Mike D here. Shaun L. has been kind enough to write a review for mikedidonato.com describing his experience with KFC’s new Double Down Sandwich. Take it away Shaun!
The morning of April 18, 2010, I landed at JFK, returning from a 3-week long trip to Brazil for work. There was only one thing on my mind. Kentucky. Fried. Chicken.
While Brazil has beautiful women and Churrascaria’s as far as the eye can see, they are missing one thing: KFC. While I was abroad I saw via the interwebs that KFC was finally letting the infamous Double Down out into the wild! Alas, I was out of the country and would have to count down the days until my return flight home.
On Tuesday, April 20, after much needed recuperation, I decided to stroll down to my local KFC in Meriden (aka the armpit of CT) for lunch to see if the mighty Double Down was able to live up to all the hype. 5 dollars and 29 cents later, I had a deep fried mess of a chicken sandwich in my possession. They have a grilled version that you can buy but that would just be ABSURD and STUPID. I’m not sure if mine was packaged correctly as it came in a KFC Wing’s box complete with wing wax paper but Whatever. It didn’t change the fact that this thing is two fried pieces of chicken for bread, with bacon, cheese, and some special sauce in the middle. AKA, a gift from the Gods of Olympus.
A few obligatory close-up shots later and it was time to eat. How did it taste? Well, exactly like you would expect: fried chicken with some cheese. If you love the Colonel’s Original Recipe than you’ll probably enjoy this. The cheese was a nice touch and the sauce was like the Colonel’s 12 herbs and spices were liquefied into a ‘creme de tangoscity.’ KFC most definitely has a PhD in sauce-ology. As for the bacon; I didn’t even taste it. I had two scrawny pieces of bacon between those two luscious deep-fried chicken breasts. For a sandwich that is basically the epitome of America, they sure did skimp on the bacon. Wendy’s baconator and KFC’s double down need to get down and dirty and make a love child that is overflowing with bacon. Overall it’s a pretty tasty sandwich, but make sure that you have plenty of exfoliating face wash (the kind with those micro scrubbers is preferred) handy so that you can remove the multiple layers of grease that will form on your face within minutes after devouring.
The big question however is whether or not it was worth it? For $5.29 for the sandwich alone and $7.40 for the meal (tax included in CT) which includes potato wedges and a drink, I’d have to say HELL NO. While it is a tasty morsel, it didn’t do a great job of filling me up. For $4 I could have gone to McDonald’s and bought 3 McChickens and a McDouble and been full. Would I have been sick? Yes. Would I have been full? Hell Yes. For even less I could have made a PB&J sandwich and ate about 1 cup worth of Cheeze-Its and I would have been equally satisfied. I think that ultimately you are paying for a gimmick. This thing should be priced at $3.50 or made larger. I’ll just factor the extra $1.79 as paying for the luxury to eat something so utterly ridiculous. Nice try KFC, but you’ll have to do better next time to impress me.