Until the other day, I was one of maybe two or three people in the Patch newsroom who had never had The Frosty, a treat at Wendy’s that is so beloved by so many people that it has earned the formality of the article with a capital “T.”
The Frosty came up after Wendy’s chief executive was eviscerated on social media over plans to join companies like Uber and Amazon in implementing surge pricing to charge more during peak demand times, but later walked it back. Fans of The Frosty can mark themselves safe from that.
Our Slack newsroom lit up like a Roman candle. Patch editors’ memories frothed with the nostalgia of quick trips after school, the power of The Frosty to deliver cool relief on scorching summer days and passing The Frosty tradition on to their kids.
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For a special treat, get fries and dip them in The Frosty, several people advised. One guy texted his dad, who replied he hadn’t had The Frosty since sometime in the ’80s but recalled them as “thick and awesome.”
“But honestly,” the dad said later in the thread, “if I’m going to splurge a shake, I’d rather have a real one made with milk and ice cream.”
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Everyone at Patch knows I’m older than The Frosty itself, so how could it be I was still a Frosty virgin? Because I love these people I Patch with, I accepted the challenge — but with some anxiety.
My last — and my first — visit to a Wendy’s was a disaster culminated by that novel square burger patty we’d decided to try on the road trip to our friends’ wedding rising from my belly and spewing out in the reception line like a long-quiet volcano. It missed the bride and wedding party but splattered my date during a dash to a trash can that wasn’t fast enough. For me, the Wendy’s experience was like a bad tequila bender that puts a person on, say, a decades-long margarita hiatus. At least the tequila was fun until it wasn’t. But I had to set the bad mojo aside. Being a reporter isn’t for sissies.
A small chocolate Frosty cost $2.19 and tax, an affordable indulgence. A cross between a shake and soft-serve ice cream, it seemed to hold the power to teleport whoever consumed it to a mid-century malt shop filled with girls with ponytails and boys with flat tops dipping their fries in shakes and doing the twist. Americana, baby. Plum assignment. Plum.
The straw sucked me right back to the 21st century.
Wendy’s should think about serving this in one of those Stanley cups people fight over — the adult dribble cups with industrial-strength reusable straws. This flimsy piece of polypropylene was entirely useless in a drink with the consistency of quick-mix concrete and flattened as I drew air. No big deal. The Frosty comes with a spoon, too, and smaller bites are a good defense against brain freeze.
The moment of truth was a spoonful away. I so wanted to stand in sweet solidarity with my Patch peeps on The Frosty, to hear angels sing when I consumed it. They’re so smart and discerning, so clever and innovative, so culturally tuned into what people care about that they couldn’t possibly be wrong.
Could they?
First, the face, the one a person involuntarily makes when something is so sweet it hurts to eat it. This right here is what gave rise to the cliché “sickeningly sweet.” How many canes of sugar had to be refined to make this thing? (Answer: A small Frosty has about 39 grams of sugar, about 14 more than the daily intake recommended for women by the American Heart Association.)
And what was up with that taste pretending to be chocolate? Had Wendy’s fished a pouch of artificially flavored powder from the clearance bin at a dollar store? It seemed so. Other than that, the ice cream was as good as soft-serve ice cream can be. In retrospect, a vanilla dessert would’ve been a better choice.
The key to enjoying The Frosty seems to hinge on snarfing it down like you’re in a speed-eating contest. If you don’t, it’ll turn on you in a hot second. I managed to get half of it down before the once-thick drink disintegrated into a clump of ice cream goop.
All those ingredients in The Frosty left a filmy, metallic-tasting residue in my mouth. It had to go before yogurt culture started growing on my tongue. Would vigorously gargling mouthwash cause whatever was going on in my mouth to curdle? The fear was real but worth the risk. Mercifully, there were no chunks in the spit.
Don’t hate me, but the only angel I heard was whispering that The Frosty isn’t my jam.
If it takes the frostiness off my review for fans of the treat, I also probably wouldn’t like a Dairy Queen’s Blizzard, Burger King’s Smarties Fusion, McDonald’s McFlurry — or that green thing the chain rolls out around St. Patrick’s Day.
But let’s talk about pie à la mode, shall we?
(Patch national editor Beth Dalbey is old and has tried a lot of things, but never The Frosty until recently.)
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