Fast Food Review: KFC Dip 'Ems

Have you ever seen a movie so comically bad that you can't turn it off? I don't mean a silly comedy where the actual act of watching it becomes the joke - I guess that's kind of what a stoner movie is - but rather something so atrocious that you just sit there dumbfounded. Is this really a movie?, you think to yourself. Someone actually watched the final cut of this and said "Okay, we're good to go!"?

Some movies that fall into that category for me: Open Water 2: Adrift, The Island of Dr. Moreau, Wild Wild West, and Lady in the Water.

That's kind of how I feel about KFC these days. Their products are so ridiculous, I can't look away. They are trying to get business by coming up with new ads... they just aren't actually willing to release any new products.

Thousands of people have already read my views on KFC's manipulative renaming of their Snackers as "Chicken Littles." And now KFC is jumping on board the dipping craze, releasing "Dip 'ems," presumably to compete with Popeyes Dip'n Chick'n or the Checkers Chicken Dippers which I wrote about yesterday. They even are copying Popeyes use of an apostrophe.

But, in true KFC fashion, they haven't bothered to do anything new with the chicken. These are the same chicken tenders that they have been selling for years.

The one new wrinkle, however, is that KFC is offering three new sauces: Creamy Buffalo, Orange Ginger, and Bacon Ranch. (I guess one could argue that this counts as releasing a new product, but I don't think so.) But... am I really going to go try chicken tenders that I hate just so that I can try new sauces?

Of course I am.

I headed to the KFC closest to me.

The ads claim that KFC is selling a three-piece box with one side, a biscuit and a drink for five bucks. So, if you've been reading for any amount of time at all - literally; I just mentioned this phenomenon yesterday - you won't be surprised to know that it was six dollars here in Brooklyn. Whatever.

As soon as I placed the order the girl behind the register removed three chicken tenders from a shelf under a heat lamp. I have no right to complain here: I know this is what KFC does. Yes, the chicken would be ten times better if it wer cooked to order, but what can you do? KFC is fine with leaving chicken out for a long time, that's how it goes.

But there were a couple of new wrinkles this time: I didn't get to choose my side, she automatically grabbed an already-filled container of potato wedges that were just sitting on the counter. And when she asked me what I wanted to drink and I said Diet Pepsi, she handed me a cup already filled with ice and the drink. I don't even want to think about what this all means. Is this the KFC policy now, to do everything ahead of time to minimize wait times for customers? Why not just put every single item on heated racks like a 7-Eleven and let the customers serve themselves?

The employee asked me what kind of sauces I wanted and I chose the Creamy Buffalo and Orange Ginger. (Both of which were in stock; despite the fact that Popeyes chicken is much, much better than KFC's, at least KFC bothers to stock their sauce.) She told me that she had tried the Bacon Ranch and that it was good, but ranch just isn't a flavor I much enjoy. I've had bacon-tinged ranch sauces before, and I admit the bacon makes it taste slightly better, but it's still not for me.

The chicken was terrible. No surprise there. Dried-out from sitting under heat lamps for God knows how long. Like I said, this is what I expect from KFC these days.

When I wrote about Burger King's chicken strips and Kung Pao sauce in March, I wondered why more fast food chains don't introduce sauces with an Asian flair. Marvo pointed out that many people consider sweet & sour to be an Asian sauce, and he's probably correct, but I meant something even more obvious. Orange Ginger is definitely a step in that direction.

It was pretty sweet, and without looking I knew the first ingredient was corn syrup. I don't care about the health aspects of high fructose corn syrup, I care about the taste, and, as usual, the flavor of it was too dominant. There was definitely orange in the background, that burnt-orange zing similar to orange marmalade, which I enjoyed. (I could not taste any ginger; the ingredients list "ginger puree," a blend of ginger with water and acid.) But it was too hard to get past the syrupy flavor up front.

The Creamy Buffalo sauce tasted exactly like McDonald's spicy buffalo sauce. (Not surprisingly, looking back at photos I see that the first five ingredients are exactly the same: cayenne pepper, water, vinegar, soybean oil, and food starch.) But that's not a bad thing. I like both. It is also, as you can see, a color not of this world

KFC's buffalo sauce, like McDonald's, is much spicier than I expected it to be. At one point I had to pause to take a sip of my watered-down-because-God-knows-when-the-ice-had-been-added-to-it Pepsi.

I'd like to tell you that I would probably try both these sauces again. But I doubt I will. I don't think I'll be returning to KFC. Their chicken is not good, and their insistence on cooking something as easy-to-prepare as chicken strips ahead of time is annoying. I will definitely return if they bring back their boneless "Tangy Teriyaki" wings, but, barring that, I don't see the need to go back.