Takeaway Truth is an occasional Lifehacker feature where we compare marketing images against what you actually get served. Today: KFC’s Zinger Mozzarella Burger. (Plus taste test!)
The KFC Zinger Mozzarella Burger is being marketed as a “burger for grown-ups”. We didn’t realise mozzarella carried an age recommendation, but there you go. The burger comes with a single Zinger chicken fillet, a rasher of bacon, lettuce, mayo, a tomato based sauce and a patty of Zinger-coated mozzarella cheese. Here’s the spiel from KFC’s website:
Love chicken? Love Mozzarella? Take a bite out of our Zinger Mozzarella burger and taste the crispy Zinger chicken fillet, the sizzling slice of bacon, and our Zinger coated mozzarella cheese. That’s rich mozzarella cheese deep fried for that extra crunch. It’s a burger for grown ups.
And here’s the official advert (which, oddly, barely features the product at all):
As you’ve doubtlessly surmised from the copious amounts of cheese in the above advert, the Zinger Mozzarella burger is not a healthy lunch option. But how bad is it? KFC has somewhat cheekily refrained from sharing a complete nutritional breakdown with customers. (The item has yet to make an appearance on the company’s Promotional Nutritional Fact Sheet.)
All we can tell you is that a single burger packs in 3053kJ of energy, with a large combo meal tipping the scales at 5132kJ. Needless to say, the Zinger Mozzarella is meant to be an occasional indulgence.
But you’re presumably not here to judge the fat content. All you really want to know is how the real thing compares to those tasty, tasty photos. Without further ado, here is the side-by-side comparison:
Mi fa cagare!
This clearly isn’t one of KFC’s best efforts. The hero topping shares almost no resemblance to the advert and the whole burger looks like the late, great Luciano Pavarotti sat on it. Either that, or it was the victim of a Mafioso hit. One thing’s for sure, the burger on the left looks vastly more appetising.
Fortunately, what the Zinger Mozzarella Burger lacks in truthful advertising it more than makes up for in taste – this was one of the most delicious burgers we’ve enjoyed from KFC in a long while. The addition of deep-fried cheese might not be good for you, but it really does add something special to the burger, both in terms of texture and flavour. Will eat again.
Truth Rating: 5/10
Taste Verdict: 9/10
Comments
11 responses to “Takeaway Truth: KFC Zinger Mozzarella Burger”
Tomato based sauce in place of Zinger sauce? Think I’ll pass on this one.
Isn’t “Zinger sauce” just mayo?
Hmm, now that you mention it, maybe the Zinger does not have zinger sauce. I always ask for it and add to my food. It’s quite spicy for fast food sauce and goes well with lots of stuff. I keep a stockpile at home and sometimes add to homemade burgers and tacos.
Ask for it at the first window after you have paid and then again at the second window when you collect your food.
are you talking about the ‘super charged’ sauce? if so, i will be adding it to this burger when i try it – like i do for all zinger burgers. makes it taste so much better.
Is it called that? It may be. My mistake again. I had it on taco’s last night as we had run out of salsa. Works great.
I think Darren means the “supercharged” sauce they promote intermittently, but generally have on had often.
I found the tomato sauce had a bit of a kick to it, wasn’t your straight up Rosella tomato sauce, was more like a tomato chilli sauce.
I must not have got lucky. I am a big fan of the Zinger Stacker. Tried this today and I have to say, it was less than meh! I could taste a little cheese, but it had no kick to it, and (for me) the flavours didn’t blend all that brilliantly.
I would like to see Halloumi instead of Mozzarella.
That’s a rubbish looking burger.
Had one yesterday, was pretty tasty, but looked nothing like the advert. Honestly, that photo of the purchased example here, how did that score a 5? That should be like 2 out of 10. There’s only 3 (and a half) components of the 7 even visible (did they even add lettuce???), and even then they put the chicken and mozzarella around the wrong way! I mean, how does that even happen, surely they have a build order for these things. But really, that’s shitful.