Wendy’s
http://www.wendys.com/

I like Wendy’s burgers and I’m not really ashamed to say it.  In the realm of drive-thru burgers, I really think that Wendy’s has the best tasting product.  Apparently, I am part of the minority with this opinion because the scientists at the Dave Thomas test kitchen have decided to completely overhaul their long-standing burger recipe.  I am not kidding you here…they called it “Project Gold Hamburger.”  They called in pickle chemists and focus groups.  They traveled the country sampling competing national chains and local burger stands.  Employees working the grill have been instructed to only press the patty twice instead of the usual eight times.  Lastly, and I’m really not making this up, they sought federal approval to store the cheese at a higher temperature to ensure better melting on the burger.

So I’ve already said it, but I like (or rather liked) Wendy’s burgers.  After discovering that my local Wendy’s was offering the new “Hot ‘N’ Juicy” burgers ahead of the October 3^rd nationwide launch, I thought I’d see if the changes were for the better.

What I Got:  Bacon Deluxe Single Cheeseburger; ~$4.00.

As you can hopefully see, there are FIVE slices of cheese on my burger.  FIVE.  I do not want, nor do I need, five slices of cheese on a single-patty burger.  After shedding the excess dairy, I began to notice the subtle differences.  The patty was much larger and less processed-looking.  The bun, my favorite improvement, was well-toasted and slightly crunchy around the edges.  The onions had changed to the red variety and apparently the crinkle-cut pickles won out.  Nothing has changed about the bacon, but that’s great because I liked it just the way it was.

Would I Buy It Again?  Well, the changes certainly didn’t have a negative effect on the taste, so yes, I would.  The price tag is a bit much, but I would still rather have just one of these than two of any other fast food burger.  I wasn’t aware that there was anything fundamentally wrong with the old burgers, but this was certainly very good and still head-and-shoulders above the other common drive-thrus.  If they hadn’t made such a circus of the changes, I’m not sure that anyone would’ve even noticed!  They’re so subtle that they have really only served to make an already good product just slightly better.   I would recommend, however, that they ditch the silly “Hot ‘N’ Juicy” moniker.  It didn’t work for the “Big ‘N’ Tasty”, so why go there again?

-Indy Food Geek

Wendy’s
http://www.wendys.com/

I’ve never publicly expressed this opinion before, but I really do feel that Wendy’s has the best breaded chicken sandwich in the fast food market.  I think the quality of the meat is first-rate and they manage to keep it surprisingly juicy.  So when I saw window stickers go up for “Flavor-Dipped Chicken” at Wendy’s, my interest was piqued.  I recall seeing the “Flavor-Dipped” schtick a few years back but couldn’t recall ever trying it.

What I Got: BBQ Flavor-Dipped Chicken Sandwich; $4.50-$4.89 (somewhere thereabouts).

For no reason in particular, I chose the BBQ bath for my breaded chicken fillet.  The pickle and onion adornments seemed appropriate, albeit sparse.  As you can see, my sandwich was put together hastily and proved quite hard to eat during a lunch break at work.  I found myself rushing through the sandwich so I could start cleaning myself up.  Sauce on my hands, sauce on my face and sauce on my shirt.  The sauce also did a number on the breading, turning it soft and mushy.  Without more than two slivers of onion, I really couldn’t taste much BUT the sauce after a while.

Would I Buy It Again?  Nope. This sloppy mess costs dangerously close to $5 and I can’t figure out why.  I love BBQ anything so I guess it tasted all right, but it ranks very low on the value scale.

A couple of years ago, the WIBIA team would offer an “Instead” suggestion and I’d like to bring that back up for this review.

Instead:  Try the Asiago Ranch Chicken Club (with the spicy fillet).  Just like the flavor dipped sandwiches, it is in the $5 range but it is worth every penny.  The bacon, cheese and sauce are a great addition to the already stellar spicy chicken fillet sandwich.  I highly recommend it.

-Indy Food Geek

I was reading a post at SeriousEats.com the other day where they were comparing the various ice cream-type options at Wendy’s (Twisted Frosty), Burger King (Sundae Shake) and McDonald’s (McFlurry) and I realized two things:

1.  The reviewer was absolutely right about that Oreo Sundae Shake at Burger King.  That thing sucks.
2.  I’ve somehow made it through my life never having tried a McFlurry and I couldn’t figure out how or why (I’ve never had a Twisted Frosty either, but I’ve at least had a regular Frosty, so I at have an idea what a Twisted Frosty would taste like).

