Chick fil-A's Egg White Grill - But for Want of a Muffin...

Tyranny of the Weakest Link
"What I could really go for now is a whole-wheat English Muffin, with no butter" said noone...ever.  And yet Chic fil-A has jumped into the healthy breakfast arena with a product predicated on just such a fantasy: the new Egg White Grill, a sandwich so blandly named (as has always been Chic Fil-A's wont) that it shall henceforth be known to most customers, for as long as it stays on offer, as "#3 with small coffee."  And it is this whole wheat English muffin that stifles an otherwise promising dish in its cradle.

This is a shame because every other part of the sandwich is expertly executed.  If one were to judge the sandwich by its components like the blind men groping the proverbial elephant, one would be prepared to describe it differently.  Tasting the warm, smoky, generously portioned, and attractively seasoned chicken breast section, you'd proclaim "this is a juicy, satisfying, and exciting new way to enjoy chicken for breakfast."  If you sampled the slick folds of fried egg white, you'd say "nobody will ever miss the yolk!"  If you ran your pinky through the semi-liquified cheese slice that, upon melting, coats the muffin and the egg white slab like unctuous finger-paint, and took a lick, you might say "who needs butter when this thing is slathered with queso dip?"

And you would be right.  But all that effort is undone by the aggressively unpleasant whole wheat English muffin that sucks up moisture and snuffs out flavor like a pile of sand.

The early autumn sun rises on the first of three tastings of the Egg White Grill.  It looks like a reasonably proportioned sandwich, the top bun raised aloft on grilled chicken and egg whites draped with downfolded wings of American cheese.  But the high rounded dome of whole wheat dryness is an ominous sign.

What's Wrong with Whole Wheat English Muffins?
Trusting your sandwich to a whole wheat breadstuff isn't so unreasonable in principle; it's not like dark breads are inherently unpalatable.  I can genuinely enjoy nicely buttered wheat berry toast with black coffee.  Ham on pumpernickel is delightful.  And the most elemental whole wheat products, breakfast shredded wheat and Triscuits, are American classics.  So whole wheat per se is not the problem.  But there are nonetheless certain products where whole wheat's presence is disastrous.  Think whole wheat pasta and you start to get the idea.  And whole wheat's influence on English Muffins is similarly insidious.

One primary reason is that a glutenous stretchiness is part of an English Muffin's appeal, and whole wheat flour contains much less gluten, so this bread doesn't have the same stretch and chew.  It's more like the limp foam stuffing inside a cheap couch, spongy and moisture-neutralizing.  And whereas the glutenous dough of a white muffin will trap steam within its microscopic bubbles, creating a crisp moistness when toasted, the whole wheat muffin seems to contain deserts within deserts.  Then there's the flavor, some strange combination of sawdust and old bookbindings, mildewy, dark and stale, the antithesis of a morning brightener.  It tastes like rotted attic planks smell.

The second tasting within the Food Kingdom studios, made the dry, bland taste even harder to understand.  Look at that cheesy ooze!  But we're staring straight at this sandwich's assets.  The liabilities that undermine this sandwich are hidden from view.

Quantities and Ratios
The taste-nullifying properties of the whole wheat muffin might not figure so large if there weren't so much of it.  Fast-food leaders like Wendy's have long known that the bread in a sandwich is meant to be unobtrusive and should serve mainly as a vehicle for allowing the hands to convey the sandwich fillings into the eater's mouth without cancelling out the featured flavors.  If the wheat muffin could have been made, say 30% thinner, this would probably be a different review.  But an examination of the Egg White Grill's cross section reveals the fundamental flaw, that the muffin itself is almost twice the thickness of the chicken, egg, and cheese put together.  The photo below tells the sad tale.

This view from the third tasting (I really wanted to like this and give it every chance!) really clarifies the issue.  The cheesy egg and the chicken with genuine grilled taste are delicious and they are provided in reasonable quantities, but not relative to the over-apportionment of whole wheat bread. Dusted with powdery residue, and seemingly growing like a fungus, this nasty muffin is choking the life out of its fillings.

All in the Name of Nutrition
Using an abominable whole wheat English Muffin in place of a tasty traditional one is all the more pointless when you consider the nutrition facts, easily obtainable through a web search.  Despite its whole wheat pedigree, the Chick Fil-A muffin actually contains zero grams of dietary fiber.  As for carbs, it supplies 16 grams as opposed to the 26 grams contained in a standard Thomas's English Muffin.  But put that in the context of the standard recommendations of daily carbohydrate intake.  For a person on a 2,000 calorie-per-day diet, the USDA recommends between 225 to 326 grams of carbs per day.  Even for a restricted diet of 1,500 calories, the recommendation is for between 170 to 245 grams per day.  So the additional 10 carbs supplied by a white English muffin would only represent 1/17th of a person's carbohydrate allowance for the day under the most restrictive conditions.  The Food Kingdom recommends getting a breakfast sandwich you really enjoy.  The piece of your soul that yearns for a good breakfast will thank you.