Should you find yourself headed to a Dairy Queen for a quick meal ... or even a seemingly
innocent ice cream cone ... watch out for the following menu items, sure to displease
even the least picky palate.
You'd think a basic burger would be pretty hard to screw up, right?
Ground beef, grill, bun, and done.
Usually a safe bet off any fast food menu… but not so at DQ, at least some of the time.
Restaurant reviewers have remarked on their burgers' peculiar texture, charred taste,
and soggy buns, while former employees speak of burgers spending too long in the warming
pan.
What's really upsetting, however, is complaints from customers claiming that their DQ burgers
caused them to experience serious food poisoning symptoms.
“I’m fine, I’m good.”
“If you start to feel sick, then I’ll start to…
AHHHHH!”
One man even sued a Fort Worth Dairy Queen over a moldy burger that sent him to the ER
and cost him over $20,000 in medical bills.
According to Ralph Bryan's attorney, the barber was busy at work when his wife brought him
a double patty burger.
He took several bites of the burger while it was still partly covered in its wrapper,
but declined to finish the rest ... it wasn't until later that he saw the bun was covered
in mold.
When Bryan later complained to the restaurant where the burger had been ordered, the manager
offered him a coupon in compensation.
Instead, he chose to file a lawsuit seeking $200,000 to $1 million in damages for his
pain and suffering, and perhaps to cover the likely cost of his choosing pricier restaurants
for his future dining needs.
Raw or undercooked chicken is one of the leading causes of foodborne illness, according to
the Center for Disease Control.
But for years, unhappy customers have been taking to social media to report raw or undercooked
chicken strips from Dairy Queen, some of them even posting photos to prove they're not exaggerating.
One Indianapolis man took his complaints further than posting an online rant, however.
“I got a couple bites and I was like, this does not taste right, looked at it, ripped
it out and realized it was completely raw.”
Zach Cruse decided to report the incident to DQ corporate, and the company didn’t
waste any time springing into action.
“An employee is now fired after serving THIS raw chicken to a customer.”
The local health department also launched an investigation of the restaurant's food
preparation procedures.
If there's one thing DQ is justly famed for, it's the soft-serve ice cream they've been
dishing up since 1940.
The thing about soft-serve ice cream, however, is that what makes it so soft is the extra
air that's added into it.
This is done with the aid of a pretty complicated machine which can harbor all kinds of nasty
bacteria.
It turns out that the machines are actually very difficult to get completely clean.
The owner of a Dairy Queen in Iowa had her workers clean the soft-serve machines twice
a day, and even replaced all of the hoses and fittings on one machine, and yet the machine
still failed to meet state sanitation standards and was shut down by local health authorities.
One worker who repairs the machines used to make soft serve ice cream commented that he
would never allow his family to eat the product, due to the difficulty of disinfecting the
machine sufficiently to kill off most of the bacteria.
The most unsanitary part of these machines, he stated, was the nozzles, as these become
clogged with foul-smelling green gunk, just what you want as the base of your ice cream
cone.
A food reviewer with Business Insider magazine, who has tasted some of the worst items that
fast food restaurants have dished up over the years, still states that the hands-down
worst thing she's ever tried is Dairy Queen's chili cheese dog.
She was unimpressed by the meager amount of chili and the barely-melted, crusty cheese,
but what really threw her was the alleged meat inside the bun.
She didn't think it tasted like a hot dog at all, even a bad one.
Another taste tester described the hot dog as tasting like it was three weeks old.
There's a good chance that your hot dog won't be exactly fresh off the grill.
One former DQ employee admitted that the hot dogs were used, quote, "over, and over, and
over" and even reheated to serve the next day if they weren't all gone by closing time.
Dairy Queen, like just about every other fast food chain out there, does offer a few salads
on its menu for the health conscious diner ... or perhaps the one who's saving all their
calories for dessert.
The problem with ordering a salad at DQ, though, is that you definitely won't get what you're
paying for.
One DQ employee, commenting anonymously on Reddit, described all the ingredients as old,
including the lettuce, cabbage, carrots, and, quote, “even older grilled chicken," which
sounds like a way for them to get rid of a bunch of unwanted leftovers.
What's more, this same employee revealed a menu change circa 2016, a sneaky downsizing
maneuver in which the salad amounts were reduced but the bowls were redesigned to hide this.
Oh yeah, and their salads aren’t exactly healthy options, either.
All of the main course salads range from 270 to 400 calories and 11 to 21 grams of fat,
and that's without any dressing.
Ok, so nobody goes to Dairy Queen and orders a Blizzard thinking it's going to be part
of a nutritious, well-balanced diet.
These are nothing but delicious calorie bombs and we all know it.
Every once in a while, you just gotta indulge, though, right?
Well, there's indulging and then there's just plan insanity, and at DQ there's one menu
item that totally crosses over the line: the Royal Reese Brownie Blizzard filled with peanut
butter, in the large size, comes in at a whopping 1,500 calories!
