Read about Erin’s other food finds on EJeats and San Diego Sugar.
My review of some of the new items at Quiznos started off with a bang and ended with a whimper. After enjoying a magnificent Chicken Milano Sandwich, I hoofed it back home to try three new desserts: a Chocolate Chunk Cookie, a Marshmallow Treat, and a Chocolate Brownie, figuring the 1 mile walk earned me some extra calorie consumption. I also feared unleashing three desserts simultaneously would result in a mountain of sugar-coated regret, but that wasn’t the case.
After taking a few obligatory bites, all of the treats hit the bin. While there’s at least one great new savory option on Quiznos’ new menu, the sweets still need some tweaks. Let’s start with the Chocolate Chunk Cookie, which is listed as “new” on the menu, (probably because in their previous incarnation, they had chips instead of chunks). It’s been a long time since I’ve tasted a cookie from Quiznos and the last time I did was in another country (Canada!), but man, have they gone downhill.
The cookies I remember were soft and chewy, with a sweet, buttery flavor, but these new ones taste just like every mass-produced cookie you can buy in a vending machine or at a convenience store. The strongest flavor components were corn syrup and molasses, and overall, the cookie tasted artificial , and like it could have been baked weeks, or months, earlier. Marshmallow Treats are tough to really mess up, seeing as they have three main ingredients: crisp rice cereal, marshmallows, butter (and sometimes vanilla), but Quiznos’ version was dry and tasted like the crisp rice had been toasted.
At first, I liked this subtle difference, but the square really needs more butter to bring that creamy, sweet flavor and make it softer and chewier. Like Cap’n Crunch, eating it puts the roof of your mouth in a dangerous position. The Chocolate Brownie was more like chocolate cake: tasty enough, but lacking that chewy, fudgy quality that makes a brownie a brownie. It was rich and sweet, but a little on the dry side. With a glass of milk, it would be good, but by itself, it’s about two times as sugary as it needs to be.
A quick look at the packaging revealed that the dessert items are distributed by American Foods Distributors, a subsidiary of Quiznos headquartered in Hauppauge, NY. It’s not clear where they are also produced, but if Quiznos is serious about improving its line of desserts, it would be much better if the individual locations offered fresh-baked items, like the cookies at Subway. Right now, there’s nothing that sets apart the new sweets from the mass-produced, preservative-laden, overly sugary treats you’d find at a 7-11.
