As suggested earlier, I have visited a Roy Rogers Restaurant in 2023 and I've come back to tell the tale. Gather 'round.
First off a word about fast food. When did fast food get so expensive? When I ordered 1 cheeseburger and one side of macaroni and cheese, I expected the burger to be about $5 and the side to be about $1, and maybe the total with tax and change would be around $7. No, it's actually $14. If it's simply that I'm out of touch with the world, I apologize but I was shocked.
A second thing I expect from fast food is for the food to be ready right after I'm done paying. That's the "fast" part! Instead here, I gave my order and them to call my name after it was prepared. Seems like the two main advantages of fast food are deteriorating quickly and I'm seeing the point of it less and less.
So for the purposes of getting a good sense of the place and creating a good review I ordered much more food than I could eat and I brought some home. But keep in mind the flaws of this methodology: for the food that I ate right away, my adrenaline was going from the highway driving and from eating in a restaurant by myself; for the food that I took home, well, we all know that fast food that is allowed to sit for a few hours is not ideal.
The Fried Chicken
Starting with the headliner. The fried chicken is what I would get as a kid and it's the main thing I was looking for.
It's good, it's quite good. The crust is thinner and less crunchy than KFC and the chicken is super moist. The spices are not amazing or terrible, but average to above average. I have no complaints and the fact that it beats KFC says a lot. If you're a fried chicken junky like me, I recommend.
The Biscuit
The fried chicken came with a biscuit. There's not much to say about a biscuit - they're never terrible and they're never life-changing. I would say the Roy Rogers biscuits are above average.
French Fries
Let's establish an objective baseline. There are fries that are on the "crunchy/heavily fried" end of the spectrum and on the other end is fries that are soft and potatoey. These are very light, very much on the potatoey end of the spectrum. As someone who prefers this type of fries, these are excellent.
The Cheeseburger
I saw that Roy Rogers also had roast beef sandwiches and some chicken sandwiches which looked pretty interesting but I went with the burger.
This is pretty much your bog-standard fast food hamburger - it's small, it's thin, it's fairly dry - with one twist: the bun. The bun is doughy and powdery, to get a sense of it, imagine an Egg McMuffin muffin with a burger in it. It's kind of like that. It sounds weird, but I love those muffins and like this. Still, the burger is the main thing and that's nothing special. As fast food burgers go, this is on par with the rest.
Mac and Cheese
Fast food mac and cheese is always disappointing. In fact, in my case, I think all mac and cheese is disappointing. The difference between the idea and the reality of mac and cheese, for me, is so great that I should have admitted I don't care for it long ago. But somehow I keep holding on.
On the other hand, let's go to a relative scale... This mac and cheese is at least better than the other ones I can think of in the space: Popeye's and Boston Market. It's slightly thicker and slightly cheesier.
Mashed Potatoes & Gravy
Fast food mashed potatoes are also a bad idea. For some reason, fast food places have decided the best way to mass produce mashed potatoes is to simulate them in a lab with only the most chemically chemicals. You eat them and you have to trick yourself into thinking of it as actual mashed potatoes and actual gravy. But again, on the relative scale, I would say these are better than Boston Market's mashed potatoes AND KFC's mashed potatoes. They're all pretty similar but these are just slightly better, I think.
Conclusion
I don't think Roy Rogers is revolutionizing fast food, I don't think they're going to take the world by storm and dominate the market. However, I judge the food to be better than the major fast food chains I have around me. The big thing is: the fried chicken is better than KFC. I don't know if it's better than Popeye's, that would take a head-to-head, which would be tough. But that being said, the sides are way better than Popeye's... And the quality of those fries are a nice bonus.
