Fast Food Review: Monterey Ranch Chicken Sandwich from Wendy’s

Posted August 3rd, 2011 | 4:24pm by Ryan

Imagine my apprehension when approaching my local Wendy’s drive-thru today. I’m looking for something advertised on the Wendy’s website for 99 cents. Hmmm, a new value menu item called the Monterey Ranch Chicken Sandwich. Sounds good, looks good. I’ve ranted in the past about how I never quite know what to expect when it comes to Wendy’s and their prices. So on this day, I wasn’t surprised to find this new “Value Menu” sandwich for $1.89!!! Damn you Wendy’s!!! Yeah, yeah… I know all about “at participating restaurants” or whatever, but I find that to be a bad way to do business when you are trying to compete for fast food domination. I don’t encounter issues like this in places other than Wendy’s for whatever reason. Anyways, I got my Monterey Ranch Chicken Sandwich for $1.89 cents and got this experience started off in disappointing fashion.

The Monterey Ranch Chicken Sandwich is described like this:

Crispy fillet of all-white meat chicken topped with all-natural Monterey Jack, fresh lettuce and zesty ranch sauce. All for just 99cents. Not only will your taste buds thank you, your wallet will too.

I’m all for a cheap sandwich with a tasty description. Since the Monterey Ranch Chicken Sandwich was 90 cents more than all the advertising I see on TV, I just considered this to end up being a failure. I’ve always appreciated the freshness of the veggies at Wendy’s and the “fresh” lettuce was indeed fresh. Fresh, crisp and cool, just the way I’d like it to be but this is just pale iceberg with a nice extra crunch. The all-natural Monterey Jack was a miss in my opinion. I’m not usually too crazy about cheese on a chicken sandwich… I could take it or leave it. The Monterey Jack had a flavor that left me unimpressed… it didn’t have much impact. That said, I’m glad this wasn’t cheddar or American cheese. The “zesty” ranch dressing, was decent but I still felt the flavor impact was a little off. The chicken patty is kind of just there… nothing special but I was actually surprised that the patty wasn’t incredibly small (but that could just be the tiny bun making it seem a lot bigger). Maybe if bacon was added on this sandwich, I would feel the price was more fair and the taste would’ve been more complete.

If your local Wendy’s actually has a “My 99” value menu, you’d probably enjoy the Monterey Ranch Chicken Sandwich more than I did. I just can’t get over the constant barrage of advertising for this thing and I just paid $1.89 for it. The value menu at my local Wendy’s is definitely not a “My 99” type of menu. Boo Wendy’s.