Fast Food Review: Popeyes Firecracker Butterfly Shrimp Tackle Box (Well... Sort Of)

A new Popeyes promotion always gets my attention: they are almost always delicious. So when I read yesterday morning about their newest offering - "eight butterflied shrimp marinated in a spicy cayenne pepper seasoning" - I knew what my dinner was going to be. Also grabbing my attention was the description of the firecracker dipping sauce: honey, Crystal hot sauce, and Aleppo pepper flakes.

I headed up to Popeyes, placed my order (I added a drink to make it a $5.99 combo), was told it would be three minutes and sat down to wait. Five minutes later (close enough) I was handed a tray with my order. There was a container of cocktail sauce on it.

"May I have the firecracker sauce, too?" I asked.

"We serve the shrimp with cocktail sauce," I was told.

"But I want to try the firecracker sauce," I said, pointing at the menu that promises the sauce.

"We don't have it," she replied.

I usually get a kick out of this, when a fast food joint pastes posters in the parking lot and signs in the windows for a new promotion and then fails to have one or more elements of the promotion. But on this occasion I was just annoyed: I really wanted to try that sauce. If she had told me they didn't have it when I was ordering, I would have gone to another Popeyes. (Which, of course, is probably why I wasn't told.)

Now that I've gotten that out of the way, I will say this: the shrimp were delicious. Meaty pieces of crustacean and a crunchy, slightly-spicy coating always please me. Like many of Popeyes promotions, these shrimp would not have been out of place at twice the price in a fancier fish restaurant. I could have easily eaten two dozen of these little things.

Of course, the high quality of the shrimp was something of a mixed blessing: while I loved every bite, all I could think was: Wow, these would be even better with the firecracker sauce. Popeyes cocktail sauce is fine - they even keep it refrigerated - but it was not what I wanted.

These aren't as good as the crawfish, but they are better than the red hot popcorn chicken, garlic butter shrimp, and wicked chicken.

I would absolutely try these again, but first I will ask if they have the firecracker sauce, and I recommend you do, too.