Every fast food chain has its reliable fan favorites. But when they introduce new items,
they can sometimes get into trouble. Customers saw all sorts of new menu options roll out
in 2020, and while some were good, the following very much were not.
In September 2020, Buffalo Wild Wings released its cauliflower wings as part of a larger
menu revamp. Cauliflower as a chicken wing substitute is nothing new, as evidenced by
a 2018 headline on Vox.com that read,
"How cauliflower took over your pizza, your kitchen, and the world"
These particular cauliflower wings came topped with the sauce of your choosing as well as
Everything Pretzel spice, sesame, garlic, salt, two types of pepper, and green onions.
While you might assume the cauliflower wings are a decent option for diners looking for
healthier options or vegetarians who would otherwise be struggling to find good options
on the Buffalo Wild Wings menu, that's actually not the case. All of the chain's fried items
are fried in beef shortening, meaning that these cauliflower wings aren't vegan or even
vegetarian. Furthermore, a small serving of the cauliflower wings is 440 calories, which
is more than the number of calories in a six-count of traditional wings.
But beyond all this potential deception, how do they actually taste? If you're looking
for a satisfying wing experience, you might as well just stick to the real deal. As one
commenter on the deal blog Hip2Save put it,
"Bottom line, these are just breaded and deep-fried cauliflower florets. You gotta love marketing."
Plenty of us probably remember the cute Burger King commercial with farting cows and preteen
yodeler Mason Ramsey. It received plenty of air time as it claimed that the new Reduced
Methane Emissions Whopper would offer consumers the same great taste they'd come to know and
love, but with an added, eco-friendly benefit. The idea was that Burger King would begin
changing up the diets of the cows used for its beef, including adding lemongrass to the
livestock feed, to decrease methane emissions by 33 percent, a welcome change as methane
contributes to climate change.
"If my cow ain't farting, must be me."
While the sentiment was nice, the hype was actually unfounded, as reported by Popular
Science. First, it's worth mentioning that Burger King wasn't offering the Reduced Methane
Emissions Whopper at all of its locations, but rather only in a few select cities. Second,
Burger King is only adding that lemongrass to the cows' diets for a short period of their
lives, meaning they're producing the exact same amount of methane the rest of the time.
As a result, according to data from the Breakthrough Institute's director of food and agriculture,
this change really only reduces the cows' methane emissions by 3 percent.
In the summer of 2020, Chipotle launched the Tony Hawk Burrito, one of many recent fast
food schemes that used a celebrity name to hype a run-of-the-mill product. If you take
a look at the Tony Hawk Burrito, you'll discover that it's just a simple burrito with rice,
beans, chicken, salsa, and guacamole. You could ask for the same list of ingredients
and attach whatever name you like to it to get the same result.
The only part that was actually special about this promotion was that the first 2,000 individuals
to order the burrito received access to a demo of a new Tony Hawk skateboarding video
game. As one unenthusiastic blogger on Medium noted,
"The Tony Hawk Burrito is just a very generic burrito order [...] It was fine. For eleven
dollars, it filled me up, I guess. It was definitely a Chipotle burrito that I ate and
that is all I really have to say about it."
McDonald's Travis Scott Cactus Jack meal consists of a Quarter Pounder with cheese topped with
bacon, onions, and lettuce, served with fries and barbecue sauce and a Sprite for $6. When
it launched, it was a huge hit, with rap and food fans alike heading out to the Golden
Arches to see what all the hype was about.
"The most interesting ingredient to me is extra lettuce. You have extra lettuce in there."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the thing. It's like- it's a little- it's a little weird."
But as it turns out, it was a lot of hype for not very much. With a little special ordering,
you can have the Cactus Jack meal with no need for a Travis Scott endorsement at all.
This hyped-up meal is also concerning for other reasons, beyond the lack of creativity.
For one thing, multiple McDonald's franchises reportedly haven't been entirely happy to
associate their branding with a rapper known for explicit lyrics. Additionally, Joan Ifland,
founder of Food Addiction Reset, believes that the meal promotes food addiction, due
to both the celebrity endorsement and the various sweet-and-salty ingredients.
For those who couldn't get on board with the Travis Scott Meal, maybe they could vibe instead
with McDonald's J Balvin Meal, named after the Colombian reggaeton artist. This limited
offering consisted of a Big Mac, fries with ketchup, and an Oreo McFlurry. So again, it
was a meal that any diner could easily order on their own with no endorsement required.
The meal itself is all well and good, but it appeared that McDonald's completely overlooked
one of its most infamous problems when creating this promotion: the dreaded broken ice cream
machine. And in fact, on the day the meal was released, some J Balvin fans were completely
unable to get the McFlurry to complete their purchase and were forced to settle for an
apple pie instead.
Pimento cheese is a Southern classic. It contains pimento peppers, cheddar cheese, and mayonnaise,
and it's typically served on white bread or crackers. It's a popular appetizer or even
a full meal. So perhaps that led Chick-fil-A's development team to think that because fried
chicken is Southern, they might as well put another Southern item on top of it and call
it a day. And maybe that's how they ended up with the Honey Pepper Pimento Chicken Sandwich.