I had an ice cream craving last Wednesday, so I decided to cruise on over to McDonald’s to try their new limited time offering, the Reese’s McFlurry (by the way, I could almost guarantee this is not just a limited time offering and will become permanent…why wouldn’t it?).  I could have gone to Dairy Queen and gotten a Blizzard (the king of all ice cream treats), but I wanted to see how McDonald’s McFlurry stacked up since I have never had one before.

What I Got:  Regular Size Reese’s McFlurry $2.35

If you’ve never had a McFlurry, it is similar to a Blizzard.  They take their “reduced fat” vanilla ice cream, dump in Reese’s Cup chunks and blend.  It’s not very complicated.

When I got mine and saw the amount of Reese’s Cup chunks and the ample portion size of the McFlurry, I was very pleased and devoured the first half in about 1.3 seconds.  The taste of McDonald’s thick (I find it to be thicker than Dairy Queen’s) vanilla ice cream was a perfect mix with the peanut butter and chocolate of the Reese’s Cups.  Truly, vanilla, peanut butter and chocolate is the best combination of ice cream and candy that there is in my opinion.

The second half wasn’t as wonderful though as I noticed that I was missing something and thought, “hey, where the heck did all the Reese’s Cup chunks go?!”  Basically, they only put Reese’s Cup chunks in the top half of my McFlurry and not in the bottom half.  I’m not sure if that is standard protocol or if that was just a blending error by the employee that made my McFlurry (maybe someone that has had multiple McFlurrys can help me here?), but I was very disappointed.  I like the taste of McDonald’s plain vanilla ice cream, but that’s not what I was paying for here!  If I wanted plain vanilla ice cream, I would have gotten a plain sundae for $1 and saved myself the money!  I need my Reese’s Cup chunks!  C’mon McDonald’s, I’ve got weight to gain here!  Oh well.

Would I Buy It Again?  Most likely not. I went into this to see how it compared to Dairy Queen’s Reese’s Cup Blizzard and the McFlurry lost.  The McFlurry was just boring.

When you compare the two you are really comparing the taste of the soft serve ice cream that they use (Reese’s Cups are the same everywhere) and while I like McDonald’s ice cream in general, Dairy Queen’s is superior.  Plus, I know that when I go to Dairy Queen, my Blizzard is going to be made by an ice cream “professional”, so I won’t run the risk of getting screwed out of my Reese’s Cup chunks.

The only time it would be acceptable to choose this over Dairy Queen is if in you are dying for ice cream and there is not a Dairy Queen nearby.  Ugh…no Dairy Queen nearby…that sounds like the seventh layer of hell to me.

-IndianapolisEater

I don’ t think it is a secret around here that our staff likes to eat.  I mean, why else would we have a food blog?!  DUH!  Anyway, one of the occasional by-products of eating and competitive human nature are eating challenges.  You see them all the time on television, online, at your local bar, etc.  There’s even a website called EatFeats in our blog links that updates the news and challenges throughout the country.

Since Man v. Food debuted a new season this past Wednesday (outstanding show) and the Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest is in a few weeks on July 4th, I thought it would be kind of fun to open our own little corner of the blogosphere to see what kind of eating challenges our readers and staff have done.  These don’t have to be “professional” challenges per se, as I’m interested to hear some of the challenges that you’ve had amongst your friends as a bet or a “I bet you can’t eat…” type of thing.  My only request is that they invovle either quantity of food (example:  a two pound cheeseburger) or spice of food (example:  super hot chicken wings) and were part of a competition against at least one other person (or thing in the case of a restaurant).

Since I’m the author of this post, I’ll start with some of the things that I’ve done in my “challenge” history:

*Fast Freddy’s Gorilla Burger:  This was at a now defunct restaurant in a town next to my hometown and I did it when I was roughly 16-17 years old.  The burger was two pounds of ground beef and every topping imaginable (avocados, tomatoes, onions, bacon, mulitple slices of cheese, pickles, lettuce, mayo, ketchup, mustard, mushrooms, etc.) on a bun.  I took this challenge on two separate occasions and finished it both times.  The prize was my name on a plaque on the wall.

*Last Man Standing Chicken Wing Challenge:  This was in college and was between myself and two friends.  We bought several bags of frozen wings on a random Saturday, cooked them in the oven and ate until we could go no more.  Sadly, I lost this one as I only finished 51 wings for second place.  The winner finished 54.

*Bub’s Big Ugly:  I did this one along with wibia and we both finished it.  You can read about it the details of it on their website.  Sadly, this one was pre-blog, so we don’t have any documentation.  Also, this is supposedly the one that Adam Richman did on Man v. Food for the Indianapolis episode that they taped last month.  Apparently his challenge was to eat four of them and judging by a post that I saw on his Twitter page (since removed), I think he accomplished his goal.  The episode will air in August.  As for wibia and my challenge, we got our picture on the wall of Bub’s for one year as our prize.

