Fast Food Watch: KFC Go Veggie With New Cheese-Stuffed Mushroom Burger

Vegetarians and meat-lovers unite! KFC has released their first ever vegetarian burger: a dutifully unhealthy looking concoction which substitutes the usual meat patty with two slices of deep-fried mushroom stuffed with gooey cheese. Since KFC announced their new menu item, Weibo has been losing its collective mind, with over 39,000 comments under the hashtag #肯德基素汉堡# (KFC vegetarian hamburger), featuring plenty of food-porn pics of the stringy, melty cheese and lukewarm reviews. Being the deeply committed investigative journalists who allow nothing to get between us and a scoop, we decided to test the burger ourselves.

The burger (RMB 23) has been released as a promotional item for the latest in a neverending barrage of Spider-Man flicks, namely Spider-Man: Far From Home. Despite being just about the last thing we'd associate with the web-slinger, KFC appears to have decked their burger out with the classic and typical go-to substitute patty for many a veggie burger: the portabello mushroom (though we aren't 100 percent sure). The burger comes in a typical soft bun, with sweet "special" sauce, tomato, and lettuce.

What sets this thing apart, however, is instead of simply grilling and then slapping the patty in a bun with all of the other fillings, they've taken two mushroom slices and sandwiched (allegedly) four different kinds of imported cheese between them, before deep-frying the whole thing into a thick, crunchy patty.

Our verdict? Not bad! The mushroom is dense and "meaty," the cheese is tasty, and the Day-Glo orange color and crunchy texture of the patty (which holds it all together quite admirably) echo the crisp chicken pieces and burgers that the KFC brand is famous for. In the end, you feel like you're getting the same kind of high-calorie meal had you ordered the sadness-filled and karma-sucking chicken burger. (Here we should point out that there's no mistaking that This Is Fast Food And Still Probably Not Very Good For You.) With that in mind, we didn't feel like an absolutely disgusting excuse for a human after eating it.

So, the big question: who exactly is this burger for, anyway? It's hard to imagine vegetarians rushing out to buy it, thrilled that they can finally dine in the hallowed halls of KFC ("I've been wanting to come here for so long!"). Sure, it doesn't hold a candle to the kinds of gourmet vegetarian burgers on offer by the likes of Jing-A, Slow Boat, Side Street, and Arrow Factory (just to name a few) but it does make a convenient meat-free option for any veggo that finds themselves at KFC with a group of (obviously blitzed) friends, and much more interestingly, marks a serious cultural shift in China's fast food scene.

Our biggest takeaway here is that by offering a vegetarian option, and one that is pretty palatable at that, KFC is doing its part in normalizing plant-based diets (no easy feat in meat-obsessed China) for which we can only give them credit for. Something big is afoot.

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Photos: Anna Pellegrin Hartley, KFC