Wendy's is hoping to hop on the spicy chicken sandwich craze before it's too late; enter the Jalapeño Fresco sandwich.
Immediately, I can smell the sandwich — it has a very distinct aroma. Think bread, fake nacho cheese, and acrid chili peppers. It's enough to give pause, or perhaps a warning.
It's a very messy sandwich — to use a pseudo-scientific term, "goopy". I can't even take it out of the box without getting a flow of neon yellow sauce and jalapeño bits on my hands.
Open up the sandwich, and you'll find it slathered with a "ghost pepper sauce", with diced pepper floundering in the depths of the shocking yellow liquid. It's disconcerting, but the fact that real jalapeño bits are being used is a consolation, as are the crispy red onion slices.
I've always been a fan of Wendy's chicken. It's crispy and tender white meat, and the spicy version has a satisfying seasoning to it. I wouldn't call the chicken alone spicy, but it has a slight kick that differentiates it from the norm.
The diced jalapeño adds a gratifyingly fresh crisp to the otherwise sludgy lava flow of sauce. There's Colby-Jack cheese in there somewhere, but it's lost amongst the acutely fiery zest.
The "red jalapeño" bun isn't bad. It seems to be whole grain or something similar, and it has a slight savoriness to it. It's not hot, but the pepper brings an interesting flavor to it. It's actually one of the nicer, more interesting buns I've had from a fast-food establishment.
However, the heat goes to an unexpected level. I suppose I deserve this for bemoaning the lack of real spicy fast-food, but this is far beyond what I had in mind. The heat is an empty, dry, merciless one that adds little flavor or depth to the sandwich. It seems to be an extreme burn for the sake of an extreme burn, nothing more.
So, what's the verdict? In a word: frustrating. This sandwich is full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
It's horrifically messy. It's outrageously hot, with any flavor eviscerated by heat. The perfectly good chicken, bun, and normal toppings are smothered in a sickly, vibrant, molten lava flow of sauce. I suppose I can't win — either something is nowhere near spicy enough, or it's a towering inferno of mindless heat. Will we ever reach a happy medium, or is this to be the spicy sandwich of our discontent?
