TBG Reviews: KFC's Toasted Wraps

I'm not really sure if I ever envisioned a mission statement for this blog, but the one thing I've learned is that the fast food reviews are, for whatever reason, more popular than anything else I write. It's gotten to the point where I'm eating any new menu item, even if it's something I wouldn't usually order, just so it can get the TBG treatment.

Sorry, heart.

Back when I was a kid, KFC was still "Kentucky Fried Chicken". This was a time when "Fried" could appear in a restaurant's name (and "sugar" could appear in the name of popular cereals). In the late '80s/early '90s, Kentucky Fried Chicken became KFC and, in the decades to follow, they'd go back and forth between full name and acronym.

I haven't regularly eaten KFC since my first year at San Diego State. At the time, the thought of a major restaurant chain on a college campus was still just an awesome novelty. And, since they took my bare-minimum meal plan card, I developed quite the taste for the two-piece white meat n' biscuit breakfast.

After college, I'd like to say my tastes…graduated (Eh? Eh?) to more sophisticated food, but what can I say…$1.29 for anything at any restaurant will get me to go in at least once.

KFC's "Wraps" are positioned to steal away sales from McDonald's own inexplicably popular line of tortilla-enveloped chicken strips. The gimmick is simple: KFC "toasts" their wraps, while McDonald's doesn't.

I ordered one at the drive-thru window and even by the disinterested teen employee standards of the fast food industry, this was some sloppy work. Almost all of the contents had fallen out of my Wrap, so while waiting at a red light, I cobbled everything back together.

With my very first bite, I hit the unmistakably slimy texture of chicken fat. The deep-fried strip was already splintering into dry strands as I spit what I'd bit out the car window.

I've had better starts to snacks.

The chicken didn't have that KFC "11 herbs and whatever…" taste and, not surprisingly, the warmed-over lettuce, partially-melted cheddar cheese and watery ranch sauce added nothing to it. You really do get what you pay for, I s'pose, Blech.

Grade: -5 (out of 5)