*Wings Etc. Wall of Flame Challenge:  We actually profiled this one for the blog as wibia and I both did it, so you can read about it here.

*Stanley’s Deli Fat Stanley Challenge:  Again, this one was profiled for the blog, so you can also read about it here.  Sadly, this restaurant has gone out of business, so any future attempts at this challenge by me or anyone else are impossible.

*Wendy’s Spicy Chicken Nugget Challenge:  This one is just one that two friends and myself made up one night while sitting in a bar.  We went to Wendy’s at 2:00 a.m. (LOL), bought one hundred spicy chicken nuggets and bet each other that each of us couldn’t finish thirty of them.  My two competitors did not finish as they only got into the mid twentys, but I did and kept eating to just to see how far I could go.  I eventually made it to fifty and needless to say, I have had zero desire to eat a Wendy’s Chicken Nugget since that day (I used to ALWAYS get them).

I’ve had some other eating related feats but they can’t really be classified as “challenges” as I’ve defined it, so I’ll leave them out.  So, what have you guys done?  Fill us in!  Don’t be shy or embarrassed to share!

-IndianapolisEater

If you haven’t figured out from reading my material on the blog so far, I’m going to let you in on something that isn’t really a secret:  I’m not exactly sane (wibia would be happy to tell you all the ways since he and I were previously roommates for more than three years of our lives).

Anyway, one of the things that makes me less than sane is I have an absolutely unhealthy obsession with peanut butter.  Peanut butter, in moderation, is actually healthy for you but when it comes to me, moderation goes out the window and then it becomes unhealthy because  I love the stuff and can’t get enough of it.  Peanut butter, especially when mixed with chocolate, is my definition of what heaven must be like.

I saw a statistic on television once (I want to say it was on Unwrapped but it could have been Good Eats) that said that the average American eats five pounds of peanut butter a year.  This caused me to laugh quite a bit because when I thought about it, I realized that I ate five pounds PER MONTH!  Yes, that is true.  I used to go to the store once a month and buy the 80 ounce jars of peanut butter and go through them in one month’s time.  Of course I would use the peanut butter for sandwiches, oatmeal, pancakes, desserts (I may make a Food Porn-like post about my homemade Peanut Butter Pie sometime) and other regular things (I never did quite get the peanut butter on a hamburger thing though).  Mostly, I would just get a spoon or a fork and eat it directly out of the jar.  It got to the point that I was so out of control with the stuff that I decided to stop keeping jars of peanut butter in my house in order to help my cholesterol and my waist line.  Yes, that is a true story.

To take it one step further, I’ve also gone searching online for other peanut butter flavored products, including gum.  I chew gum constantly (Did you know that chewing gum burns 11 calories per hour?), so if I could mix peanut butter with gum, it would be like a day long walk through the fields of heaven.  Alas, I could find no peanut butter flavored gum in the world and I was a very sad man.  It actually put a downer on my day because I was willing to spare no expense to have peanut butter gum shipped to my door.

Yes, I love it that much and apparently I’m not alone in my love as there is actually a website dedicated to all things peanut butter called PeanutButterLovers.com.  They’ve got recipes, contests, etc.  If you like peanut butter, are just curious by nature or are bored and a total loser like me, check it out.

I’m the same way with Italian pasta salad as well.  If someone puts it in front of me, I will finish it.  I’ll spare you the rest though.

Anyway, the purpose of this post was not to expose me as the crazy person that I am, but instead to find out about some other people’s food obsessions/quirks.  Here’s some that I’ve heard of:

**I once dated a girl that said that her favorite thing to do was go to McDonald’s and get a chocolate milkshake and an order of fries (it worked with Wendy’s Frostys too).  She would then dip the fries in the chocolate milkshake and eat them both together.  This was the first I had ever heard of someone doing this and I thought it was genuinely insane.  Yet, as I’ve ventured through the food blogosphere, I’ve come to find out this is actually fairly common because of the salty/sweet mix.  Despite this, I still don’t get it.

**I have a friend that will only drink a soda if it is a fountain Coke from McDonald’s.  He’s a regular reader of this blog, so I’m “outing” him so to speak, but I’m pretty sure he’ll get over it.  His claim was that fountain drinks at McDonald’s tasted different and the only way he was going to drink a soda is if it came from there (he makes special trips just to get them).  At first I thought he was nuts, but I came to find out that McDonald’s actually does tweak the syrup/carbonation levels in their fountains to change the standard drink recipe, so they really do taste different and he was right all the long.  Go figure.

