Review: New Chicken Parmesan Sandwich from Burger King

Posted September 29th, 2012 | 7:45pm by Erin Jax

If you’ve been paying attention to the action at Burger King, you will have noticed that they’ve been rolling out new menu items left, right, and center. During the summer, they released three new Whoppers, plus sweet potato fries, and a questionable sundae that had bacon in it. This time around, they’re revamping their chicken options, rolling out everything from a Chicken, Apple, and Cranberry wrap that Ryan looked into, to the arguably more seasonally-appropriate Chicken Parmesan Sandwich.

BK describes the Chicken Parmesan Sandwich this way:

A premium white meat chicken fillet generously breaded with homemade seasoning carefully topped with tangy marinara sauce, melted mozzarella cheese and shaved parmesan cheese all on a warm, toasted artisan-style bun.

Sounds pretty good, right? Admittedly, going into this little experiment, that’s what I thought, too. A chicken parm sandwich seems like a totally reasonable endeavor for a fast food place like Burger King, especially since they already have most of the ingredients in place. Smear a little sauce on a fried chicken patty, top it with cheese, and there ya go. It sounds easy enough, but in reality, the seemingly simple undertaking resulted in a sandwich that failed on every single possible front. File this review under “I tried it so you don’t have to.” Let’s break it down, starting with the bun, which had the texture of a cheap motel mattress: dense and spongy. Making matters worse, it stuck to my teeth. The bread looks toasted in that the underside of each half is browned, but it’s not at all crisp or even warm. It’s impressive from a scientific standpoint, but a big fat fail when it comes to flavor. I’d like to see how BK achieves this effect.

Under the bun is where things get even worse. The chicken is topped with an unmelted square of flavorless mozzarella and flakes of waxy cheese that I suspect is supposed to be parmesan. Neither bring any flavor to the patty. The marinara sauce is bordering on tangy, but the portion of it that’s spread on the bun gets sucked up by the spongy bread, and the rest of it disappears into the chicken.

The “premium white meat” chicken is supposed to be “generously breaded”, but I found it generously fried, if anything. The batter was so dry and overcooked that it tasted like fryer grease, and the chicken had absolutely no moisture. I couldn’t taste any of the promised seasoning, unless you count a lot of salt. Really, that’s all the sandwich tasted like: a crunchy fillet of salt on a spongy, cold bun. Pass!