In addition to being a movie lover, I am also a connoisseur of fast food.  So I was excited to learn about Domino’s new “Specialty Chicken.”

I first heard about it in this Buzzfeed article, written by someone who hadn’t tried it and erroneously called it “fried chicken crust.”  And I realized I had to try it myself.

First off, they have nothing to do with pizza.  Get that notion right out of your head.  They’re chicken tenders covered in toppings, which include a bit of cheese.  They’re available in four flavors: Classic Hot Buffalo, Sweet BBQ Bacon, Spicy Jalapeno-Pineapple, and Crispy Bacon & Tomato.

I tried the Sweet BBQ Bacon and Spicy Jalapeno-Pineapple.  I figured that Classic Hot Buffalo would just be the same as boneless buffalo wings.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but you already know if you’ll like that. I wanted to try something novel.  And I’m personally not a big fan of tomato, so I didn’t try the Crispy Bacon & Tomato flavor.

Appearance:

Here’s the picture that Domino’s food stylists are using:

Here’s an actual picture I took:

So appearance wise they don’t look that great, and they were slightly burnt on the bottom.  I don’t know if that’s just something that happened with my order, or if the way they prepare these necessarily leaves burnt bits on the bottom. To clarify, it wasn’t the actual food that was burnt.  It was just some burnt bits (most likely cheese) that were stuck on.

But you don’t order Domino’s for its visual aesthetics.  You care about the taste.

Taste

The BBQ-Bacon version is pretty tasty.  Domino’s chicken tenders (which they refer to as “Boneless Chicken”) are already decent.  When you add cheese, sweet barbecue sauce, and bacon, that improves them enormously.  We had ordered ranch sauce on the side, but ended up not using it because the chicken, cheese, barbecue sauce, and bacon already combined their flavors perfectly, and the ranch would only upset the balance. I would definitely order this again.

The Jalapeno-Pineapple was amazing.  I would say that this is by far the best item on Domino’s menu.  You can’t see it from either of the photos above, but in addition to pieces of actual pineapple and jalapeno, it’s covered in some sort of pineapple-jalapeno jelly that’s incredible.

One word of warning: When they call it the Spicy Jalapeno-Pineapple Specialty Chicken, they aren’t kidding about the spicy part.  It was fine for me, but my wife found it too hot for her to keep eating.  (And that was after her first words upon tasting it were “Holy crap this is good!”)  So if you’re sensitive to spicy foods, you should stay away from this.  Which is a shame, because you’re missing out.

In conclusion, Domino’s has hit this one out of the park, and I will eagerly order these in the future.

(Until Domino’s decides to discontinue it, because they always seem to have an unfortunate tendency to mess with everything good on their menu.)