.
The messy but delicious Burger King fish sandwich,
and the Wendy's, I've got pickles, yes I do.
I've got pickles, how about you,
needs a cheerleader to get me to finish eating it
fish sandwich.
The winner, by a fin, the Burger King fish sandwich.
That does surprise me, because when I worked at Wendy's
we always prided ourself on how fresh everything was.
I was the meat guy, so my job was to take the big
20 pound, 40 pound, I don't know.
I remember them being very large boxes of hamburger meat
and running them through the machine in the back
that pushes them out into those square patties,
and that was about eight in the morning,
long before we started serving them.
Every day made them fresh, and we had people in
shredding lettuce, and cutting tomatoes.
Everything was very fresh
so you could taste that in the food.
I'm a little bit disappointed that their fish sandwich
doesn't have that energy.
McDonald's first off, don't charge $5,
and if you are gonna charge $5,
don't make the sandwich so small.
If you're observing Lent,
hopefully you have a seafood restaurant in town,
or else a local cafe or restaurant,
someplace where they batter, and bread,
and get the food ready fresh every day.
I think you'll really enjoy that most of all,
but if you gotta go with the big three,
the king of fish this time around is Burger King,
and it looks like I've got some cleanup to do here.
Yay, I'll be back soon with some more videos.
You can keep checking back for those,
or you can click that subscribe button down below.
You'll get notified when our videos go up.
See you on the next review.
♫ Epic review guy
♫ Wanna watch it all day long