Takeaway Truth is an occasional Lifehacker feature where we compare marketing images against what you actually get served. Today: KFC’s Grilled Salsa Twister.
Fast food restaurants have been known to gild the lily when it comes to accurate depictions of their menu items. Far too often, the mouth-watering feast on the poster turns out to be a limp and oily morsel. In a bid to keep the fry-jockey overlords honest, we’ve decided to document the reality of fast food — it was either that, or go postal like Michael Douglas in Falling Down.
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When KFC last came under the Takeaway Truth spotlight it was easily one of the worst offenders of the whole series. The Grilled Taster Box was a truly pitiful sight — it made us feel like we were staring into the mournfully large eyes of an orphan whose pet mouse had just died (actually, it kind of looked like the dead mouse too).
This is not something you typically want from a fast food meal and the Taster Box was scored accordingly.
The Grilled Salsa Twister can therefore be viewed as KFC’s shot at redemption (watch the official promo clip here).
Billed as a “meal picnic” the Grilled Salsa Twister comes with two “100% grilled” breast fillet strips, salsa, corn chips, lettuce, cheese and “supercharged sauce” wrapped up in a warm tortilla. But is it the scrumptious mouth-fiesta promised on the poster or the fast food equivalent of Spanish flu?
[clear]
Below is the Grilled Salsa Twister as it appears on KFC’s Facebook page:
And here’s how it looks in the cold light of reality:
Just to ram it all home, here’s the obligatory side-by-side comparison:
Oh dear. The first wrap looks like it was painstakingly prepared by the head chef at a Michelin rated restaurant. The second one looks like it was knocked together by a hammer-stunned rooster.
Where do we begin? The meat is visibly burnt, there’s only one chicken strip visible and the piñata of salad has been reduced to a few soggy strands of lettuce (the salsa was present inside the wrap, but the quantity you get definitely fails to match the poster).
Once again, we feel compelled to point out that we did not remove any fillings or manipulate the food in any way — that’s exactly what we were served by the bored looking KFC checkout chick. We think it’s marginally better than the KFC Grilled Taster Box but that really isn’t saying much.
Truth Rating: 4/10
Which fast food franchise or menu item would you like us to tackle next? Let us know in the comments section below.
Comments
14 responses to “Takeaway Truth: KFC’s Grilled Salsa Twister”
I’m a bit surprised by this. I’ve had this wrap a few times, and it usually comes out looking not too far from the top image (though not the one with ‘do the salsa across the image)’
I remember watching a “Behind-the-scenes” video for a burger photoshoot, and I shouldn’t have been surprised but although they do use exactly the same ingredients as a “restuarant-spec” item, they put all the ingredients toward the camera-end of the food so that it looks fuller. Deceptive, in my mind, as the top picture has a rounded-out rear that indicates it has something in it, when in reality it would be empty air.
This? Kind of funny how the guy talks about with photographs they are working in a one dimension world so they have to make some compensations…
a one-dimensional world ? … that’d just be a straight line, then.
That would still have a second dimension to it.
What is wrong with all the fast food joints near the LH office? Every piece of fast food you ‘review’ looks terrible and it all looks worse than every single piece of fast food I have ever received, and I buy more fast food then I’d like to admit.
Sample groups of one are not enough! We need to science this up. Maybe lifehacker could give a headsup on what their next Takeaway Truth is so other people could also take pics and rate. Social crowdsourcing buzzword extravaganza styles.
I would definitely be up for that! Any excuse for takeaway…..
Last week the location discussion came up, with the fast food joints in these reviews all being located in Penrith NSW. My experience in Penrith is that if you really want fast food, you need to go out of your way to go to the right fast food joint.
And of course if you really do want the thing to look as it does in the pic don’t go somewhere where the food is put together by a mob of 16 year olds who have 5 minutes to do it and be prepared to pay a hell of a lot more.
So I often wonder why these companies don’t get sued for false advertising and the “serving suggestion” clause surely doesn’t work in this scenario since it is a “restaraunt” not a heat and eat TV dinner, is there some kind of law making fast food joints from being exempt to false advertsising claims.
They don’t try to mask it as a serving suggestion.. at least not any more i’m not sure if they did in the past..
It’s not false advertising because as another user said above – they DO use all the same ingredients as in the resteraunt, just spend a whole day making 4-5 of them with a professional chef whos job it is simply to make it look as good as possible.
As someone else above says – if you want a meal of that calibre, be prepared to pay 3-4x the price.. which ofcourse most people generally aren’t when looking for a quick meal..
all you do is buy fast food from penrith go somewhere else ffs
This one was actually from Kingswood.
i think you should checkout these guys. http://www.salsas.com.au/
I work at KFC, and I’ve never seen a twister leaving our store. Collins Food Group are actually a scrupulous employer and the store who served this would probably have a low C.H.A.M.P.S score.
I can’t believe how rude some comments in the “takeaway truth”section are! !! If you don’t like the way the author judges the food, or the way he takes photos, THEN DON’T READ THE NEXT POST! !! Easy fixed! ! Swearing at the author makes you look like an uneducated twit….