If the new Subway Footlong Sidekicks were actual sidekicks, they’d be Scrappy-Doo — ill-conceived re-sizings of popular properties that forget what made the original good in the first place.
The three Sidekicks in question — the Footlong Cookie ($5), Footlong Pretzel ($3) and Footlong Churro ($2) — all come as elongated spinoffs of familiar mall food court staples. Subway took their cookies and made them bigger. Auntie Anne’s brought their pretzels and untangled them. Cinnamon came in with the churros and, well, left them alone and made them moderately longer.
With their powers combined, these brands create three ways to ruin your lunch for $5 or less. It’s like the Avengers, but they only got Hawkeye, Tony Stark’s driver and the one dude who was playing “Galaga” on the Helicarrier.
The Subway Footlong Sidekicks
The Sidekicks debuted nationally this week and are prepared fresh by your local Sandwich Artist®. This is both a good thing and a bad thing.
The good news is that you can get a cookie, churro or pretzel that’s still warm from the oven. The bad news is that Subway does not have a good process in place for employees to prepare these things.
The cookie comes in a footlong paper tray that’s warmed in the oven. That’s great. The problem is that it’s basically impossible to remove it from its trough without it falling apart.
The pretzel is brushed with butter and then rolled in those big chunky pieces of salt you see on chewy pretzels. I ordered the pretzel at two different locations. Between the two, I’d say about seven pieces of salt actually stuck to the pretzel.
Then there’s the churro, which is brushed with butter and covered in cinnamon sugar. Well, most of it is.
What do they taste like?
Footlong Pretzel – This is not a pretzel. This is a breadstick
Sure, it looks like a pretzel on the surface. But this generic gluten torpedo lacks the crispy exterior and chewy interior you get in a good pretzel. It’s basically a stick of sturdy white bread with a thick crust.
Fortunately, you can get some honey mustard with it that’s pretty good.
Footlong Churro – In theory, this is the best of the bunch. When made properly, it’s crispy, chewy and tasty, coming in with the Cinnamon Toast Crunch-adjacent flavor.
I was pretty happy with it. But about halfway through eating it, my teeth hit a spot that was randomly hard and crunchy. It snapped like a cracker. I also had patches that didn’t get the cinnamon sugar coating, which left me chewing on plain fried dough.
Footlong Cookie – I wrote a full review of the Footlong Cookie already. But I will still take this opportunity to complain about this slumping sleeve of oily cookie.
The cookie comes in a footlong sleeve, is cooked in the footlong sleeve and is handed to you in the footlong sleeve. There’s a reason for this. The cookie is not equipped to live outside of this sleeve.
It’s like an arm with no bones in a big plaster cast. As long as it’s wrapped up, it looks ok. But if you try to pick it up or do anything with it, you get a big, gorey mess.
The cookie itself is pretty good when fresh from the oven — even as it falls apart in your hands. But when the cookie cooled, I started to notice the lack of flavor in the actual cookie batter — and a strange lack of sweetness.
So are they any good?
The pretzel? No. The churro? Maybe. The cookie? Only if you’re eating it right away with a glass of milk.
The final word
I don’t know what I expected from this whole ordeal. I wouldn’t go to Auntie Anne’s for a meatball sub. So why would I get a pretzel at Subway?
Who am I kidding? I’ll be fooled again this time next year when Taco Bell partners with Sbarro to start selling pizza or some other ridiculous stunt.
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“I ate it so you don’t have to” is a regular food column looking at off-beat eats, both good and bad. It runs every other Thursday-ish at noon-ish.
You can send any praise/food suggestions to nomalley@masslive.com. Please send all criticisms and questions about the difference between a pretzel and bread to irotondo@masslive.com. You can check out the rest of the series here.
