Archive for the ‘TGI Friday's’ Category

T.G.I. Friday’s Onion Rings

Monday, June 28th, 2010

T.G.I. Friday's Onion Rings - Ad

T.G.I. Friday's Onion Rings

Looks: The image on the packaging conveniently omits all of the hat-shaped onion end-pieces which seemed to comprise my entire box, but the color and texture are appropriately represented. 4 out of 5

Taste: The onion is sweet, the breading is crunchy, and they taste great dipped in ketchup, catsup, or Generic Tomato-Based Dipping Sauce. To more adequately describe these rings, allow me to draw upon personal experience: in my life, I have encountered three types of onion rings:

  1. “Onion” rings, which are essentially deep-fried breading with the faintest bit of onion inside – these are what Burger King sells.
  2. Onion “rings”, which are more onion than anything else, with not enough breading to adequately cover and give structure to the onion. These are found at 2nd-tier concession stands and poorly-run restaurants.
  3. “Onion rings” – healthy slices of white onion with healthy amounts of breading. Both components have their own flavors, and both textures are detectable in your mouth.

These rings are definitely a variant of #3. They have enough breading to make you feel bad about yourself for eating the entire box, but enough onion to make you feel good about yourself for eating an entire vegetable. 4 out of 5

T.G.I. Friday’s Potato Skins

Monday, May 31st, 2010

T.G.I. Friday's Potato Skins - Ad

T.G.I. Friday's Potato Skins

Looks: Apart from the cheese not spreading as judiciously as it does across the potato skins on the box, these frozen recreations could be straight out of a TGI Friday’s kitchen. 4.5 out of 5

Taste: I’ll be honest with you – I didn’t eat these. My wife was making them for a snack and I grabbed them to photograph after they came out of the oven but before she realized they were done. Sort of a potato-napping, if you will. Based on her level of displeasure at finding that her skins were missing, I’d peg their potential taste at about a 3.5. 3.5 out of 5

T.G.I. Friday’s Turkey & Bacon Melt Quesadillas

Sunday, October 25th, 2009

TGI Friday's Turkey & Bacon Melt Quesadillas - Ad

TGI Friday's Turkey & Bacon Melt Quesadillas

Looks: I would love to see how they were able to take the picture for the packaging. It’s not possible that they even used the same quesadillas that they put in the box, because they don’t come out looking anything like the ad. There isn’t as much filling, the tortillas are much flimsier, and I’m not certain that all of the ingredients shown coming out of the quesadilla are even in there. 1.5 out of 5

Taste: Even though they don’t look like the quesadillas on the box, I think you’ll agree with me that they still look tasty, in an “it’s-really-late-and-i’m-starving-oh-don’t-these-look-good” kind of way. They were pretty good: cheesy filling, meaty pieces of chicken, and soft tortillas. I couldn’t taste any bacon, and the cheese was slightly greasy (which might have been from the MIA bacon), but not too bad overall. 3.5 out of 5