Review: Jollibee Chicken and Mushroom Pasta

Jollibee added a new dish to their pasta offerings but should you go for it?

via Kainan Korner

The big mean orange machine of the Philippine fastfood scene is on a roll, releasing new products left and right, and it doesn’t look like it’s slowing down anytime soon.

After going back to school with University Floats, taking a page out of McDonald’s playbook with Chicken Nugget Crunchers, and joining KFC in the hash brown bandwagon with Hash Brown Burger, Jollibee tries to set itself apart with a dish of its own, the Chicken and Mushroom Pasta.

According to various sources, the Chicken and Mushroom Pasta was released before the Hash Brown Burger. I’m yet to taste the HBB but I’m aware of its existence. As for the C&M Pasta, I’ve only learned about it yesterday at around 6:00 p.m. If I didn’t stop by at the Jollibee-Mindanao Avenue branch across Veterans Memorial Medical Center, I would still be in the dark about this new noodle.

A big brand such as Jollibee does not hesitate to spend money when it comes to introducing new products to the market. I mean, University Floats and Chicken Nugget Crunchers got some TV exposure. How come the C&M Pasta isn’t getting the same treatment? Are they trying to prevent a national disaster caused by people fighting over the limited supplies of C&M Pasta? Obviously, I can’t offer an answer unless I tried this new product out myself. So I let curiosity get the better of me, bought the C&M (solo, so it doesn’t come with anything else), to go, and gobbled it up. Read on and find out what’s with the buzz, or the lack thereof.

PACKAGE

Looks like Jollibee didn't make any special package for the C&M Pasta so you're going to have to settle for a generic styrofoam.

For a new product, I was hoping its look would set it apart from other products. Without opening the styrofoam, service crew members and customers could easily confuse a Jolly Spag for a C&M, resulting into a mix-up of orders.

Sure, it’s costly, both for the environment and Jollibee, to produce a new set of styrofoams for the C&M. But is a marker assuring me that I got right product too much to ask?

Besides, I’ve been disappointed by this very styrofoam for numerous instances. The Jolly Spag is great and all, but there’s something deceiving about the appearance of this package. Which brings me to…

SERVING SIZE

If you’re hoping to see noodles, toppings and sauce springing out the styrofoam once you open you’re packed C&M Pasta, let me give you a heads up. This is all you’re getting.

Concentrate on the lower left part of above photo and you’ll notice some space fit for a bread stick.

There’s nothing unusual about that though. In terms of Jollibee’s serving size, few is normal. But like I said, the package, no matter how many times you’ve seen it, always gets your hopes up.

Surprisingly, one serving of the C&M Pasta and three glasses of water filled me up. Sadly, I think the liquids were hugely responsible for satisfying my appetite.

TASTE/QUALITY

Do you see any chicken in the pictures I’ve shown you? You didn’t? Me neither. And that’s not going to change even if you buy a C&M right now.

There’s a reasonable amount of mushrooms, cheese and bits of squishy red things, that I believe were tomatoes, for your palate to enjoy. And while I was expecting chunks of chicken, I got pieces of ground meat that I can barely taste. They were so small, it's hard to tell if what I'm eating was actually chicken. At this point, I was wondering why they called it Chicken and Mushroom Pasta instead of Tomatoes and Mushroom Pasta.

And don’t get me started with the sauce. Those traces of orange on the side are a result of clumsiness, not of generous servings. Even with my Archie Andrews-ness, I’m pretty sure that much of the sauce stayed in the package, with insignificant amounts of drips (from my count, there were about two, small drips) escaping from the styro and landing to the plastic bag containing the dish.

The C&M Pasta doesn’t boast bright colors that make the Jolly Spag and Palabok Fiesta such a treat. It would’ve, had I known you can ask for more sauce for free. But it doesn’t really matter. Why? It tastes like the Jolly Spaghetti, albeit, less tastier. To elaborate, the C&M Pasta is a less sweet, salty and meaty version of the longtime pasta offering of Jollibee.

Lastly, the noodles were soggy. I don’t know if that’s how they do it in all branches, but that’s what it’s like in the Mindanao Avenue (across VMMC) branch.

I can't blame you if you would mistake the C&M Pasta for a carinderia-made spaghetti because I did.

VERDICT:

Indeed, advertising the C&M Pasta would've led to a catastrophe of epic proportions. No, we won’t be killing each other for every morsel of it. Rather, we’d be outraged by its inability to live up to the hype.

Even for fastfood standards, the Chicken and Mushroom Pasta was a letdown. Though Jollibee isn’t a five-star restaurant, it’s the leading fastfood chain in the country. Much is expected.

If you’re looking forward to a new pasta experience, look somewhere else because the C&M Pasta isn’t going to give you that. If it does, it would be eating a poor man’s Jolly Spaghetti for an additional Php 11 (a solo order of Jolly Spaghetti costs Php 44 while the solo order of the C&M Pasta costs Php 55).

RATING:

2 out of 5 forks (Pastang yawa!)

Note: Photos of the Jollibee Chicken and Mushroom Pasta, other than the one from Kainan Korner, were taken by me, therefore, they belong to Lone Opinion and its author, me. To anyone who uses them without my permission: fuck you. Yeah, they're messy. But hey, men are  supposed to be pigs, right? The forks? They're clipart asshats.