Sunday 12 October 2014

KFB in Australia: Kentucky Jack review

Here at KFB we're big fans of innovation and the addition of new ingredients as you'll notice from our coverage of the recent pulled chicken range in the UK and specials such as the Nacho Stacker. It was with some excitement then that we came across the Kentucky Jack limited edition burger in Australian KFCs.

Let's break it down for you: we've got an Original Recipe chicken fillet surrounded by crispy fried onions, two slices of white cheese, bacon, coleslaw (yes, IN the burger) and smokey BBQ sauce.
When we first unwrapped the burger we were worried - 'juice' from the slaw has seeped out into the wrapper and bun leaving some very soggy edges. Construction was otherwise solid - KFC UK should take note that bacon out here in Oz is most certainly NOT of the streaky variety (something that we felt marred the Big Daddy somewhat). Cost-wise it was cheaper than the Zinger Stacker by a couple of bucks, probably owing to the lack of the extra chicken breast.

And so onto the tasting: the first bite was full of real contrast - sweet (BBQ sauce) but salty (bacon), crunchy (onions, slaw) but soft (bun). There's a great balance of flavours going on in here. Even the cheese, which is Australia is of a white variety, packed some real punch.

There was something about the flavour though that we couldn't just put our...tongue on. Something that took this reviewer back to childhood school lunch halls. It was a certain tang, it was...SKIPS! For readers who aren't from the UK, Skips are prawn cocktail flavoured tapioca-based snacks (which taste a lot better than they sound). And somehow the Kentucky Jack was very reminiscent of this flavour profile. If we had to guess we'd say it was the combo of the crispy onions and the BBQ sauce. Do note however that despite sounding like an odd addition to a burger, we thoroughly enjoyed this throwback taste.

And as we've come accustomed too here at KFB we do have to ask the key question: would it be better with a hash brown? Actually for once, given all the contrasting flavours and textures going on, we're not sure it would.

Value: 7
Flavour: 8
Overall: 7.5

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