We Tried Chick-fil-A’s New Chicken & Waffles Sandwiches And S’mores Menu

August 24th marked the first day Chick-fil-A‘s new fall menu items hit their stores. The new style of sandwich and two new drinks are a continuation of this year’s ‘Newstalgia’ celebration to mark Chick-fil-A’s 80th birthday. The ‘Newstalgia’ campaign plays off of beloved flavors and introduces them to Chick-fil-A‘s menu with a unique twist that continues to bring intrigue to the company. The Honey Pepper Pimento Chicken Sandwich and the Frosted Sodas and Floats were part of this campaign, and now we get to see how its newest additions hold up.

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The new menu items include a chicken and waffles sandwich, available in the original, spicy, or grilled filets, a s’mores milkshake, and a s’mores frosted coffee. Not only do these items sound like a nice change of pace for a Chick-fil-A launch, but they also simply sound delicious. Naturally, we had to know for ourselves if that was true, though. Without further ado, here is our official Sporked review.

The Chicken & Waffle Sandwiches

In regards to the two sandwiches we tried, there were definitely some pretty strong positives and negatives. We tried both the spicy version of the filet and the original for the sake of this taste test, and surprisingly, the spicy filet didn’t come out as the preferred bite overall. Especially with the heightened craze around ‘swicy’ food at the moment, I expected the balance to be a bit better. But a bite of the spicy sandwich really lost a lot of the flavor that made this a nice sandwich to eat.

The original sandwich really allowed all of the flavors to act in harmony and be a much more conscious experience, though. Surprisingly, you can actually taste the bacon when this sandwich is made with the original fillet, which you couldn’t with the spicy sandwich. And ultimately, the sweet and salty combo with the original filet just won out overall. Other than which filet is best for the sandwich, though, there’s not really much news on that front. They’re the same standard filets that we typically see out of Chick-fil-A.

The bun being waffles, though, this is something new from the brand. The buns are supposed to be maple flavored, similarly to a McGriddle. And honestly, if you like the flavor of the McGriddle buns, then you’ll probably really enjoy the overall flavor of this sandwich and the waffles being used for it as well. Personally, I don’t really love the flavor of artificial maple, so if that bothers you, then you might wanna skip out on this sandwich.

Plus, the waffles were really lacking in the texture department. The waffle really should be fluffy and tender, all of which this one just really wasn’t. It was dense and pretty tough and, other than the maple flavor, it didn’t really have anything else going for it. Overall, though, it’s still a sandwich I finished and enjoyed… just not my new favorite.

The S’mores Frosted Coffee

The S’mores Frosted Coffee was a little bit confusing, honestly. I think all too often s’mores items are marketed as having all of these flavors involved and yet they fall short in all department except for one. For the frosted coffee, you really could only taste that fake, artificial marshmallow syrup flavor in concert with the flavor of the regular frosted coffee from Chick-fil-A. It was still delicious, but it basically just tasted like a coffee milkshake.

The S’mores Milkshake

On the other hand, the s’mores milkshake definitely provided a bit more of a balance in s’mores flavor, although still not ideal. The chocolate and graham flavor only comes through in the milkshake through pieces of cookies that are blended in with the shake, so it makes it really chunky and kind of inconsistent per bite. I mean, it’s actually really hard to sip this one through a straw from Chick-fil-A. Using something like a boba tea straw would be a much better way to drink this. Something I really like about the shake is that the whipped cream itself is flavored like marshmallow as well, so it gets bonus points for that on that. It’s a good shake, but the balance between the flavor of marshmallow, graham cracker, and chocolate is off.