Drew v. Food VII: Comfort Food Edition

2020 is relentlessly 2020ing out 2020 to horrible 2020 sideways. In an age where wildfires rampaging through the Pacific northwest will somehow almost certainly cause the murder hornet to proliferate instead of die out, we very much need to eat as many of our feelings as possible to make it through each day. So now I’m hitting you with yet another off-schedule food review. Because we both need it. Badly. Oh, so badly.

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Wendy’s Pretzel Bacon Pub Cheeseburger and Chicken Cheeseburger

As accidentally requested by The Monster King on our Discord (join up and you, too, can influence future posts!), here’s this week’s marquee review.

The pretzel bun is much softer than most — if not all — pretzel buns I’ve had, but it is no less delicious for it. Perhaps the shell could have been a little thicker, but that’s not much of a nit to pick.

The onion “tanglers” (think onion rings, but more shaped and cut to resemble the broken pieces of curly fries) seemed at first like it had just the right amount. However, after inadvertently eating the larger half of the lopsided supply of onion rings first, the burger’s taste came together much better on the less populated half.

As for the special beer cheese sauce… it’s there. Better than having no sauce at all, but nothing you’d demand on a different sandwich.

The bacon itself, sadly, gets a bit lost as it did in KFC’s Double-Down sandwich. The burger is as light on the bacon as it is heavy on the onion tanglers.

Muenster cheese was probably the best choice for this burger, so kudos to whoever made that call. Top-tier cheese choosing.

I’ve mentioned before that I’m not a pickles guy, but I can tell you that they were drowned in the sauce, just like on Popeye’s Chicken Sandwich. Can people who dig pickles tell me if this is actually a preferred practice? It seems to me like they’d be more enjoyable elsewhere in a sandwich, but I’m not the voice of experience, here.

That all said, my recommendation is to ditch the beef and have the chicken version. It matches the flavors and textures in play much better than the burger does, but at the expense of not being able to land double or triple patties on it.

As I did not buy these on the same trip, I was not able to attempt to make an homage to Doublemeat Palace, but it seems like it could work.

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Wendy’s Bacon Pub Fries

Following the trend, these fries have the same beer cheese sauce and bacon as the burgers. There’s also some shredded cheddar cheese, but it isn’t melted. There was about a 50/50 split of fries that had toppings and fries that did not. The fries themselves are traditional Wendy’s fries; firm, but not hard. Pleasantly sturdy.

This isn’t intended to be eaten fry by fry. If you don’t shovel gobs at a time with a fork, the bacon is just going to fall off.

Overall, it’s fine. It’s no poutine, but it’s a nice change of pace from getting the same old fries each time if you’re a Wendy’s regular. It’s probably worth paying the extra dollar every now and then to upsellgrade the fries in your value meal.

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Cheetos Mac and Cheese

When I happen upon a food weird or meme-y enough to try, you know it’s going to end up on the blog. It’s just more interesting a journey than fine dining.

The Cheetos Mac and Cheese kit comes in a noticeably larger box than the traditional mac and cheese offerings, but weighs in about the same at just under 6 oz. The pasta comes in larger pieces than I’m accustomed to in such kits, but it seems like there’s more air in the box, too, to even it out.

The cheese powder, when poured, is more orange than orange. And the scent is unmistakably Cheetos. A good mixing takes the edge off the color, though. As for the flavor, it comes up VERY short. My taste buds detect the butter much more readily than the cheese, which is something I don’t think has ever happened to me with any other mac and cheese.

I don’t know if it would taste better if I boiled the pasta in Mountain Dew instead of water, but I shall leave that experiment to the reader.

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Kit Kat of the week: Apple Pie

Well in time for the Fourth of July was the most American Kit Kat imaginable.

If Nestle were making these, I’d expect the wafer to have all the apple flavoring and the casing to have the color and taste of baked dough.

As Hershey made it, the wafer tastes weekly of the entire pie, and the casing carries an odd creme-like flavor. This was definitely a weak attempt.