Southwest Burger: This looks like the most far-out item from the new offerings.  The white Cheddar we’re familiar with from the Grilled Onion Cheddar is featured along with a barbeque ranch sauce and tortilla strips.  Also available with an additional burger patty for 79-cents more to make it a Southwest McDouble.

Dijon Swiss Burger: Fans of Swiss cheese are probably disappointed to see the Mushroom & Swiss Angus no longer on the McDonald’s menu so the return of Swiss comes in the form of the Dollar Menu Dijon Swiss Burger.  The burger also features lettuce, pickles, and mustard sauce.  Also available as a Dijon Swiss McDouble for $1.79.

Bacon McChicken:  It’s about time the McChicken receive a much needed upgrade.  The Dollar Menu McChicken with added white Cheddar and new thick-cut Applewood smoked bacon becomes the new Bacon McChicken.  Priced at $1.79.Buffalo McChicken: This is your standard McChicken made just with added buffalo sauce.  A Hot ‘n Spicy McChicken with added buffalo sauce to make a Hot ‘n Spicy Buffalo McChicken sounds entirely possible.Buffalo Bacon McChicken: Here’s where some McDonald’s Math comes into play with the $1 Buffalo McChicken becomes $1.79 with the addition of bacon, but not bacon and cheese (see Bacon McChicken above).  So an extra burger patty and strips of bacon are both a 79-cent upcharge.

So out of all the new menu items available in select markets, which one would you like to see make the national jump?  How do you feel about value menus and the prices that keep creeping up?  What’s your current favorite McDonald’s Dollar Menu item?  Let’s discuss!

• Shell (comment #103)

Enjoy a few venti quad shots on me!  Email me, (GrubGrade at Gmail dot com) with your mailing address and I’ll send your gift card to its new home. Thanks for participating everyone. 

What happens when you take thinly sliced turkey and add crisp pepper bacon, fresh spinach leaves, drizzle with bacon dressing and top with fresh tomato and onion on honey wheat bread? You get a turkey sandwich you want to gobble right now.

With the new Turkey Bacon Florentine Sandwich, you’ve got a bunch of familiar ingredients found in the Market Fresh line.  The turkey, pepper bacon, tomato, onion and honey wheat bread can all be found in the Turkey Ranch & Bacon Sandwich that remains one of my favorites.  Where the Turkey Bacon Florentine makes its stand-out taste and style is with the addition of spinach leaves and bacon dressing.

The slices of oven-roasted turkey are the base to this rather large and filling sandwich.  It’s not a slippery, slimy bunch of congealed turkey pieces thankfully and they’ve got that drier carved-out texture I prefer.  They turkey is sliced in store daily so that helps out knowing its not been pre-sliced months ago and sitting in a vat of other deli meats.

The pepper bacon is a little crunchier than I prefer, but Arby’s still manages to be one of the better tasting bacon places in the fast food world.  They came in 3rd place in our bacon poll. There’s no cheese to be found and that’s not a bad thing because I feel it would get lost in this sandwich. The bacon and bacon dressing dominate the flavors overall and adding cheese would just add more unneeded calories and fat. At 700 calories and 25 grams of fat already, there was no need to pile any more on with the overkill of cheese.  I would’ve preferred the bacon dressing to be a little less like runny salad dressing and more like a thick dipping sauace consitency.  A thicker bacon dressing would’ve worked a lot better for me.  The bacon dressing was tasty, but came off as too sour as it didn’t balance itself well across the sandwich and ended up collecting areas.

The sliced tomato and crisp rings of red onion provided a cool crunch and helped balance the moisture since the crusty bread edges are just way too thick.  I found myself tearing off some pieces of the crust of the honey wheat bread as I tend to do with Arby’s Market Fresh sandwiches.  The fresh spinach leaves were piled on generously and I was happy to see a green veggie in my sandwich other than the typical lettuce.  I felt a little better knowing that I got some vitamins during my lunch.  The sandwich has 35% of your daily value of Vitamin A, 20% DV of Vitamin C, 30% DV of Calcium and 60% of your daily Iron.   With that said, this sandwich has 2080 milligrams of sodium so that’s approaching an entire days worth.

In a growing line of Market Fresh sandwiches, the Turkey Bacon Florentine is worthy of a limited-time spot.  There are minor issues here and there that could have been addressed to make it work better for me.   The bacon dressing needs some adjustments and the honey wheat bread needs to be changed completely.  At a price of over five dollars for just a sandwich alone, it’s more than I’d like to spend when I’m in the mood for fast food.  The Turkey Bacon Florentine still gets points for having fresh veggies, great turkey and bacon, and for giving spinach a shot over the usual lettuce.

We’ve gone and changed breakfast forever. Again. Bite into this smorgasbord of bacon slices and pepper fried egg, sandwiched by a Glazed Donut.

Doubled with the fact that today happens to be National Doughnut (or Donut) Day and I was able to score a free Key Lime donut with my coffee purchase, the gluttony continued with the $3.29 purchase of the infamous Glazed Donut Breakfast Sandwich.  It’s just one of those throwaway days where I’m starting out in a shameful way and sinking down to a new low and consuming something that will have you believing I’ve reached rock bottom.  But wait, this sandwich really wasn’t too bad.  First impression of the Glazed Donut Breakfast Sandwich is that $3.29 is too pricy.  The light and airy glazed donut doesn’t have much of a substantial weight to get this into the category of “hearty”.  It was a quick five or six bites and the evidence was gone.  I wouldn’t know how to possibly make this sandwich any more of a filling menu item, so the three ingredients are just enough.Most all good breakfast sandwiches  for me utilize a sharp cheese to balance the breakfast-y flavors all out, but thankfully the Glazed Donut Breakfast Sandwich has no cheese.  The idea of this sandwich was already slightly cringe-worthy for me so cheese would’ve put it over the top.  The sugary glazed donut dominated the flavor for me with its familiar sweetness while the abundant salty bacon brought out the much needed contrast.  Like dipping salty French fries in your Wendy’s Frosty, the Glazed Donut Breakfast Sandwich succeeded in the sweet/salty area that most people are drawn to.  The problem with the sandwich comes from the direction the egg takes with the taste.  Slapping a heap of crispy bacon in between a glazed donut seems to be a better flavor construction to me and the egg kind of just got in the way of their harmony.  I guess without the egg we wouldn’t necessarily have a true breakfast sandwich, so I understand why it’s there.The overall sandwich is an expectedly sticky endeavor, so the paper its wrapped in is put to good use for grubbing on the go.  The donut is delicate, yet not too different from something like a croissant so it’s held together just fine.  Nutrition-wise, while the Glazed Donut Breakfast Sandwich is far from being eligible for the DDSmart menu, it still was a little surprising to see its only 360 calories.  Usually when we see crazy fast food products that make mainstream news headlines, the product is passing the 1000 calorie mark.  This breakfast sandwich is still an alarming item to see on the menu board, but it would’ve been funny to see it advertised as an “Under 400 calories” option like I’ve seen on other products.  That said, you’ve still got 8 grams of saturated fat and 13 grams of sugar to deal with so it’s obviously not health food.I still see this product as strictly a gimmicky attention grab for Dunkin’ Donuts and they’ve succeeded in getting America talking.  In the end, gimmicky or not, the sandwich succeeds in limiting the components, getting the salty/sweet combo involved and actually featuring a donut for once. Putting the idea of a donut sandwich aside, my experience with it wasn’t all that terrible.  This is actually a decent sandwich, albeit one I doubt I’ll be overly tempted to have again.