In today’s age, we have a strange obsession with making anything “meatless.” Most fast food restaurants are fighting to get the rights to the most authentic fake meat on the market. We’ve seen a lot of press recently with the Impossible Whopper from Burger King, but there are several other fast food companies that are trying to get into the craze of a meatless option. Even companies who technically already have one.
From January 13th to the 19th, Dunkin’ went on a marketing spree for their Beyond Sausage Sandwich. And who better to advertise the sandwich than the myth, the legend, the lion, Snoop Dogg. How this glorious combination came to be will forever be an enigma to me, but they did it. And according to them, they “dropped it like it’s hot.” Whatever that means. I assume that it might be a reference to one of Snoop Dogg’s songs, but I honestly don’t care enough to double check.
What does "Snoop Taste" even mean?
This promotion was made to bring attention to their meatless options as well as adding a “menu-hack” that others could use after the sandwich was discontinued. When the news reached my timeline, I realized what I had to do. I needed to go to Dunkin’ and taste this monstrosity for myself.
I decided to go after a church retreat. This meant that I hadn’t had a decent shower in about two days, and I had about three to four hours under my belt. Just know that this review is in light of that fact. But lucky for me, I had many friends with me who could join me in my suffering (shout out to Esther Park, Stephanie Hwang, Patrick Lin, Se-Hoon Kim, and James Choi).
When I went to the register to purchase the sandwich, the cashier had no idea what I was talking about. Which meant that I had to make the sandwich myself using the coveted “menu-hack” method that Snoop Dogg mentioned in his interview for the sandwich (which I also highly recommend people read because it is hilarious). I ordered a regular frosted donut, and a Beyond Sandwich, got a plastic knife from their utensil kiosk, and began my careful sandwich surgery.
I cut the donut in half and began to dissect the breakfast sandwich to get each individual part to the donut. Sans the bread of course. After the sandwich was constructed, I cut it up for me and my friends so that we could all taste it together.
Honestly, very similar situation to the KFC/Krispy Kreme Sandwich.
My initial thought going into the sandwich was that it was going to be a salt bomb. Usually, when someone boasts about a new meatless option, they substitute flavor for salt. While that is one way to add flavor, it seriously overwhelms the senses where the only prominent flavor is the sodium content. And I also assumed that they would salt the egg as well. However, what I tasted was a lot different than what I was originally expecting.
Worry and annoyance. All in one photo.
One thing I can say for sure is that the donut portion of the sandwich was the most overpowering part of the sandwich. I didn’t really need to focus on the flavors of the egg, meatless patty, or the cheese because the donut overpowered them all. Which was actually something that played in their favor. A donut from Dunkin’ is actually pretty good, so eating just a donut would have been enough for me.
The detriment comes when you start to evaluate each of the sandwich’s components.
The thing that caught me off guard was that the egg and the patty had the same texture. I guess I was expecting the patty to have some kind of meat texture. Whenever a company boasts about their new meatless sandwich, they mention how much the meat not only tastes like the real thing, but it feels like the real thing as well. Even just going through a cursory glance at the Beyond brand of meats, it seems like a huge selling point to them. As if they want you to know that their fake meat is the most authentic fake meat on the market.
The face of someone who wants to be somewhere else...
I was also taken back to the lack of salt that I was experiencing. In fact, the egg and patty were a lot blander than originally expected. Like I said, the most impactful part of the sandwich was the donut. Everything else paled in comparison. The old adage of having salty with the sweet had proven to not work in this case either. Mostly because it was missing that salty quality.
Maybe I was expecting too much from the sandwich, but I do wish that left more of an impact on the initial bite. I will say that after eating the sandwich, I felt as though my mouth was coated with salt. However, it was already a moo point because I didn’t have the donut to cut the saltiness that I was experiencing.
In the end, Steph asked me what would make the sandwich better. My response was to get rid of the cheese, patty, and egg. Which just leaves you with the donut. It was the only thing in the ingredients list that had any flavor.
Anyways. Final rating: 5/10. Not the worst. Not the best. I prefer just a donut.
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