Review: Wendy's - Asian Cashew Chicken Salad

Wendy's new Asian Cashew Salad features fire-roasted edamame, spicy roasted cashews dusted with garlic, onion, and sea salt, chopped grilled chicken breast, sliced cucumbers, diced red bell peppers, and a lettuce blend of 11 different kinds of field greens, dressed with a light spicy Asian chili vinaigrette.

It cost me $4.29 (off of $6.29 with a coupon) for a full-sized salad.

One of the key selling points of the Asian Cashew Salad has to be that it clocks in at 380 calories including the vinaigrette.

The dressing isn't the typical sesame-soy-ginger concoction that comes with most Asian salads, but is more like a Thai peanut dressing with a slight kick to it. It's pretty tasty and novel.

Most of the salad's heat comes from the spicy roasted cashews, which remind me a bit of a dry-roasted peanut seasoning but with a lot more spicy heat from cayenne. They provided a medium heat that set my lips tingling. The seasoning and spiciness covered up most of the actual cashew flavor though.

The chicken was moist enough and plentiful, but was not cut very well; they cubed it but all the pieces were still connected and ended up like how some people cut a mango. You might want to grab a knife just in case.

The field greens actually had a fair amount of flavor and were mixed with an equal amount of iceberg lettuce (buried under the field greens), which provided a nice wet crunch. The red peppers added a little bit of flavor added some crunch as well.

The edamame added texture and some were actually charred a fair bit with the requisite flavor/bitterness.

Overall, Wendy's Asian Cashew Chicken Salad offers an good mix of textures and an interesting departure from the typical Asian salad, while still being enjoyable. Just be warned that there's a sizable amount of heat as far as salads go.

Nutritional Info - Wendy's Asian Cashew Chicken Salad
Calories - 380 (from Fat - 120)
Fat - 13g (Saturated Fat - 2g)
Sodium - 970mg
Carbs - 33g (Sugar - 18g)
Protein - 36g