Saturday 11 July 2009

Wendy's Boneless Wings: Bold Buffalo ~ NWR

I likes me a good burger. And not just a high quality, thick, homemade burger. I can appreciate fast food burgers too. I love a good Wendy's Bacon Classic. Square patty's? Hell ya. And back in June when I heard about Wendy's adding Boneless Wings to their menu, well, I was curious to try.





I'm seeing the advertisements on constantly for these chicken bites. "Tastefully done! Enjoy 100% tender, juicy, chicken breast with a choice of 3 signature sauces" they declared. The 3 flavours to choose from are Buffalo Bold, Honey BBQ, and the one I see in all the commercials and print is the Sweet & Spicy Asian Chicken. They go for about $4.99 for an order, or $6.99 for a combo.



Going through the drive-thru, the girl at the window dropped my bag before handing it too me. With cat-like reflexes, she caught it, and handed it to me with a smile. When I got it out of the bag, well, the container was a little dented. But the chicken was unharmed.



I opened the container and took a whiff: it sort of smelled like Buffalo sauce, but way sweeter. Or waaaaaay sweeter as Wendy might say.





I was a little thrown off because I expected boneless wings. Instead, I got chicken bites. I consider a chicken strip a boneless wing; something that at least looks like a wing, not tiny chicken morsels. Some pieces are as big as a chicken nugget, but others are little bits. Very inconsistent in shape, but I believe that is to give the impression of 'authentic' and 'premium' as the commercials keep suggesting or the tag 'tastefully done.'





The meat is very tender. The 'breading' is very light, with no real crisp. It has a nice texture, but doesn't add much to the whole piece.




The sauce was another story. Buffalo Bold. That sounds spicy and exciting to me. It wasn't. In fact, they need to rescind the term "Buffalo" for false advertising. These are sickly sweet. There is no heat, and no butter or cayenne sauce flavour to them. Did I mention they were sickly sweet? Like some red dye added to high-fructose corn syrup. Normally I like HFCS, I think it gets an unfair rap. But this was not right. I don't know how it passed focus groups and taste testers. I hate the general public for making the food industry dumb down the heat.




Final Thoughts: I got them down, but I wouldn't try again. The sauce was just soo sweet it was gross. I can only imagine how sweet Honey BBQ and Sweet Asian sauces are. The chicken meat itself was really nice, like when a Brit says 'really nice', not the North American 'nice'. Follow? Oh well. if you have to try them for yourself, order it sauce on the side, if you can. I thought they included a wetnap to clean up, but it turned out to be 2 salt packs attached together. Another disappointment. Next time, I stick with the burgers. They are waaaaaaaay better.


3 comments:

Chris said...

I had these this week. My wife got them at lunch at work. I had seen the Asian variety commercial here and didn't even know they had "Buffalo", so I assumed I was eating the Asian version. After I had eaten them all, I went back to her office and said, "Those were ok but I swear they just used a cheap buffalo sauce...nothing asian about it." Turns out....yeah, she got me the buffalo ones. I pretty much agree with your review. Damn. I could go for a Frosty for breakfast now.

Julia said...

I work at wendys and ive tried each kind of wings. You must just have some weird taste buds or something because the buffalo isnt extremely sweet like you said. Maybe you got the asian wings on accident because those are pretty sweet and you wouldnt believe how many times the wrong wings go out. And why would you even need wetnaps? You have a fork and a dish to eat them over. There is no need for them to touch your fingers.

Lord of the Wings said...

Julia - Thanks for stopping by. It might be possible I got the wrong order, but I'm pretty sure they were meant to be the Buffalo.

As for the wetnaps, I just thought they would have been nice. I don't know why I needed salt?

Everybody tastes differently and I know people that do like them. Unfortunately it just wasn't me.

Cheers, WK