Review: Sonic Flatmelts and Breakfast Burritos

The third most awesome thing about Sonic (after the drinks, and breakfast being served all day) is the menu and Sonic happy hour. It has great variety – whatever you want, they’ve probably got it. Chili dogs, tater tots, onion rings, corn dogs, popcorn chicken, the aforementioned breakfast, and many more.

Well now they’ve added a few limited time offerings to that long list: two new Flatmelt sandwiches and two new breakfast burritos (because five burritos wasn’t enough).

The Flatmelts come with your choice of steak or chicken (grilled or crispy). Each one is equipped with hickory BBQ sauce, bacon, cheddar cheese, and grilled onions, “all wrapped up in a soft, warm flatbread.” They go for $3.99 in these parts.

As for the new burritos, they are variations on Sonic’s Steak and Egg Burrito. You have the Zesty Cheesesteak, which features steak, zesty cheese sauce, grilled onions, tater tots, eggs, and cheddar cheese. Then there’s the Smoked Chipotle, which consists of steak, smoked chipotle sauce, jalapeños, grilled onions, tater tots, eggs, and cheddar cheese. Each one will cost you $3.49.

The folks at Sonic were cool enough to hook me up with a $20 gift card to sample the goods. They also sent a pretty sweet computer cleaning kit off Amazon; it says it’s for Macs but I’m going to use it on my PC because I live on the edge.

Anyway, earlier this week I set out to get my hands on these new items. I got two flatmelts – steak and crispy chicken – and one of each burrito. Don’t worry, I didn’t eat them all by myself. One of my roommates was around to help with the taste test.

We began with the Zesty Cheesesteak burrito. My first bite was very bland – mainly eggs and onions. As I got into it, there was more steak. The steak was decent in the flavor department, but not very tender or juicy. I also began to notice the tots more as I continued. They gave it some texture, but I wished there were more – I think there were only 4 tots in it. The cheese was really lacking as well. I didn’t notice cheddar cheese, or any zesty cheese sauce. That was disappointing because I think some sort of flavorful sauce would have made a huge difference in this burrito. Overall it was okay but pretty bland. I give it 5.5/10.

Next we decided to tackle the Smoked Chipotle burrito. This one scared me a little because jalapeños aren’t really my thing, but I felt it was my duty to burn my mouth for you, So Good reader, so I dove right in. It wasn’t so bad – mainly steak flavor with a little kick from the chipotle sauce. But then in the next bite I got about 4 jalapeño slices and things went downhill. My eye began to twitch and I required a large pull of Cherry Limeade. It was much the same until I finished my half of the burrito. The jalapeños dominated, and nothing else really came through except the steak. For me it was too hot, but my roommate enjoys the heat and said it was decent. I would have preferred less jalapeños and more of the other ingredients (tots, cheese and chipotle sauce, specifically), but as is I give it 4.5.

Then we moved on to the sandwiches. First up was the Steak Flatmelt. The first thing I noticed when I checked under the hood was that the ingredients were not distributed properly. All of the BBQ sauce, cheese, and onions were smack dab in the middle of the flatbread, meaning that when it’s folded up, those all accumulate at the bottom, creating uneven bites. It’s science.

Anway, as you can see in the photo, there’s a good helping of steak. Not surprisingly, that was the main flavor of this sandwich. The hickory BBQ sauce was also well-represented, and like any good BBQ sauce, was sweet and smoky. The sauce also combined well with the grilled onions. Unfortunately, the bacon and cheese were totally lost in the mix. I’m not sure if bacon would have gone well with the steak anyway, but more cheese would have been a very welcome addition. One might expect something with ‘melt’ in the name to have tons of melty cheese or cheese sauce, but that was not the case. However, it’s still a decent sandwich, and the soft flatbread was a good vehicle, so I give it a 6.5.

Finally, we have the Crispy Chicken Flatmelt. At this point I was pretty tired of steak, so I had high hopes for the two chicken strips. Unfortunately, they did not meet my expectations. They had a thick, crispy breading, so there’s that. But they were really dry and didn’t taste like much. Barbecue sauce was the most prominent flavor along with the onions. At least the cheese came through this time, and I even tasted the smoky bacon a little bit. This one was a 6/10, despite the terribly bland chicken.

In all, these new burritos and Flatmelts were disappointing. They’re not bad ideas in theory, but the execution was poor. One burrito was bland, the other too hot. The Flatmelts were decent, but poor ingredient distrubution caused some elements to be non-factors, while the chicken strips may as well have been fried cardboard. I don’t recommend the new additions, and I can say with confidence that I won’t get them again unless Sonic makes some improvements.