In truth, it actually wasn't that simple. According to a Chick-fil-A press release,
their culinary developers worked on perfecting the sandwich concept for over a year. The
result was a chicken filet drizzled with honey and topped with pimento cheese, served on
a toasted bun with mild pickled jalapeños. The chain tested the new menu item in North
and South Carolina in September 2020, but it never made it further than that. There
was speculation that part of the problem was that this was a Southern favorite that would
only appeal to Southern diners. Even so, North and South Carolinians didn't come out in full
force enough to propel this sandwich to the rest of the country.
"All I taste is pimento cheese, but it's good."
"I didn't either. But I'm feeling the jalapeño."
If you're ever craving an all-beef patty at 7 a.m., you can now find one, thanks to a
2020 menu offering from Carl's Jr. The Breakfast Burger features a charbroiled beef patty,
bacon, egg, American cheese, hash browns, and ketchup, all on a regular burger bun.
This actually wasn't the burger's first appearance. It was previously around earlier in the 2000s,
with Carl's Jr. bringing it back every so often. Amidst all the other chaos of 2020,
the Breakfast Burger seems to have gotten lost in the fray. The only thing new about
it, despite what the chain's marketing would have you believe, is that the hash brown is
in a different, more bun-friendly shape. During one of Carl's Jr.'s last iterations of the
Breakfast Burger in 2014, LA Weekly called it, quote,
"a breakfast item that answers the question no one has been asking since the dawn of time:
"How can cheeseburgers be eaten for breakfast?"
That review also poetically muses,
"Before you even unwrap the package, you can almost see all of the plans you had for the
day leaving you, your ambitions swirling the drain with the self-respect that you already
lost last week. After unwrapping the burger, the second thing you notice is that it seems
to have been prepared in the lavatory of a moving Greyhound bus to Minneapolis."
Dunkin' Donuts rolled out a few new offerings for Halloween 2020, including a spicy Ghost
Pepper Donut. There was an entire "spicy" marketing campaign around this item that included
a hashtag, involvement from Hot Ones host Sean Evans, and encouragement for diners to
"surprise" their friends with the innocent-looking donut.
"Dunkin' has a new item that you're gonna find either delicious or possibly disgusting."
The good thing about this item is that by all appearances, Dunkin' Donuts actually knows
how ridiculous an idea it is, and that it's not actually tasty enough to keep around.
This donut may not have been a huge culinary hit, but reviewers at least had some fun with
it. As comedian Josh Gondelman put it on The Ringer,
"We all know why the Spicy Ghost Pepper Donut really exists: because the world is in a state
of chaos where few norms remain intact and fewer boundaries sacrosanct. The Spicy Ghost
Pepper Donut was, in retrospect, all but inevitable."
KFC does fried chicken very well. With more than 23,000 restaurants in more than 140 countries
and territories, it's arguably the world's largest and most successful chicken chain.
But it can't quite nail any potato product other than its classic mashed potatoes. Potato
wedges were around for a while until they were canceled. Now, the restaurant is on to
its Secret Recipe fries, which were introduced in the middle of 2020. The response was lackluster,
even with a throwback price of thirty cents. Reviewers noted that KFC's original "secret
recipe" chicken spices just don't work on fries.
A quick look at the mentions of "KFC secret recipe fries" on Twitter reveals that that
sentiment is shared by a significant portion of the general populace. Some notable comments
have included,
"KFC new secret recipe fries not all that"
"KFC sprinkle lil black pepper on their fries and call it 'secret recipe.'"
Popeyes says that its Cajun Style Turkeys for the holidays are a "fan favorite." For
$40, customers can preorder a Thanksgiving turkey, with or without sides. It's precooked,
so it only needs to be reheated before serving. But is this turkey really the fan favorite
Popeyes claims it is?
In 2019, Business Insider gave the turkey a test run, which revealed that although it's
precooked, the turkey is frozen again and shrink-wrapped, which necessitates a day of
defrosting. The reheating process takes nearly three hours, which can further dry out the
already-cooked turkey. The Business Insider reviewer liked the turkey's flavor, though
she noted that it was "far from Cajun." Alas, she also mentioned that the turkey was "a
bit tough," with a sandy texture that tasted cooked, frozen, and reheated. She also noted,
"At the end of it all, I wasn't sure how much trouble buying Popeyes' turkey had actually
saved me. I still had to defrost, de-juice, re-juice, and reheat the bird. I'm not sure
I'd sacrifice the freshness and texture of a home-cooked turkey for Popeyes' pre-cooked
one."
For the first time in nearly a decade, McDonald's decided to offer new bakery items in 2020,
including a blueberry muffin, cinnamon roll, and apple fritter. The muffins and cinnamon
rolls were fairly well-received, but it's fair to say that not everyone is caring for
the apple fritter. As one critic at The Takeout put it,
"This fritter was crusty, dry, and a waste of calories. The glaze was crystalized, the
apples invisible, and the flavor disappointing."
Similar opinions were voiced on social media, with a couple of tweets declaring:
"McDonald's apple fritter [is] like a microwaved honey bun"
"I never had an apple fritter that I didn't like until I had the one from McDonald's."
The honey bun take was a popular one, as multiple people tweeted about the similarities. Customers
have also bemoaned the fact that employees seem to have a habit of leaving the fritter
out of the drive-thru bag. They probably should've just stuck with the apple-flavored baked good
that they're already famous for.
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