KFC's of Europe - KFC Poland

My First KFC in Poland was pre KFB, back in 2005. I have dim but happy memories, and remember a fellow traveller remarking with a note of jealous wonder in her voice, after I consumed my burger with a certain veracity that she'd 'never seen anybody eat chicken like that'. Regardless of the intent I wore the comment as a badge of honour.

The branch itself is located near the Warsaw Central Sstation, and, unusually given the different parent companies shares premisis with a burger king, their kitchens merely seperated by a glass panel and the restaurant seating available to patrons of either brand.

Due to some unfortunate timing, we were forced to have KFC for breakfast and I was very happy to see the branch open and serving a full menu at 09:30am.

The menu had a lot of traditional favouries, Wraps, Boxmasters, Zingers and towers as well as a couple of innovative chinese inspired menu items not too disimmilar from our own current UK Time Limited offer (TLO) ricebox.

Due to hangover and a desire to get the measure of the branch in terms of the quality of their bread and butter items I opted for something a little more familiar, taking a fairly standard wrap whilst my travelling companion sampled the Boxmaster (here called the Mega Pocket). Both were made using good quality ingredients throughout:

I have to say that the qualty of the branch was all to a high standard, as was the food and weighing in at around 16 Zlotych for a standard meal this came in at around half the price of it's UK counterpart for comprable quality.

Not content with scoring highly on all of the above and great early opening to boot, the Polish KFC had one more excellent boast - Beer as a drink option. I see a bright future for KFC in Poland

KFC Ricebox Review

Here at KFB we've been critical in the past of KFC's failure to genuinely innovate. For a long while it seemed that each new Time Limited Offer (TLO) was essentially a chicken burger with a different sauce.

However when they go ahead and innovate and introduced last period's Burrito we stayed silent, but to try and correct that course I present a review of their latest TLO - The Ricebox:

Promising Steamed Tex Mex rice, Bean Salsa, Fresh Lettuce and Zinger chicken, this represents a real departure from the norm where KFC have consistently opted for a bread based carbohydrate component. Although the recent Burrito contains rice, that meal also came with Fries and I wondered upon seeing the first street ads for this whether the tradition meal format would survive.

It hasn't, for £4.99 you get a Ricebox (O.R. or Zinger) and a drink. An optional regular side is priced with a 50% discount at 50p.

I tried this at one of my favoure branches, Goldenhill in Tunstall, Stoke-on-Trent during the evening rush at about 18:15. Service wasn't too quick and my server apologised upon handing me my bag. Whether as a concilliatory gesture for the perceived delay or poor training I shall never know but I opened my nicely weighty bag to see a portion of fries sat atop my ricebox.


First look:

The plain brown minimalistic packaging gave it quite a refined look that didn't scream 'fast food'.

Disappointingly the cellophane window designed I'm sure to tantilise the expectant diner with a first glimpse of the feast that awaits them was smeared with an unidentified sauce (believed to be ranch) rather ruining the experience, but offset by the knowledge that my box was full to bursting.

Having finlly figured out how to open the box I was greeted with:

a mess!

My bag hadn't contained the sturdy looking wooden fork displayed on the marketing images so I opted for a company plastic spork which barely survived its travails.

The salad I expected to be cold as well as the salsa, the Chicken I expected to be hot, the rice I didn't and still don't know. It was either cold to start with and had picked up a bit of heat from the Chicken breast or had been served only lukewarm.

However I dived in, and overall enjoyed a pleasent experience. The salad and bean salsa (primarily kidney beans) provided a range of flavours and textures that kept the whole thing fresh and it was moist throughout. There was no surfeit of rice but neiher was it a stingy portion.

Overall this would make a great lunch, perhaps not big enough for my evening meal but a great addition to the current fast food ensemble which stands out as a unique offering amongs the big 3.

I felt the price point was a little high and breaks with the traditional 3 item meal. (perhaps the addition of a small dessert would make £5 seem a good deal). Another minor gripe was the cutting of the chicken which had not gone clean through and was quite difficult to manage with only aforementioned spork.


Whilst not to my personal taste this is a good crack of the whip which  deservs a 7.5 out of 10

KFB Mini Review: Smith's KFC Zinger crisps

There I was, aimlessly traversing the aisles of my local Coles supermarket on a quest for OJ, oblivious to all around me. But what was this?! Out of the corner of my well-trained eye, I caught what looked to be a glimpse of the Colonel's famous visage. Could it be? Was that really his smiling red and white face on...a packet of crisps!? Though we've seen KFC-crisp crossovers in the past in certain parts of Asia, this is the first time such a collaboration has been attempted in Australia. And what a collaboration it is.

The crisps themselves are super crunchy and believe it or not do actually have a taste that's reminiscent of a Zinger fillet. Are they a replacement? Heck no. But if you have an acute Colonel craving and just can't bear the thought of venturing out to your nearest KFC outlet, keeping a pack or two of these handy should help to allay those deep-seated yearnings.

Oh and one other important thing to note - as far as we can tell there's no actual chicken in these crisps. Meaning that for quite possibly the first time, vegetarians can experience the delicious, otherwise forbidden taste that approximates Original Recipe coating.

