KFC pie plan sizzles and fizzles

Liam Ducey
September 12, 2013
WA News

There comes a time in a young man’s life when opportunity meets inspiration, where innovation takes hold and propels you forward to greatness.

That moment didn’t quite arrive in Perth this week with the release of the KFC Zinger Pie.

Shredded chicken, not that much of it to be honest, with a nondescript brown gravy. It didn’t smell appetising. It didn’t smell of anything.

Being a culinary adventurer and a self-professed pie connoisseur, this was an opportunity I couldn’t miss, to see if a multi-national company could genuinely make an impact on the pastry-with-various-animal-bits-inside-it industry.

One big positive of the pie is the incredibly crisp and crunchy pastry on top. Under the foil, not so much. Photo: Liam Ducey
I should have passed.

Upon asking my friendly customer service representative what was actually in the pie, the reply was curt with a hint of uncertainty.
“Uhh, it’s chicken, ahh, Zinger chicken.”

Righto. That cleared that up.

I handed over my eight dollars – it’s $3.95 per pie and any self-respecting pie journalist needs at least two to ensure quality control in a thorough review – and I headed off.

Troublingly, as I got to back to the office and dug about in the plastic bag, they had included two spoons. I can understand why people might use spoons in the consumption of a pie but for KFC to actively, if not entirely consciously, promote that goes against the very spirit of the Great Australian Pie.

My initial view of the pie filled me with apprehension. The upper crust is a deep, dark brown, like the pie has been lathered in spray-tan and left in the UV bed to add that extra coat. The removal of the aluminium foil pie-tray reveals a soft, slightly greasy underbelly.

After removing the incredibly crisp and crunchy pastry shell – truth be told, despite its appearance this is actually a big positive – the filling appears underwhelming. Shredded chicken, not that much of it to be honest, with a nondescript brown gravy. It didn’t smell appetising. It didn’t smell of anything.

Everyone knows KFC’s Zinger chicken is the poor brother of the Original Recipe, but the Zinger Pie could only work with Zinger chicken, because there is literally no other taste. The chicken tasted like, well, like chicken, but the zing. Oh the zing. It comes on immediately and strongly, like that bug you picked up in Phuket. It lingers over time, and to be honest as I’m writing this, a good 20 minutes later, I can still taste it. The Zinger flavour certainly does its job, which is to give the pie a flavour at all, but it’s not the sort of flavour you want to stick around.

All up, KFC’s foray into the lucrative pie market is a bit of a disaster. It all comes down to how much you appreciate that distinctive Zinger flavour. For my money, this is a last-resort pie, the sort of pie you’d only want when all other pie-sources have been exhausted. I might be getting ahead of myself here, but dare I say it, some variety – maybe even some vegetables – wouldn’t have gone astray.
6/10

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