Arby's

Critic's Review

I saw the Fish Sandwich on a TV commercial and sometimes marketing works. Basically fish and chips on a bun without the chips. The restaurants charge $15 for this; I wanted to see what I got for $5.69.

Ipicked up the sandwich and came straight home so the sandwich was still hot. It didn't say fish anywhere on the box so I was worried they might have given me the wrong thing. Those order boxes are kind of scratchy without the masks.

Opening the box revealed a pretty good sized sandwich. Barely fit in the container.

A pretty good sized piece of fish. Nothing in the bag; no fork or extra tartar sauce. Just napkins. And you will need napkins.

I spread out the tartar sauce a bit and dug in.

This sandwich was not constructed for eating. Shredded lettuce, tomato; there was a pickle in there. Very hard to eat.

But pretty good. I added a little salt; nothing fast food-like about this except for the shredded lettuce. Whatever process they use to cook the fish is foolproof; perfectly cooked fish. It reminded me of Arthur Treachers, a favorite off-campus food trip with I was in college.

Conclusion

There was absolutely nothing wrong with this fish sandwich. This was light years better than many offerings I've had at restaurants for $20.

It's a sad commentary when fast food is better than what you get at a restaurant. Welcome to Las Vegas.

Review 8/5/22

Arby's has one of the better birthday deals; a free small shack and small curly fries with purchase; and they extend it for 60 days after your birthday. There's one close to Costco, so I swung by after making my usual Costco run.

There's no way to get the offer if you order online, so you'll have to go inside. Luckily Arby's isn't as popular as it used to be, so I was the only customer at 3pm.

And it's a good thing, because the register girl has no idea how to give me the deal. The manager had to come over 4x, and they finally figured out there was no way to key in a free small shake. So they ended up just voiding it and giving it to me.

$7 for a reuben, curly fries and a Jamocha shake.

I'd nipped at the shake on the ride home.

One thing I learned is that Arby's has pretty good shakes. The Jamocho is supposedly a chocolate/coffee blend. It didn't really taste like coffee but it wasn't as sweet as a chocolate shake. Same calories so not sure how that works.

The portion of curly fries was find with the small. Note that I threw these in my air fryer for 3 minutes at 320 degrees with no preheat and they came out perfectly crisply and hot.

The reuben was fine. Not an OMG deli sandwich, but perfectly ok for this deal. I wouldn't pay $7 for this on it's own; I'd rather get an $11 Reuben that's has better corned beef.

[show_photo file="Arbys_Reuben_Close.jpg

That being said, it was as good as I could expect from a place like Arby's.

Conclusion

While Arby's sandwiches have always been pedestrian, as fast food goes they're still halfway decent. Some other chains like Burger King have gone from pretty good to terrible, but Arby's is somehow holding on. The $3.59 small shake is a winner, and with 4 sizes you can have just as much as you want.

I had 1/2 the reuben, fries and shake and it was 1200 calories. So plan accordingly.