Review No. 34: Bonus! Check In at Sonic-Harkrider
1140 Harkrider Street
(501) 327-2072
20.4 percent finished reviewing Conway restaurants
Note: We’re going to post bonus reviews as we check in to various chain restaurants around Conway for which we have already done an initial review. We reviewed Sonic Drive-In on Oak Street in July, so we’ll check in to the other Conway Sonics as we proceed in our quest to dine at every restaurant in our fair city.
She Said: We wanted to try something different with this Sonic adventure, so we went for breakfast a little before 8 a.m. on a morning I had to skedaddle to an appointment at 9 a.m. As (bad) luck would have it, we pulled up to the one broken screen/order-taking-machine in the drive in, but the staffer was cool and took our order without redirecting us. We did wait a long time for our food, with others who had come after us leaving before us, but the carhop apologized, and I always appreciate that. Things can go wrong for anyone, anywhere!
The breakfast menu is not extensive, mostly comprising breakfast burritos, of which I am not a fan, so I went with the ciabatta-roll breakfast sandwich, with bacon, egg and cheese. The combo of this meal comes with tots or fries, so I chose tots, as they more closely resemble their brunching cousin, the hashbrown. The combo also includes a drink, so my choice was, of course, coffee with cream. A few observations after I got my meal home:
- The ciabatta bread is pretty dry and tasteless. The McD’s English muffins in the eponymous Egg-Mc are much tastier. I got bored with the sandwich before it was eaten and abandoned it.
- Tater tots are always satisfying, but the fried greasiness of these upset my stomach all day (I’m not saying anything was wrong with the food; my body just couldn’t take it for breakfast).
- Someone in the bowels of Sonic forgot my cream for my coffee (No add-ins for me: Those are sugar-fests!), but I had brought it home, so I used my own half-and-half to salvage it.
He Said: Yeah, the Sonic breakfast is not exactly heart- or pancreas-friendly, since pretty much every breakfast sandwich is made up of eggs, cheese and some pork or beef product of some kind. The breakfast burrito with sausage has 29 grams of fat (26 with bacon or ham). The supersonic breakfast burrito has 32 grams of fat, and the ultimate meat and cheese breakfast burrito has—wait for it—56 grams of fat to go with its 800 calories. The bacon, cheese and egg “Li’l Breakfast Griller” is a possibility, with only 16 grams of fat. But that’s only because of its “li’l” size. I opted for the French toast sticks, thinking I might be safe because I wasn’t getting cheese or meat. But as usual, my instincts proved wrong: This selection contains 31 grams of fat—more than half of what I can eat in an entire day. Yes, French toast does use eggs, and I suppose there was butter involved, plus the frying the toast. But 31 grams?
And it wasn’t that great. It tasted incredibly processed, and didn’t really give me the feeling I had had an entire breakfast. At least I got Orange Juice. Which was very cold—I’m assuming it was made from a frozen concentrate.
What We Got and What We Paid: Ciabatta breakfast sandwich combo with tater tots and coffee and French toast sticks with orange juice for $11.48.
Rating:
She Said: I love a Sonic burger, but breakfast for me is no-go. If I’m going to eat junky eggs and bread, this is not worth the calories or the strongly worded letter I’ll get from my stomach later.
He Said: I won’t be back for breakfast.