Fran Magazine reviews Coca-Cola with Lemon

Fran Magazine: Issue #137

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My Review of Coca-Cola with Lemon

I love Coca-Cola products. My mom drinks a mini glass bottle of Coca-Cola every single day with her lunch, and seeing this on our kitchen table nearly every day of my youth generated instant envy and desire. As a child, I was not allowed to have Coke every day, only special occasions: eating a restaurant, the odd Saturday, someone else’s birthday party.

For the longest time, my ideal Coca-Cola was a “full fat” Coke — aka “regular.” No bells, no whistles. Ideally in a can or from a fountain, but a plastic bottle would do in desperate occasions. During my tenure at The Onion, I often drank Coke Zero; I now no longer have a taste for Coke Zero at all and find it disgusting. I’d rather have nothing. Over the past few years, I’ve developed a significant taste for Diet Coke after years of being disgusted by the taste of aspartame. Still: enjoying a Coke is a treat for mostly special occasions. Around the house I drink mostly water, if not also the occasional seltzer, coffee, or tea. Having Coke or Diet Coke in the house has always felt forbidden. When it happens, I always think: Let’s not do this again. It ruins the magic.

There are essentially three perfect iterations¹ of Coca-Cola that I enjoy:

1. Regular Coke — glass bottle or can

2. Diet Coke — over ice with a slice of lemon

3. Cherry Coke — the rare movie theater that offers this²

I am always curious about a new flavor of Coca-Cola, but these are not my go-to choices. Vanilla Coke? This is fine, but rarely something I’m actively craving. Coffee Coke? Compelling experiment: I had two, and mostly liked them, but don’t miss them at all.

I just got back from the UK, where I bore witness to something that thrilled me. On our first evening there, we stopped by a corner store to pick up some essentials and saw something in the cold drinks section that struck me as novel.

credit: the coca-cola company

This could be major: would the beverage be able to combine the classic joys of a regular Coke with that of a Diet Coke with a slice of lemon? For the record: Coca-Cola with Lemon is a product that did once exist in the early 2000s. Have I had it before? Probably not — I have no memory of such a thing, where as Vanilla Coke and Vanilla Cherry Coke, available throughout my youth, linger in their Proustian sort of way.

There was only one way to find out if this beverage was any good. I bought a Lemon Coke³ and took it back to the apartment where we would all try it.

My review?

Coca-Cola with Lemon is fine — but there is not enough lemon.

When we think of lemon, perhaps we think: sour, bitter. Sure, that makes sense. But lemon is also very, very sweet. I love to just take a slice of lemon to eat sometimes if I am using it to garnish. Part of what wasn’t working about the Coca-Cola with Lemon is that it preserved the bitter aspect of lemon — yay — but neither the tartness nor the sweetness. All the sweetness came from the Coke, lacking almost completely in a citrusy bite.

Lest you think I am being harsh on Coca-Cola with Lemon, I will share additional reactions from those in our apartment. Haley said, “It was surprisingly low on lemon and high on Coke,” with other sources casting even more negative aspersions: “They forgot the lemon.”

This is an affordable and accessible beverage (barring you are not in the United States), and I would not deter any Fran Magazine reader from trying it for themselves. But when in doubt, there is little better than a Coke with a fresh slice of lemon.

1. For further reading on the “perfect” way to drink a Coke, I will refer you to Jamie Keiles’s great essay on having it for the first time at the age of 24.

2. This is what keeps me coming back to IFC. Because I’m a Regal subscriber, I am forced (“forced”) to drink Pepsi products — the worst aspect of my life at present time.

3. In the UK, they offer both Coca-Cola with Lemon and Coca-Cola with Lemon: Zero Sugar, which I imagine is the equivalent of Coke Zero with Lemon. Only the former option was available to us. As an ON THE RECORD Coke Zero hater, I would not have been remotely compelled to try a novelty flavor with any association to Coke Zero.