A part of me has always been mystified by the idea that fast food chains approach the concept of R&D in such wildly different ways. I wrote a review for Chipotle’s new red chimichurri sauce here where I discuss their reticence to add anything to their restaurant’s menu that falls outside the parameters of their brand ethos. Conversely, a chain like Taco Bell will come up with some new amalgamation of the same six ingredients they already possess and pawn it off as something new. And a chain like Burger King will release something so incongruent with polite society that one must wonder if their R&D department is somehow a continuation of the CIA’s MK-Ultra project. Very different approaches with very different results.
And then there’s Arby’s. Arby’s is a chain I think most people don’t know how to fully reconcile with. It’s one of those restaurant chains that you either really love or find disgusting. I rarely find anyone with a more middle ground opinion. And I think in part it has to do with the way they boxed themselves into a corner with their We Have the Meats campaign and slogan. Food prices go up and yet Arby’s is still serving mountainous piles of sliced roast beef for seemingly the same price as any other chain sells their marquee items. Is it good? It’s hard to say. I personally love it but in a way I’m not in love with (if that makes any sense).
As an extension of the We Have the Meats campaign, their new limited time offerings are usually some offshoot of that. For example, recently they’ve been advertising burgers—an item they did not typically have before, which feels shocking for a fast food concept that prides itself on having the meats. And I think that’s the whole point of public confusion. They have some of the meats.
Without derailing this review too much, I think it’s important to get into the subject matter of today. Arby’s has released with great fanfare a new meat-based item that they’re calling steak nuggets. The name is an abomination meant to capitalize on the public’s love for chicken nuggets while also one-upping the old, boring same-old, same-old that every other chain does with chicken nuggets. No!, because at Arby’s we have the meats and the meats must excite. Thus steak nuggets—the next evolution in nugget technology.
And as exciting as that sounds, that’s about where it ends. Steak nuggets are—deep down on the inside—a fast food chain’s attempt at essentially burnt ends. I ordered a five piece of steak nuggets. What I received was five roughly one-inch cubes of beef coated in a thin amount of barbeque sauce. These were burnt ends and don’t let anyone tell you differently. Although to be fair to burnt ends, burnt ends are delicious and these were a fast food cosplay of burnt ends, so really we might as well go back to calling them steak nuggets. It fits the whole façade better anyway.
The steak nuggets are inconsistent. A few were plump and juicy. The runts of the bunch were dry and jerky-like. Not particularly surprising other than truth be told I thought they’d all be dry and jerky-like, so I’ll take a few being decent as a win.
I don’t think I can particularly recommend them. They are not cheap. And that amount of consistency doesn’t work for an item of their price point. Five steak nuggets were a little over five dollars. I commend the effort, and I appreciate they’re swinging for the fences. But the steak nuggets at Arby’s are not Lunch Break Approved.
If there’s a meat that absolutely did not need to be made into nugget form, it’s steak. That looks disgusting. Thanks for your sacrifice