This year, Burger King has been experiencing — DARE I SAY IT??? — a sort of renaissance. This year’s Mozzarella Fries and Fiery Buffalo Nuggets are two of our favorite new side orders of the year and, trust us, we continually rank Burger King last or near last in our various fast food rankings and blind taste tests. So that’s really saying something!
Now, in the midst of summer, Burger King has unveiled an all-new spicy-infused remix of a few fan-favorites staples. And they’ve dubbed it the Fiery Menu.
The full menu consists of a Fiery Whopper, Fiery Bacon Royal Crispy Chicken sandwich, Fiery Strawberry Sprite, Fiery Mozzarella Fries, and Fiery Chicken Fries. Those first two definitely deserve their own individual reviews (we’ll skip the drink), but for the sides, we decided to lump them together into one review to help you decide which side dish is essential to whatever your current BK order is.
Can the Fiery Mozzarella Fries and Fiery Chicken Fries live up to the promise of a Burger King renaissance, or do they fall flat? We found out by ordering both of them so that you don’t have to.
Fiery Mozzarella Fries
Thoughts & Tasting Notes:
Imagine the biggest sigh you’ve ever heard in your life — that’s how I feel about the Fiery Mozzarella Fries. So much promise, squandered by bad execution. I desperately wanted these to be good. Aside from French fries, mozzarella sticks are one of my favorite side orders. It’s hard to f*ck up deep-fried cheese, and yet… Burger King did it (congrats, I guess?).
There are two issues with the Fiery Mozzarella Fries. First, they’re way too thin. You want a mozzarella stick to have a good amount of cheese, about as thick as string cheese. These are pencil-thin, which creates an unbalanced breading-to-cheese ratio. The other issue is that the cheese isn’t melted enough, which leads to this:
It was impossible to bite and tear a piece of this cheese stick without the entire thing unraveling. That means if you really want to enjoy the flavor, which is an admittedly delicious mix of cayenne and black pepper, you’re going to have to shove the entire stick in your mouth and eat it all at once.
Now, you could make an argument that I’m being too harsh on this mozzarella stick. That maybe I waited too long to eat it because if you’re an avid cheese stick eater you know that time is mozzarella cheese’s greatest enemy, but that’s not the case here. Not only is Burger King literally across the street from where I live, but the order was still piping hot when I bit into it. The exterior wasn’t the issue, it’s the cheese itself. I’m not sure what changed between these Fiery Mozzarella Fries and the non-spicy version we ate earlier this year, but the quality seems to have dipped.
Is the cheese too shoddy to sufficiently heat? Are the binders and cellulose that are famously added to industrial cheese to keep it from sticking together too prominent to allow for silky meltage? We can’t say for sure, but as it stands, this is a very promising dish flavor-wise that has some quality control issues. Because of that, we can’t recommend it.
The Bottom Line:
The flavor is there, but the execution falls flat.
Fiery Chicken Fries
Thoughts & Tasting Notes:
If you’re a hardcore BK fan and you were hoping the Fiery Chicken Fries were going to get a glowing endorsement from us, well… unfortunately, these miss the mark as well. Chicken Fries are a weird menu option, they’re not quite nuggets, they’re not quite chicken tenders, but, despite all of that, they have an interesting and zesty flavor and are incredibly dip-able. They’re a great side item, so you’d think a spicy version would pop off, unfortunately, the emphasis on cayenne pepper is a bit too strong here.
Don’t get me wrong, I like the level of heat these deliver, but that’s pretty much all you can taste. The chicken slurry that is encased in the batter here is flavorless, this dish just tastes like pure cayenne. If Burger King was going for the spiciest chicken side in all of fast food, they’ve done it, but they forgot that spice is a feature, it can’t be the whole show.
Because of that, I think they’re probably better off ordering the regular non-spicy Chicken Fries. I’d gladly trade in the Fiery Chicken Fries for the buffalo-sauced nuggets BK dropped earlier this year.
The Bottom Line:
Pure cayenne, which isn’t quite as delicious as it sounds.