That's 75 percent of the 2,000 recommended daily calories endorsed by the federal Food
and Drug Administration.
Of course, if you want to feast on a Blizzard from time to time but you have a little self
control, you can always order this Blizzard in a mini size.
At just 6 ounces, it comes in at a mere 520 calories.
If moderation is not your thing, at least you can always console yourself that the large
size does supply a respectable 37 grams of protein thanks to its gooey peanut butter-filled
core.
“I thoroughly enjoy this peanut butter.”
In 2018, a panel of taste testers from foodie website The Takeout set out to rank 19 different
Blizzards, and the one that came in dead last, scoring only 1 out of 20 possible taste points,
was the infamous Banana Split Blizzard.
Why?
Because of its watery consistency and its sour taste from overripe bananas.
The strawberry and chocolate flavorings were said to be faint, and the taste of pineapple
wasn’t even noticeable at all.
How can one butcher a banana split so terribly?
We’re unsure, but the conclusion was that this particular Blizzard was pretty much one
big fail.
When it comes to fast food fry reviews, Dairy Queen fries are usually damned with faint
praise.
The Daily Hive called them just, quote, "okay," but rated them #9 on a list of 10 Canadian
chains.
The LA Times ranked DQ's fries in the middle of the pack, 7 out of 19, but remarked that,
quote, "the flavor isn't particularly noticeable" and seemingly gave the chain a bump just because
Dairy Queen also serves ice cream.
A blogger for Odyssey, however, pulled no punches, calling the fries soggy, lifeless,
and unseasoned.
These reviews, ranging from meh to bleh, are still referring to Dairy Queen fries that
are prepared as they should be, and served up relatively fresh.
Numerous consumer complaints, however, attest to the fact that the fries may well be cold,
stale, or even gritty, and that you may receive far fewer of these than you expect.
Although when it comes to DQ fries, perhaps fewer isn't such a bad thing, after all.
Business Insider has reviewed Dairy Queen’s fish sandwiches several times.
A 2016 review called them subpar, with a weak bun, soggy lettuce, bland tartar sauce and
fish that could easily be mistaken for chicken.
A more recent Business Insider review of Dairy Queen's Alaskan Pacific Cod sandwich was ambivalent
as to whether it was or was not an improvement on DQ's previous fishwiches.
The oil-coated lettuce and excessive tartar sauce were judged to be even worse than before,
but the fish itself had seemingly improved from unidentifiable to merely not so great.
Yet another review, this one posted on Reddit, characterized the Alaskan Cod sandwich as
both gross and, quote, "smushed."
The reviewer backed these claims up with some vomit-inducing photos that not only do look
both gross and smushed, but do not in any way resemble the deliciousness shown in the
company’s advertising photo.
One commenter offered the opinion that it was the Redditor’s fault for ordering fish
from a fast food restaurant in the first place, while others remarked upon how Dairy Queen
itself so often fails to fulfill expectations.
You know a food trend is on its way out by the time it trickles down to fast food chains.
Do you remember when, suddenly, every foodie was going gaga over artisanal this, that,
and the other thing?
Marketers soon found out that this buzzword was an easy way to justify jacking up the
price on an item that really didn't have to fit any specific guidelines to qualify as
artisanal.
With everyone else having jumped aboard the artisanal bandwagon in 2015, Dairy Queen decided
it might as well roll out its own artisan sandwich line, with results that were… well,
predictable.
Business Insider found the chicken bacon ranch sandwich to be soggy, while a Tripadvisor
reviewer couldn't decide whether the chicken mozzarella or the Philly artisan sandwich
was worse, reporting them to be microwave-cooked and skimpy on fillings.
At least when and if that whole food trend goes away, we won't have to blame it on millennials.
Instead, we can blame DQ and their soggy sandwiches for driving the final nail in the artisanal
coffin.
Breakfast, the most important meal of the day.
What better way to jump start your day than with a tasty, healthy meal sure to fill you
with energy… or you could just clog up every single artery and scarf down half of your
day's recommended calories and fat right from the get-go.
Good luck feeling energized to do anything but head straight back to bed after that.
If you're down with the latter plan, then you'll definitely want to stop by Dairy Queen
and load up on their breakfast, where their country platter fits the definition of heart
attack on a plate.
The country platter with sausage has been called the absolute worst breakfast item on
DQ's menu, it turns out the platter with bacon is even worse.
The sausage platter has 1,060 calories and 38 grams of fat, while the bacon version comes
in at 1,150 calories and 39 fat grams.
Actually, when it comes to fat alone, there's yet another contender: the ultimate hash browns
platter with bacon.
This dish, which could be described as a health crisis waiting to happen, has just 1,030 calories
but an incredible, and possibly fatal, 43 grams of fat.
So, eat at your own risk.
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