Fast Food Reviews

• Wendy's Buffalo Dipped Chicken Sandwich
  Grade: F
  A fried chicken patty meets a sickly, stinging, neon orange sweet-and-sour sauce in a sandwich we wouldn't inflict on our worst enemy. One puckery, cloying bite scorched the throats of the testers and caused at least one to skip dinner that night. The taste of the chicken? We wouldn't know, because it was so completely overpowered, but it sure wasn't anything we'd call "Buffalo."
  
  
  

  Keith Morrison

• Pizza Hut Tuscani Pasta
  Grade: C
  Pizza Hut offers Tuscani Pasta options: Premium Bacon Mac 'N Cheese, Meaty Marinara and Creamy Chicken Alfredo. You won't confuse this pasta with a restaurant-quality meal anytime soon; the people in their commercials must have no taste buds. The Meaty Marinara' s sauce was very sweet and pasty, and the pasta itself was overcooked. The meat in the sauce was of excellent quality but overwhelmed by the sauce. The cheese on top was a pleasing bubbling brown color, but there wasn't enough of it. It arrived hot and ready-to-eat, and would make a filling meal, but the Hut should really stick to what they do best.
  
  
  

  Andrew Porter

• Taco Bell Fresco Style Bean Burrito Supreme with Ground Beef
  Grade: C-
  We appreciate that a fast-food establishment is trying to provide its customers with low-cal, low-fat fare. What shouldn't be on the menu is a literally watered-down product. The first bite dripped thin fiesta salsa and gloppy beans, all wrapped in a stale tortilla with barely there ground beef. When separated from its wrapping, the contents looked like something more suitable for our pooches -- not that we'd subject them to it. Kudos for trying, but for 330 calories, we'd much rather have the nachos.
  
  
  

  Keith Morrison

• Burger King Chicken Biscuit
  Grade: B+
  BK's foray into the red-hot realm of Southern-style chicken biscuits is a noble one indeed, but falls just short of unseating its current rulers, McDonald's and Chick Fil-A. There's no question that the patty holds its own with a piquant, peppery seasoning blend, and just moist enough meat. It's just the biscuit that trends a bit more stolidly cakey than authentically flaky that keeps this chickwich from ascending the ranks.
  
  
  

  Keith Morrison

• Burger King Steakhouse Burger
  Grade: C+
  Perhaps we've been patronizing a less regal tier of restaurants than the King's kitchen corps, but we fail to see how a smattering of frizzled onion chunks and a blop of over-sweet sauce and mayo connotes "steakhouse." Perhaps the aggrandizement is due to the voluminous patty's slightly vulgar bun overhang, but the unclad meatscape feel less like fleshy abandon, and more like a flash of plumber's butt. It's far from a royal embarrassment, but hardly worth the extra cash.
  
  
  

  Keith Morrison

• Domino's Oven Baked Chicken Parm Sandwich
  Grade: C-
  Each half of the sandwich is spread with a thin layer of pizza sauce, barely enough to wet the bread. This is followed by a layer of cheese half as thin as you'd expect on a pizza. Then 3 tiny chicken strips are neatly arranged laid parallel to each other, giving the illusion that they're actually giving you some chicken. It tastes like pizza, only with the cheese and sauce mostly scraped off. Only order this if you just really hate pizza.
  
  
  

  Amber Porter

• Domino's Oven Baked Philly Cheese Steak Sandwich
  Grade: D
  You can custom order with or without mushrooms, onions and green peppers, but that's about as pleasing as this experience got. "Artisan Italian Bread" is really just tastes like pizza dough in a different shape, and there was way too much bread to complement the single, thin layer of "steak" and a gooey, artificial-tasting provolone.
  
  
  

  Amber Porter

• Dunkin' Donuts Southwest Chicken Flatbread
  Grade: C-
  Were we to quantify the tastes of an entire region in concordance with what DD is passing off as "Southwest" here, we'd have to assume that one quadrant of our nation had lost every tooth in their collective head. The bread is spongy. The cheese is rubbery. The compressed chicken substance is downright bouncy. These qualities which might prove to be ideal in a sleep or flotation device are less than desirable in a sandwich, but hey -- at least the rather tasty caramelized onion jam pulls it back from the brink of complete snoresville.
  
  
  

  Rachel Been

• Dunkin' Donuts Egg White Veggie Flatbread
  Grade: C+
  Dunkin' Donuts has always offered delicious donuts to help get your day started, but now they're venturing into low-cal healthy territory with their egg white sandwiches. The bread itself is pretty good, soft and doughy in a familiar way. The big problem with this sandwich is the egg white "patty" itself. In texture, taste and appearance, it resembles a small kitchen sponge. The cheese helps a bit, but there isn't enough of it to really take the edge off the egg. Only for the truly healthy minded.
  
  
  

  Rachel Been

• Dunkin' Donuts Reduced Fat Blueberry Muffin
  Grade: D
  If you're expecting tasty and healthy, this is not the breakfast pastry choice for you. While the fat has been reduced, it's still very high in calories (400, only 70 less than the "unhealthy" version), so don't kid yourself that this is healthy. While it is sweet, you might as well stick with the regular blueberry muffin, which is a little more moist and doesn't taste quite so synthetic.
  
  
  

  Rachel Been