The last few months have given rise to tons of new and sometimes shocking fast-food items, including Cool Ranch Doritos Locos from Taco Bell, Pizza Hut's new Pizza Sliders, McDonald's FishMcBites and, most recently, Denny's BBQ Bacon Mac 'n' Cheese Bites.
Clearly we've tasted them all.
Before you try any of these new items, check out what we had to say about them in our slide show.
Denny's BBQ Bacon Mac 'n' Cheese Bites
Served by the half dozen, these golden-fried balls are crispy on the outside and creamy on the inside, and ours were perfectly cooked - the outer breading wasn’t too thick or heavy. It easily cracks open to reveal soft macaroni and oozing cheese, and the BBQ sauce on the plate is tangy and only slightly sweet, making a great dipping sauce.
Speaking of dipping, the ramekin of pepper jack sauce on the side should be ignored entirely. “It’s just a bowl of calories!” exclaimed one diner. There’s already plenty of cheese inside each fried sphere, and the sauce has no discernable taste - whether there's actually pepper jack in it is anyone’s guess. Certainly the few stingy pieces of bacon sitting on top of the bowl do nothing to enhance the flavor.
But . . . do they really belong on the Baconalia! menu? In our batch, there definitely wasn’t much bacon in those balls. When one guest ran into a piece, he almost spit it out - “What’s that chewy thing I just bit into?” - until reminded that bacon was in the title of the dish.
Still, that shouldn’t stop you from ordering them. Served on a different plate, these mac ‘n’ cheese bites would easily be at home at a hip Williamsburg bar, where you’d likely pay triple the $4.59 price tag. Just get your bacon fix elsewhere, like the pepper-bacon-avocado omelet or the sourdough BLT, and you’ll be fine. As long as you avoid the “pepper jack” dip.
Hazelnut Macchiato at Starbucks
So what exactly IS a macchiato, technically speaking? For those not in the know, it's an espresso drink with a very small amount of foamed milk dotted on top (macchiato means "marked" as in marked with a small amount of milk).
Starbucks' popular caramel macchiato has been on the menu for decades, but they've just now add another flavored variation to the mix.
We recall the former to be a sugar bomb, as it's topped with caramel sauce, but we were pleasantly surprised to find the new hazelnut drink not too sweet at all. In fact, it wasn't much of anything - not too heavy on the hazelnut or sugar and not carrying that trademark "over roasted" Starbucks flavor. It basically just tasted like a latte with a hint of hazelnut. And can you have that much foamed milk and still call the thing a macchiato? The drink is available both hot and iced at locations around the U.S.
Pizza Hut Big Pizza Sliders
Pizza Hut recently added Big Pizza Sliders to their menu, so naturally, we had to check them out. We ordered them via a very cool and user-friendly mobile site to schedule a delivery for later in the day. (Did you know that was even possible? We didn’t.) A box of nine sliders showed up at the door exactly on time, holding a trio of plain cheese, three topped with pepperoni and three with sausage, peppers and mushrooms.
The first thing you notice is that Big Pizza Sliders are not big. They’re little. Much smaller than a even a personal pan pizza. Maybe they’re big if you’re feeding them to your cat? A cat would probably love batting these around, but the dough pucks would leave trails of grease all over your floor, so we don’t recommend it. However, that could be the reason they’re also called sliders - otherwise these have nothing to do with sliders as we know them. Sliders are cute mini hamburgers or pulled pork sandwiches in little adorable buns. These are pizzas.
Getting past the name, Pizza Hut tells you that “the circle is the new slice.” The idea is if you’re sharing with a group, you can customize the little pies in many different ways, and not be forced to eat toppings your friends love but you hate. Great plan. But: circles are most definitely not bite-friendly like the tip of a slice. At least not when they have inch-high crusts. You could cut your gums on these things. We decided to cut them in half for easy eating.
Cut in half, you can see Big Pizza Sliders are mostly dough. The crust is like Pizza Hut’s pan pizza crust, which is airy on the inside and buttery-crusty on the edges, in a good way. Except that sliders have much more “edge” than a regular pie, so as greasily tasty as the dough is, there's too much of it. The batch we got had hardly any sauce at all, though the toppings were super fresh - the pepperoni wasn’t burnt, and the green peppers even had snap.
Were they better than Pizza Hut pizza? If you hate a soggy bottom pie, just order some extra sauce on the side, and possibly extra cheese, and these will make you happy. They were actually a lot like focaccia, and we had the idea that if you put a few slices of American cheese in the middle of two of them, you could make a killer grilled cheese sandwich. Or maybe even use them as a bun for a burger - now THAT would be a Big Pizza Slider, for reals.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider