KFC

I recently went to a nearby Pizza Hut/KFC restaurant. (Both chains belong to Yum! Brands, Inc.) I was interested in ordering a meal combo that included a spicy chicken sandwich, a combo I had seen advertised multiple times on television.

At my request, my waitress provided me with a menu. (She didn’t come to my table equipped with one.) The menu was long on Pizza Hut food but seemed light on KFC fare. What I had intended to order was nowhere to be found. I asked her about the advertised combo, but she knew nothing about it. (She was new on the job, she told me.) The waitress left to ask a manager about the combo, but the manager seemed not to know about it either. My waitress suggested that the sandwich I wanted to try was the Zinger Spicy Chicken Sandwich, which was on the menu, but not in a $5 combo.

Unable to order the combo, I ordered a two-piece chicken meal, which was mostly fine. Well, the meal was almost fine. KFC has always served tasty biscuits, and a biscuit came with my meal. Butter, however, did not. I asked for some and received a couple of the packets like this one:

Buttery Spread packet (approximate size 3" x 1½")

I would have thought that an outfit that went to the trouble of using “11 herbs and spices” would at least serve real butter. I have no idea what I got in lieu of butter. The back of the packet was blank; the front of the packet gave little information about what was inside. All it declared was “KEEP REFRIGERATED” and “ARTIFICIALLY FLAVORED."

My visit to the Indiana, Pennsylvania, restaurant represented the second time I had been disappointed by its skeleton KFC menu. I once visited the restaurant in pursuit of a hot chicken sandwich. I had heard an NPR report on Nashville hot chicken, and I had seen a KFC advertisement for its own hot chicken sandwich. Alas, the Pizza Hut/KFC restaurant had no clue about the sandwich in question. On that occasion, I simply walked out.

Alas, one hand of Yum! Brands just doesn’t seem to know (or care) what the other hand is doing.