By June Ramli
Perth, Sept 7: Betty’s Burgers has entered Australia’s messy-versus-clean eating debate with The Drizzler, a new limited-time chicken meal designed to be dipped, drizzled and assembled exactly how you like it.
I tried The Drizzler over the weekend, and while there were parts of the meal that worked surprisingly well, the chicken itself was a disappointment.
The Drizzler for One, priced at $15.90, comes with a hand-crumbed crispy chicken breast fillet, fries, creamy buttermilk sauce, hot honey and pickles. Rather than arriving inside a burger bun, everything is served separately, leaving you to decide whether to carefully construct each bite or simply pour on the sauces and dig in.
The combination of hot honey and creamy sauce was the highlight for me. The sweetness of the honey worked particularly well against the creamy sauce, while the fries soaked up both nicely. The pickled element also helped cut through the richness and gave the plate some much-needed sharpness.
Unfortunately, my chicken was burnt.
That’s a significant problem when chicken is supposed to be the star of the meal. Instead of getting the crispy, juicy centrepiece I was expecting, the overcooking distracted from what was otherwise a genuinely enjoyable combination of flavours.
There is another issue: one piece of chicken doesn’t feel like quite enough.
The plate would be much more satisfying with two pieces of crispy chicken as standard. With plenty of fries and sauces to work through, a second chicken fillet would give the meal better balance and make the $15.90 price feel more substantial.
The concept itself, however, is fun.
In other news, Betty’s Burgers recently commissioned research of 1,000 Australian adults and found the country is almost evenly divided over how we approach messy food. Thirty-eight per cent said they carefully construct the “perfect bite”, while 39 per cent end up messy either immediately or somewhere along the way. Another 23 per cent move between the two styles.
Interestingly, Western Australians emerged as the country’s most disciplined eaters, with 44.6 per cent saying they construct the perfect bite. South Australians were the messiest, with 43.9 per cent admitting things get messy when eating fried or saucy food.
The Drizzler has essentially turned those eating habits into a menu item. You can ration the hot honey, carefully position every pickle and dip each piece individually, or pour everything over the plate and embrace the mess.
I probably fall somewhere between the two.
Would I order it again? Yes — but I’d want properly cooked chicken next time, and I’d strongly argue for two pieces rather than one.
The hot honey and creamy sauce combination is good enough to make The Drizzler worth another try. The fries work well with all that sauce, and the pickled kick prevents everything from becoming overwhelmingly rich.
Betty’s has a good idea here. Now it just needs the chicken to live up to everything surrounding it.
Rating: 3/5
The Drizzler for One is $15.90 and the Drizzler Duo is $28. It is available for a limited time at Betty’s Burgers restaurants nationally.
Disclosure: Betty’s Burgers provided DailyStraits with a $100 gift card. The views expressed in this review are our own and reflect our experience at Betty’s Burgers Scarborough Beach.
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