Monday, August 08, 2005

Chicken Caesar Review: KFC

Sooner or later, I was going to have to recognize the efforts of fast food restaurants to offer healthier fare. In this case, I started with KFC (which was once known as Kentucky Fried Chicken to us old-timers). Their Caesar Salad, which costs a paltry $3.99, comes with either crispy or roasted chicken. I chose the roasted to keep in line with the other salads I have reviewed. It also includes fresh lettuce, diced tomatoes, shredded Parmesan, garlic croutons and creamy Parmesan Caesar dressing.

Like the Chicken Caesar offered by Boston Market, this salad was not tossed. However, the size of the bowl and the finely chopped ingredients make it easy to do this yourself with the pouch of dressing included. This brings to mind one difference between this and restaurant salads that was very welcome: the chicken was actually cut into bite-size pieces. The chicken was juicy and flavorful, as one would expect from KFC, and was easily the best part of the salad. The cheese and the dressing are both very strong and come close to being overwhelming. The lettuce is Iceberg, not Romaine, and the tomatoes (not a traditional Caesar ingredient) are numerous enough to add an acidic quality to the salad as a whole. This is not exactly a criticism as I did enjoy the salad, but these two elements detract from this salad being an authentic Caesar. Finally, the guy putting together my to-go order forgot the croutons, so I'll just assume they were average for the type that come in a plastic pouch.

I'm not sure what I expected from KFC, but what I got was a very good salad for the price. The flavors may be a little too strong (which was also a fault of Boston Market) and the tomatoes too dominant, but the salad still deserves a strong recommendation purely from the value you get for your money.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I haven't eaten here since I discovered they use ghb