Arby's Deep Fried Turkey Gobbler

Today, we review Arby’s Deep Fried Turkey Gobbler. In the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, many chains offer turkey-themed sandwiches. This year, Arby’s introduced two offerings in this category: the Deep Fried Turkey Gobbler and the Deep Fried Turkey Club. Both sandwiches have a common denominator: deep-fried turkey.

Forrest and Leroy Raffel founded Arby’s in Boardman, Ohio. Today it is a part of Inspire Brands and has 3,472 restaurants in the U.S., as well as many in Canada, Costa Rica, Egypt, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and Turkey. Arby’s was founded originally as a fast food chain that was not focused on burgers (although they have one today). Their signature menu item is their hot roast beef sandwich. In the 1970s, they used the slogan Arby’s – America’s Roast Beef Yes Sir.

The Construction

Below are the ingredients for the Deep-Fried Turkey Gobbler sandwich. The sandwiches were not customized and used all the defaults offered.

Deep Fried Turkey (Default)
Melted Big Eye Swiss (Default)
Crispy Onion Strings (Default)
Provolone Cheese (Default)
Shredded Leaf Lettuce (Default)
Tomato (Default)
Savory Herb Spread (Default)
Brioche Bun (Default)
“Everything Seasoning” (Default)
Weight: 9.5 ounces
Length (Diameter): 5 inches
Sandwiches Eaten: Two
Location: Indian Trail, NC
Price: $6.49

The Experience

We used the same scoring as we did for our Turkey Sub Quest series for this assessment.

Meat/Cheese 4 points
Bread: 2 points
Condiments: 2 points
Intangibles: 2 points

Meat and Cheese

Personally, I like a deep-fried turkey slice. The turkey used on the Arby’s sandwich is a thick cut with a trim. Usually, I am a thin turkey person, but the thick cut works well here. The turkey isn’t a deli slice but a carved turkey breast. Flavor-wise, it wasn’t bad, but I was expecting more from deep-fried turkey slices.

The Swiss cheese is melted on top of the turkey. Much like the turkey, it’s average and didn’t move the needle all that much for the Deep Fried Turkey Gobbler.

Score: 2.00 out of 4.00 points

Bread

If you have been reading my sandwich reviews, you know my preference for bread with some crust. The Deep Fried Turkey Gobbler is not going to give you much of that. It offers a brioche bun that is almost pillow-like in texture. In the case of this sandwich, I found the bun worked. It didn’t do anything to stand out overly, but it still got a satisfactory grade from me.

Score: 1.25 out of 2 points

Condiments

This sandwich uses five condiments: lettuce, tomato, Savory Herb Spread, Everything Seasoning, and onion strings.

First, it was nice to see a sandwich not overloaded with lettuce, and it was also nice to see the lettuce shredded on the thinner side. There was a slight wilt to the lettuce. The tomato had a very nice ripeness to it. The savory herb spread had a mayonnaise component, which was a miss in my book. Notes of onion, garlic, and celery seed helped mitigate the mayonnaise effect.

Meanwhile, the fried onion strings were a nice addition and I thought they went well with the sandwich.

If you are wondering about Everything Seasoning, this is what Arby’s has on the nutritional guide:

Salt, Dehydrated Garlic, Spices, Dehydrated Onion, Sugar, Green Bell Pepper Powder, Yeast Extract, Toasted Sesame Seeds, Natural Flavors, Natural Caramelized Onion Flavor, And Less Than 2% of Each Canola Oil, Silicon Dioxide, and Soybean Oil Added As Processing Aids.

The quantities of the condiments worked for me – except for the savory herb spread, which was on the excessive side.

Score: 1.00 out of 2 points

Intangibles

With the exception of the Savory Herb Spread, the Deep-Fried Turkey Gobbler sandwich had good proportions of meat, cheese, and condiments. While the flavors worked well, I found the Savory Herb Spread to be a little overpowering and would have preferred less of it.

The spread combined with the soft brioche bun made for a messy sandwich. As mentioned, Arby’s doesn’t skimp on meat. The turkey is thick and weighty, so it was a little challenging to keep the sandwich together.

While I liked many of this sandwich’s components, the overall score did not exceed the sum of the parts.

Score: 0.75 out of 2 points

OVERALL ASSESSMENT

I totally understand Arby’s getting into the Thanksgiving Sandwich game, but the Gobbler name is old. It’s been used by others before, and to me, it implies the sandwich has cranberry sauce, stuffing, and, in some cases, gravy. What I will say is that the foundation of Arby’s Deep Fried Turkey Gobbler is good but not perfect. You will get what comes out as an average sandwich with some good points and some weak points.

Another good point is that the $6.49 price and this sandwich filling are not bad.