KFB interviews a former KFC employee

A few weeks ago while indulging in post-work beers near KFB headquarters it came to light that one of our drinking accomplices had previously worked at none other than KFC. Naturally we had to pick the brains of this young man to learn more. We've protected the ex-employee's face in the only way we know how: with chicken.

Hello! Thanks so much for sharing your tales direct from the Colonel's kitchen. 

How long did you work for KFC? Which city were you based in? What was your highest position?

I worked at a relatively central and busy KFC location in Perth, Western Australia. I was trained as a kitchen hand originally, but I learned front counter and burger prep as well. I worked there for about a year and a half. For a while they were trying to entice me to become a manager but that process was taking too long so I left for greener pastures.


Sounds like a foolish decision to us! OK, what’s your favourite menu item and why? 

I really enjoy any menu item that isn’t frozen chicken. Even though popcorn chicken is delicious, nothing beats the OG chicken pieces- Hot n Spicy or Original Recipe.


I really don’t like eating the potato from KFC because that stuff is instant potato, which has a rubbish mouth feel.

The mashed potato has divided us here at KFB too. Is there anything you can tell us about KFC that most of our readers won’t know?

The gravy is made, in part, with a by-product of the Original Recipe frying process. I forget what in-house term for the ‘stock’ is, but it comes from the bottom of the frier (crackling - Ed). Most people are terrified at the prospect of eating old bits of fried breading that have been sitting at the bottom of the high pressure fryers, but it’s no different from eating traditional stock.


Also, KFC in Australia have a kind of audit/olympics yearly event where store staff compete with other store staff to get standardised food orders out of the door in a certain time and at a certain quality.


Did you ever ‘Frankenstein’ together different ingredients to make bespoke products? If so, what was your favourite creation?

Menu hacks are non cannon and no true fast food fan pays them any mind.


A respectable point of view though not one we totally abide by ourselves. Do you have any funny stories about your time working in restaurants or particularly weird customer incidents?

Not really. I worked at a pretty busy store, so you got all kinds- from smelly homeless guys, to traveling americans who got pissed off that we didn’t carry 'biscuits'. I remember when I applied that I said I enjoyed cooking because I thought it would get me over the line (I was fresh out of high school so the only thing I knew how to cook was cheese on toast). As it turns out, the fast food industry is pretty regimented in practice, so cooking was definitely not a skill I needed for this position.


You wouldn’t believe the demand for stolen Original Recipe spices.


Actually I think we would! Did you enjoy your time working for the Colonel and do you still eat his chicken?

I had a great time and I definitely still eat the chicken.


That's what we like to hear. And finally, how often do you still wear your KFC caps and t-shirts?

It’s impossible to get the smell of chicken and flour out of a uniform, so they went straight in the bin. Sorry.

The smell of chicken sounds amazing, the smell of flour...not so much. Thank you for your time and we hope that you one day find your way back into the Colonel's warm embrace / kitchen.

No worries. 

KFB in Australia - Boneless Hot & Spicy Box review

To bone or not to bone? That is the question posed by every man, woman and child upon first casting their eyes over the Colonel's menu boards. It's a highly controversial subject even here at KFB headquarters. For some, chicken on the bone represents the OG - the truest expression of that special flavour. After all, it led to the 'Finger-lickin' good' slogan back in the day. For other, bones simply get in the way and take up unneccessary extra space and weight. To my mind, there's a time and a place for either option and last Friday, that time and place led me to go boneless and try KFC's new Boneless Hot & Spicy box here in Melbourne.

It's at this point that I should point out that I was severely hungover at the time of sampling the box of delight. As we've previously covered on KFB though, there's nothing finer than KFC when it comes to curing all but the most extreme of hangovers. It was game on.

Now I know what you're thinking - what right does a bread roll have to be in the mix when it's not part of a burger? We'll get back to that later. For now let's focus on the chicken: 3 sizeable chunks that were reasonably well-coated in ETC (extra tasty cripsy) rather than Original Recipe.

It was time to delve in. We've said it before and we'll say it again: thigh meat just isn't as well-suited to being used in a boneless dish such as this or a burger. While it was relatively fat and certainly sinew-free and even though it was clearly well-marinaded, it just didn't have that firm, bouncy texture we love from a good hunk of breast. Something to note: according to KFC's site, the boneless pieces could be either thigh or breast - my colleagues and I however were all served the former.

So let's get back to the bun. I was reliably informed by an Aussie chum of mine that the bun was to be filled with all the other boxed ingredients, thereby turning it into some kind of elaborate sandwich. This of course had to be tried.

The result? It was delicious. Though the bun itself was overly sweet, it complemented the saltiness of the fries and chicken well. The mash and gravy, though still not anywhere near as good as a pot of UK 3-step gravy, added some interesting extra flavour.

So what was missing you might ask? More chicken of course! The UK's Boneless Banquet For One not only features mini breast fillets coated in Original Recipe but also adds a small tub of Popcorn Chicken to the mix. Close then, KFC Australia, but not quite what we'd hoped for.

Oh, the hangover? Yup, pretty much cured post-chicken. The Colonel strikes again.

Taste: 7
Value: 6.5 ($10.95 for the meal or about £5.50)
Innovation: 3

Overall: 6/10