Sussing out the new subway Sidekicks

Graphic by Isabelle Wang

Subway’s footlong pretzel, cookie and churro.

On Jan. 22, Subway released its “Sidekicks,” a footlong churro, pretzel and cookie combination offering. People on social media went crazy over the Sidekicks, so we set out to see what the hype was all about.

We first tried the Churro. Made in partnership with Cinnabon, the churro is served slightly warm and dusted with cinnamon sugar. At only $2 and 190 calories, it seemed promising until we took a bite. Our smiles dropped immediately. 

The churro was very peculiar, to say the least. It had a funny after taste, and it tasted like it was microwaved instead of toasted like it should be. Even the best part — cinnamon sugar — was extremely underwhelming. We give it 2 Falcons out of 5.

Next we moved on to the pretzel, which was another partnership with America’s favorite mall pretzel: Auntie Anne’s. The footlong pretzel was warmed in the Subway oven and then sprinkled with salt and covered in butter. 

We dipped it into the honey mustard and took a bite, expecting it to be of similar caliber to the churro. Instead, we were nicely surprised; it was warm, tasteful and not overly salty. It earned 4 Falcons out of 5. 

We finally moved on to the holy grail of Subway Sidekicks: the footlong cookie. This was a monster. Everywhere you look on TikTok, you’ll see videos of people trying the cookie. 

While we were waiting for the cookie to be warmed up, we took a little look at the board. We noticed the cookie was $5, which was not too bad for the size, but then we noticed the calories. 1,440. In other words, the footlong cookie well exceeds a young child’s daily calorie recommendation.

We were stunned, but excited nonetheless. The first bite was pleasantly surprising: It was warm and soft, with a slight cakelike texture. But as we ate the cookie got colder, and the excitement wore off. Each bite got worse and worse and eventually had to take a  break. During our break, we realized there was an odd metallic after taste. We give it 2.5 Falcons out of 5.

In the end, we realized that we had been lied to. The Subway Sidekicks are nothing to write home about. As often happens, we had been misled by social media, but at least Subway’s marketing team is doing a good job.