**Peeps.  I’m sure you all know what they are…the neon colored marshmallow flavored treats shaped like little birds that pop up like crazy around Easter.  I hate them, but for some reason, many other people love them.  I knew a girl in college that would eat them like it was her job and it always grossed me out.  Recently, I saw a post on SeriousEats where someone had made a Peeps pizza.  Absolutely disgusting.

So, do you have any food obsessions or quirks (I know some of you can’t resist ice cream)?  If so, let us know about it in the comment section.  I’ll pick a winner of the craziest quirk that I hear and maybe make another post about it later on.  I don’t have a prize to give you other than the respect and admiration of your peers, so don’t let the lack of a prize or potential embarrassment stop you from posting your quirk.  We may make fun of you, but that should be okay.  This blog is an entertainment blog that just happens to focus on food, so we are all here for fun anyway. 

-IndianapolisEater

[Sorry for the crappy picture quality; the BlackBerry camera isn't the best thing ever.]

What I Got:  Bacon & Blue Burger $3.99 ($5.99 for a small combo)

This is a new product item at Wendy’s as they have trying to recently alter their menu to up their sagging sales.  This one rolled out nationally yesterday, but we’ve had it here in Indianapolis for a couple of weeks (I love being a test market!).

This burger is a healthy sized burger patty topped with lettuce, tomato, sauteed onions, steak sauce, applewood smoked bacon and crumbled blue cheese.

Going in to ordering this, I wasn’t expecting a lot.  I’m a blue cheese lover, but I know enough to know that when fast food places try to go gourmet with their menu items, they usually end up failing and serving something that is a very weak imitation of a gourmet product.  With this burger, Wendy’s has blown that pre-conceived notion of mine completely away because this thing was damn tasty.  The applewood smoked bacon was chewy (I prefer my bacon somewhat soft as opposed to crunchy, so this was it) and peppery and that made it quite tasty.  The blue cheese was very tart, very plentiful and the heat of the burger melted the cheese onto the burger to make a delicious, gooey mess.  I was actually surprised they put so much blue cheese on here, because blue cheese can get kind of pricey.  Kudos to Wendy’s for somewhat disregarding product cost and being so liberal with the amount that they put on the burger.  The burger patty, while not huge, was sizeable and flavorful enough that it mixed well with both the bacon and the cheese.  The produce was fresh too and that’s a welcome thing when you are eating this on a cold day in February in Indiana.  Sadly, the steak sauce taste was virtually non-existent to me as I could not taste it at all.

Would I Buy It Again?  Yes. I’m a value menu guy, as I’ve said many times here before, but if I was going to order something upscale and neglect my proclivity to order off of a value menu, I would definitely order this.  Wendy’s has got a real winner here and hopefully this one will be successful enough to hang around on the menu for a long time so that us bleu cheese lovers have somewhere to go to get a blue cheese burger that doesn’t involve going to a real restaurant and having to pay $8.00 or more to get one.

-IndianapolisEater

Wendy's Spicy Chicken Nuggets

What I Got:  Wendy’s Spicy Chicken Nuggets 99¢/five piece (promotional price)

Wendy’s recently has introduced a spicy component to their traditional chicken nuggets and since they were running a promotion and I’m a big fan of their regular chicken nuggets, I decided to check them out.  Oddly enough, as I was looking through the archives, I realized that this is our first review of any Wendy’s product item.  It seems odd that we have missed one of the largest fast food providers in all of our reviews, but that just goes to show that Wendy’s doesn’t really introduce anything that exciting all that often.

That being said, with these nuggets, you are just getting the standard chicken nugget with a spicy breading.  As you can see in my blurry picture, the spicy coating makes the color of the nugget change to an orangeish color from the normal brownish tint.  As far as the taste, you can definitely tell there is some spice in these things (the pepper is clearly visible in the above picture) but the spice is definitely not all that overwhelming, in my opinion.  If you are sensitive to hot foods (I am not), this increased heat may bother you a bit, but all in all, it’s not going to ruin your day if you eat a five piece order of these.

If the heat in the nuggets does bother you or you are so inclined, you can pair these nuggets with Wendy’s assortment of dipping sauces which include Ranch, Barbecue, Honey Mustard, Asian, etc. to attempt to cool them down or add more flavor.

Would I Buy It Again?  Sure, I would buy these again.  Nothing about the taste of these nuggets is overwhelmingly outstanding, but you are getting the value of what you are paying for.  Plus, at the promotional price of 99¢, you are actually getting a better deal by ordering these than you are by ordering the traditional nuggets (which are $1.29 for a five piece order in my area).  If these are popular enough and stay on the menu, I’m sure they will go up to the same price as their traditional nuggets, so get these at this price while you can.

-IndianapolisEater