Food critic tries Wendy's all-new breakfast menu
Some of the morning fare at Wendy's, which launched an all-new breakfast menu Monday. Credit: Newsday/Scott Vogel
At 6:32 a.m., even as the sun rose warily over barren trees, it seemed that this would be a March morning like none other, the sort of day when strangers would shoot each other nervous glances and know exactly what the other was thinking. Why? At that moment, lights were clicking on at Wendy’s restaurants all over the Island. It was only a matter of time before the question on everyone’s lips — would America’s third-largest burger chain finally be able to claim a piece of the zillion-dollar, fast-food breakfast market? — would be mercifully answered.
I sped down empty streets, tires peeling, brakes screeching, thoughts racing. Yes, Wendy’s has failed at breakfast twice before, I warned myself, but this time things will be different. This time they are introducing a Honey Butter Chicken Biscuit.
Honey, butter, chicken and biscuit are, as most linguists and a few semioticians will tell you, four of the finest words in the English language, and together they promised a juggernaut that would easily unseat McDonald’s Egg McMuffin — that tired, dry, nearly-50-year-old has-been. Intent on blunting Wendy’s obvious momentum, Ronald and Co. had launched a preemptive strike, hastily declaring this to be National Egg McMuffin Day, a holiday they vowed to commemorate by handing out free sandwiches to anyone who’d take them. Good luck, I laughed, rolling my eyes at the golden arches in the rearview mirror.
Notwithstanding the fact that it was now 6:37 a.m., an hour in which I habitually avoid any and all freckle-faced, pigtailed girls with wide smiles, I fishtailed into a Wendy’s parking lot, bolted from my car and yanked on the door, which was locked. Like many around the country, this particular Wendy’s had never served breakfast before. Indeed, it had never even opened its doors before 10 a.m. A bleary-eyed manager, alarmed by the ruckus, motioned me around to the drive-through (his dining room opens at 9, I later learned). Not for the last time this day, it occurred to me that if Wendy’s is to become a morning destination, its restaurants will need to be run by morning people, which seem at present to be in woefully short supply.
No matter. From memory, I rattled off the order I’d been rehearsing in my head for days: one-Breakfast-Baconator-combo-with-a-chocolate-Frosty-ccino-plus-a-Sausage-Egg-and-Swiss-Cheese-Croissant-along-with-of-course-a-Honey. Butter. Chicken. Biscuit.
As dedicated viewers of CNBC’s “Squawk Box” and anyone else with too much time on their hands will tell you, Wendy’s has been trying and failing at breakfast since the 1980s, when a menu that included omelets and French toast proved too time-intensive to prepare for its grab-and-go audience. In 2013, the chain tried again, introducing a new breakfast menu at some locations, and failed anew. Still, it’s always morning in America in fast-food land. So confident is Wendy’s in its new nine-sandwich morning lineup, the chain has simultaneously launched, for the first time, a breakfast menu in every single one of its U.S. restaurants, and begun promoting same with an estimated $80 million ad campaign.
There are two schools of eating, the first being that you should immediately eat the thing you love most on your plate, and the second, which says you should eat it last. Plainly part of the latter camp, I started my morning with a Breakfast Baconator combo ($6.49), which includes a side order of something called seasoned potatoes with coffee — or, for an upcharge, Wendy’s signature vanilla or chocolate Frosty-ccino.
The marquee Baconator, a supersize egg sandwich with a hollandaise-ish sauce, is advertised as containing six strips of Applewood smoked bacon, two slices of American cheese, and a sausage patty in the shape of a square (har har). Mine arrived with three bacon slices, one cheese and no evidence of sausage either round or square. Still, I found the Baconator to be soft, warm and well-salted. The only thing standing between it and breakfast stardom, it seems to me, are three more slices of bacon, one slice of cheese, and an AWOL sausage patty.
If the phrase seasoned potatoes conjures thoughts of steaming home fries at the local diner, you are conjuring the wrong thoughts. For those who’ve been up all night, Wendy’s garlic-and-black-pepper fried wedges might be a suitable breakfast accompaniment, but I found them a bit decadent and greasy for the morning, even by the comparatively low standards of fast-food potatoes. I thought the same about my Frosty-ccino. It was milkshake-like and lightly caffeinated, something less to drink in the morning than atone for.
Better was the sausage, egg and cheese croissant ($3.89). Besides allowing me the chance to consider my first square sausage patty and ask why, the sandwich boasted a nice, freshly cracked egg and a springy if not flaky croissant. As a whole, I found it to be soft, warm and well-salted.
If you’ve been reading this far, well, first of all I thank you. Second, you are no doubt dying to hear my verdict on the Honey Butter Chicken Biscuit. Third, I can’t give you one, because when I began unwrapping the sandwich, for which I paid $3.49, I found only an unsliced biscuit puck. Upon completing the unwrapping, I found nothing further. My first thought was that I was living a breakfast nightmare. A few deep breaths later, I deemed the effort by my local Wendy’s representatives to be an utterly forgivable rookie mistake by a team not accustomed to waking at such hours, one which afforded me ample opportunity to consider the bread in detail. It was soft, warm and well-salted, and without a doubt the best honey butter chicken biscuit I’ve ever tasted that contained neither honey, butter nor chicken.
Breakfast is available every day from 6:30 a.m. to 10 a.m. at Wendy’s restaurants nationwide, although dining room hours vary. See wendys.com for further information.
Newsday writer and restaurant critic Scott Vogel aims for a refreshing, gimlet-eyed take on the Long Island food scene, often while drinking a refreshing gimlet.
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