The Pickle Core Meal at KFC feels like a big dill … at first. Photos: Briony Winchester.
I have no idea how I became the official KFC correspondent for Region, but heck, I ain’t mad about it.
A mere eight months after my review of KFC’s limited edition banh mi range, I’m back in-store reviewing the newest specialised menu we literally cannot stop talking about in the office: the Pickle Core range. (Pulitzer incoming?)
It’s a pretty brave move by KFC on two fronts.
One: it’s a massive bulldozing into Macca’s territory because pickles are basically one of the Golden Arches’ five food groups.
And two: what percentage of the population actually likes pickles?
I feel like pickles are a Boomer thing. Or a mates-around-the-telly-watching-footy thing. The kind of thing your dad eats standing in front of an open fridge while demanding to know who polished off all the Christmas ham.
Even the banh mi felt more mainstream.
Anyway, I walk into my local home of Colonel Sanders (KFC Googong), optimistic.
I’m the girl who’ll eat a pickle straight out of the jar and who ends up eating the pickles off the cheeseburgers of almost my entire family and friend group.
If anyone can handle this, it’s me.
From the limited-edition green menu, I order the Pickle Core Meal: a boxed set that comes with a pickle burger, regular popcorn chicken, pickle-loaded chips, pickle sauce and a Pickled Pepsi Max.
Yes.
A Pickled Pepsi Max. More on this later.
Pickle-loaded chips featuring popcorn chicken and about as much dill as you can handle.
I also order a side of frickles – fried pickle slices for the uninitiated – which I have been addicted to since trying them at Hooters Parramatta in 2016.
I dive into my meal. And for about 15.3 seconds, it’s good.
I bite into the burger – fried chicken, pickles, pickle sauce – and yum. Throw in a couple of frickles dipped in pickle sauce: also yum. A few chips loaded with pickle on top: yep, still yum.
“Colonel Sanders, you’ve done it again,” I think but don’t say because I’ve a mouth full of dill.
Halfway through the same rotation of pickled goodness, however, it all comes undone.
The frickles are actually amazing.
I start getting those little acid pimples on my tongue, like you get when you drink too much pineapple juice.
My mouth is sending a formal cease-and-desist.
So naturally I take a break from the pickles by trying the Pickled Pepsi Max.
What is Pickled Pepsi Max? It’s pickle brine poured into the same cup as Pepsi Max.
Nope.
Remember being about 10 and going to a friend’s house and mixing Coke, orange juice, milk, Milo and whatever else you could find in the cupboard into a glass, then daring someone to drink it?
Yeah, that.
Pickled Pepsi Max? Yeah, nah.
So the drink is a fail, and now I just can’t face returning to the pickled buffet laid out before me. In fact, I’m desperate to eat something – anything – that doesn’t taste like pickle.
I scoff the popcorn chicken and end up flipping the loaded fries over to get to the beautiful, untouched chips underneath.
I waste about $17 of a $21.45 meal.
And I realise there’s probably a reason I only eat one pickle out of the jar at a time, not the whole bloody jar.
Within about 30 seconds, I gave up on the new limited edition KFC range.
The verdict: 2/10.
It starts well. Really well. Then suddenly you’re $21.45 poorer, your tongue has chemical burns, and you’re digging through a box of chips looking for one that hasn’t been touched by dill.
Unless you’re a hardcore pickle enthusiast, don’t bother.
And if you are? Get the burger and the frickles. Then get out while you’re ahead.
