Filet-o-fish

So once again I think I have Arby's to blame for this. I saw them advertising a fish sandwich that was obviously a direct competitor to McDonald's Filet-o-fish, and my brain went "you really ought to compare those two." And then it wouldn't shut up until, surprise surprise, I bought a filet-o-fish so I could compare these two.

Like last time we're starting with the MacDoodle sammich. Also like last time, I'm stunned that the bar for a "premium" sandwich delivered in a little box from the golden arches is so incredibly low. But here it is, the filet-o-fish, which if I'm lucky, won't have any actual fish on it. Pictured behind the sandwich is my actual dinner, a couple of pizzas from Hungry Howie's with several of their flavored crust options. These two pizzas, purchased as paired with a coupon, cost about $11, leaving them at about double the price of the M-Did's fish sammy for way more than twice the food and at least a thousand times the flavor. For some unfathomable reason, the people who made these pizzas decided to put seasoning on them.

Unreal, I know.

Look, you folks who just eat at Mark Dandies (TM) might not know what seasoning is, or if you do you're presumably suffering from some kind of genetic ailment that presents as an allergy to salt. But it might come to you as a surprise that, generally speaking, food is improved by seasoning it with a little salt, some pepper, and maybe some other herbs or spices. Jumping right to the subject at hand then, the filet-o-fish does not inspire confidence, given that much like every other sandwich I've seen from MiggleDiggle's that isn't drowning in shredded iceberg lettuce, there are like three component pieces. This is how they made sandwiches for us on elementary school field trips thirty years ago when they didn't want to accidentally trigger a food allergy. White bread, a slice of baloney, Kraft single, and a bare swipe of mayo. Sure, supposedly the meat and condiment sauce are different here, but the visual similarity this thing has to probably the laziest sandwich in the history of sliced bread doesn't bode well for what's coming.

Look, fish can be a pretty divisive food. There are some people that just can't stand the taste. Personally, I enjoy fish, especially fish that's been breaded and fried. There's a sort of pungent saltiness to most fish that can be offputting, I get that, but generally it works for me. The patty they put on this sandwich... isn't fish. I mean, it probably is, and the texture sure is right. But the saltiness you would typically associate with fish? There's nothing. Saltless. The breading tastes like nothing and has no textural crunch like you might expect from good, or even bad fried fish. The cheese makes no sense in this flavor context but also genuinely just blends in with the bread. The only thing in here that tastes like anything at all is the pickles they stirred into this sauce, which I'm not convinced isn't just mayo with... pickles... stirred into it.

I want to say that the flavor is just awful, because that would be something. Anything. I wanted this sandwich to stir something in me, but in contrast it wound up essentially sucking all of the emotion straight from me. Consuming the Mike Douglass fillet of fish was most akin to gazing into the unblinking void without the spine-chilling premonition that the abyss gazes back. All is blackness, all is emptiness, but there is no despair. There is simply...

nothing.

Much as with my last foray into MiiDoofle's menu I am astonished at how little flavor they were able to pack into this thing. I could reproduce this sandwich at a solid savings from my local grocery store, just snag the cheapest hamburger buns you can, bake a couple of frozen fish sticks to toss in between them, then top with a Kraft single and some relish stirred into a dollop of mayonnaise. But even if I did that, I'm genuinely not sure I could render it out with so little flavor. The worst fish sticks I've ever had put more love into their breading than this, and I'm not sure where to even find pickle-relish that doesn't have any sort of pickling liquid in it.

But the biggest punchline in all of this to me is that as much as I love to mock mayo for having no flavor, I genuinely have never tasted mayo that was a bland as whatever the crap it is MucDuds is passing off as "tartar sauce" on this thing.

So once again the double arches have managed to take a sandwich concept that seems like it should be rife with personality, even if it's a negative personality, and produce a version that is so empty of anything noteworthy it is genuinely like eating air. I will give them that the texture on this sandwich is better than the McRib. The fish feels like fish in the mouth, instead of a mousepad. But mouthfeel isn't going to save a $5 sandwich that otherwise is less satisfying than chewing on a mouthful of ice. I am honestly not even sure this sandwich has actual-pants calories in it, it tastes so empty.

But maybe that's the big secret here. Maybe it doesn't have calories. Maybe the big zero-calorie super-food all the diet-heads have been searching for is, in fact, at Mech Dudes, but they won't even look at it because it came from a fast-food joint.

Well anyways, my conclusion is that the pizzas were good and Hungry Howie's crust options are honestly fantastic. Would recommend trying them out if you haven't. It's like you finish eating your slice of pizza only to have a surprise breadstick at the end. Solid thumbs up there.