Panda Express Apple Pie Roll

The Apple Pie Roll is the dessert at Panda Express: spiced apple filling rolled in a pastry wrapper and fried crisp, 150 calories a piece. It is the only sweet item on the menu beyond the fortune cookie, and it works far better than a Chinese American chain dessert has any right to.

The format borrows from the egg roll and the filling from an American pie: cinnamon spiced apple, soft but not mushy, inside a wrapper that fries into a shatter rather than a chew. It arrives hot enough to need a minute, and the contrast between the crackling outside and the warm fruit inside is the entire appeal. It looks like a fried spring roll and eats like a hand pie.

At 150 calories with 30 g of carbs and 13 g of sugar, it is a modest dessert by fast food standards, less than a serving of Chow Mein at 600 calories and roughly a third of an Orange Chicken serving. Sodium is negligible at 90 mg. The published flags cover wheat and soy from the wrapper.

How much is the Apple Pie Roll? Stores set the price individually, with no national figure published.

It suits the end of any meal here and travels acceptably for about ten minutes before the wrapper softens. Pair it with a zero calorie drink to keep the sugar in one place, or split it after a heavier order like Beijing Beef at 470 calories. Fortune Cookies at 20 calories are the lighter sweet finish.