Over the past several decades, “fast food” restaurants have always been fairly notorious for presenting a desperately limited menu of poorly prepared palate polluting but pocketbook pleasing items, practically placing far more emphasis on the word “FAST” than on the word “FOOD!”
Everyone understood the concept going in, so there were no big surprises or unfortunate victims in the trade off. What you were willing to give up for speed, a cheap price, late night service and convenience were merely the little things, like taste, quality, nutrition, and the ability to finish the entire meal before it already started trying to kick it’s way out of your stomach … you, … the little things.
Where all these chains of fast food restaurants finally officially crossed the line of no return with me was when they collectively started simultaneously bragging about their Massive Mounds of Meaty Mountains, Four Fisted, Feast of Fury Big Bodacious Bacon Bonanza Burgers!
Clearly none of us were stupid enough to honestly expect any real, major improvement to the overall quality of the dining experience. I mean, this wasn’t going to be some colossal corporate culinary “cattle call” of connoisseur cuisine all of a sudden, but we did take them at their word that it was going to at least be “large, bacon oriented and meaty.”
We naturally took a few carefully calculated looks at those big, bold burgers bulging and bustling with brandished “baconosity” constantly displayed before our collective eyes in their advertisements and we thought to ourselves, “OK, I’m at least confident there is most certainly going to be enough bacon packed into this baby to actually, distinctly “TASTE” it.
And you see that’s where they lost me. Every time I would go in or drive through one the 8 or 9 chains that claimed they had the very best bacon burger, I was continuously disappointed and eventually angry because instead of the 5 or 6 big, plump, firm, thick and tasty slices of bacon the showed in all the commercials, it would in fact be 2, thin, pale, drab, listless flakes of “meat matter” that didn’t look, taste, or seem like bacon at all.
Disillusioned and depressed, I gave up completely on the “quick fix” drive thru experience. Then a few months later, a good buddy of mine told me about a fast food bacon burger I want to consider giving a chance to.
This joint, whose name will be changed to protect the ignorant, but for convenience sake, lets just refer to it as” Dick Monald’s” had a new Bacon and Cheese Angus burger and he swore to me on a slab hickory smoked, honey rubbed that the bacon on this puppy really wasn’t all that bad at all.
So I gave it a chance and I honestly have to admit …. I’m still totally ticked off.
Yes, the bacon actually does sort of taste like bacon flavor and it is thicker and more meaty than the others, but as usual, there were only 2 pieces of bacon and these guys actually have the gall to charge around $6.50, tax included, for this thing.
I won’t even bother to get started on my assessment of the Angus beef, but lets just say, you could buy yourself a medium range, premium steak and a pound of gourmet bacon from some online meat club for around the same price and feed a family of 4 a bacon burger that is so absolutely blow all of your minds, and that’s exactly what I decided to do.
Best move I ever made. Now I know why they call it “Fast” food, because if you order a bacon burger there, you’re basically, pretty much fasting!
Signing off at Pigging out!
(NewsBlaze readers use coupon code Blaze to get 10% off your next bacon order)
Rocco owns and runs a Bacon of the Month Club called The Bacon Freak Bacon is Meat Candy Club as well as a Wine Club called the Coastal Vineyard Wine Club
