Taco Bell is a guilty pleasure even for fast foodies. It’s hit or miss to say the least, but to be be honest, we kind of like the gamble. Yet, if there’s one day when you can be sure to get a decent tasting Taco Bell meal this time of year, it’s Friday. Why is that?

Because for every fast foodie who observes only the day-to-day flavor desires born from their stomach right now, there are several Roman Catholics currently observing Lent, a tradition of the faith in which meat dishes are refused on Fridays and vegetable or fish-based meals are eaten instead. With 77.7 million Roman Catholics in the United States, you can see the incentive for Taco Bell to fill their Friday fast food void.

While McDonald’s will always have the Filet-o-Fish, Taco Bell is a popular choice among Roman Catholics who observe the Lenten tradition of not eating meat on Friday. This is on account of the ability to substitute just about any meat-filled item with refried beans instead, as well as the allure of such limited-time offerings as the Pacific Shrimp Taco and Dorito taco shells that serve to spice up an otherwise bland bean filling. Not to mention, meatless menu mainstays such as the 7-Layer Burrito are always available.

Indeed, part of Taco Bell’s Lenten prevalence is the fast food chain’s willingness to market itself directly to Roman Catholics this time of year. At just about every location you are certain to see signs reminding observers of Lent that Taco Bell is there when they need it on Fridays.

With that said, the word Catholic is not to be found anywhere in their advertising. You will see the word Lent everywhere, but the seemingly obvious next is skipped. A little weird but that’s the world of marketing for you.

Now what about those new menu options?

All year around you can get any meat filling at Taco Bell replaced with refried beans, and a few menu options such as the 7-Layer Burrito or the Cheesy Bean and Rice Burrito. It serves as a great way to please a non-meat eater when scouting for fast food. The only problem is that the refried beans at Taco Bell tend to taste terrible unless relatively fresh out of the microwave. After about an hour the grayish-brown matter firms up under the heat lamps and stays hot for about as long as the worker at the drive-thru window is holding the bag.

Come Lent, however, this often changes – most especially on Fridays. Either it’s some unspoken corporate ax coming down on every chain, or a policy every regional manager and franchise owner is wise enough to follow. Regardless, Taco Bell refried beans make for an excellent meat substitute this time of year in everything from the Baja Chalupa to the Nachos Bellgrande. In addition, the options that feature refried beans as their core ingredient always taste better.

When it comes to the limited-time offers such as shrimp-filled tacos and shells consisting of Dorito matter, the satisfaction returns to a state of hit or miss. For a few dollars per taco you aren’t going to get Hawaiian beach shrimp, and unless thawed and reheated recently they aren’t going to taste any better than the freeze-dried shrimps that come along with a cup-o-ramen.

The same goes for the Dorito shells. While they help make a refried bean-based taco taste better, they make the sog-rate of normal Taco Bell shells look worthy of lasting a nuclear winter. Again, the timing of your order is critical throughout the week. If you want the best tasting limited-time Lenten Taco Bell during most week days, order around peak meal times when you know they have a fresh lineup.

Or, just wait till Friday. On Friday all these options are always going to taste great. Taco Bell can’t afford to upset millions of new customers stopping by just to fill their stomachs quickly while remaining true to their faith. They keep these menu options fresh throughout the day just in case, which means just about everything on the menu is sure to be kept at an extra-level of freshness for the sake of anyone these Lenten observers care to bring along with them, such as co-workers.

But if you’re interested, you got to act quick – Easter is two weeks away and after that, it’s back to the old 24/7 hit-or-miss Taco Bell.

R.I.P. sweet prince.

The term “pink slime”, referring to that anaconda-esque foodstuff above, was coined recently by Jamie Oliver, health food advocate and human buzzkill. It’s apparently composed of what’s leftover after all the “choice cuts” are taken from beef. It’s not legal to serve to humans in the snooty old UK, but until yesterday, the good ole US of A has been slapping some antibacterial spray on it and calling it food. Aaaaand roll it.

I don’t know about you, but I’m Machiavellian when it comes to food. The taste justifies the ingredients, namean? If pulling pink slime ultimately affects the taste of my beloved McDonald’s hamburger, simultaneously salty and sweet, then my mourning will begin in earnest.

Green slime, thankfully, will continue to douse weary celebrities 'till kingdom come.

Among the ranks of Fast Foodies heroes are Herman Cain, known for his Godfathers’ Pizza affiliation and his gospel songs about pizza, Susan Guy, Domino’s deliverer extraordinaire, and the woman who cried when In-N-Out burger opened. These people have loved fast food to a mentally unhealthy degree, in a way that is fun to watch and even, to some of us who cry at Zaxby’s and make up fake birthdays in order to eat at Outback, relate-able.

However, there can be such a thing as a Fast Foodies Non-Hero. And I’m sad to present to you the first reported case of a Fast Foodies Non-Hero, Stacey Irvine. Ms. Irvine fell in love with chicken nuggets at age two, and has eaten little else since. In fact, she claims never to have enjoyed a fresh fruit or vegetable.

Image c/o DailyMail.co.uk

(ed note: Thankfully, years of chicken nugget overdose appears to have not affected her skin or body type!)

‘McDonald’s chicken nuggets are my favourite. I share 20 with my boyfriend with chips,” says Ms. Irvine, now interviewing with various news outlets after her recent collapse due to nutrients deficiency. Her nug lovin’ has not only caused Ms. Irvine to be seriously nutritionally impaired, it’s also caused anemia and swollen tongue veins (??). But of course, I, as a psych-nut, have to wonder about the psychological addiction I’m sure she’s got going on: how hard must it be for her to quit the food that has been her life-blood for basically her entire solid-food-eating life?

Combine the studies about the addictive qualities of fast food with the concept of having to quit something you’ve been doing since before you could form a complete sentence…and you’ve got one helluva situation to overcome.

#firstworldproblems (c/o DailyMail.co.uk)

When not worried about her arterial health, Ms. Irvine’s problems include what the f to do with her massive accumulate of Happy Meal Toys.

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Stacey, I understand your love of nugs (and would be curious to hear your thoughts on the contentious McBites). But your addiction is giving fast food a bad name, and for that you must be named the inaugural Fast Foodies Non-Hero.

I was recently directed to this article (thanks Fritzy!) and thought I’d share it with you guys. USA Today reports that Burger King (blech) has started a trial run of delivery services. Now, I’ll put my personal feelings about BK away and say that this is pretty sweet. Even though it’s reported that it will take ~30 minutes for the food to reach your house when you could ostensibly get in the car and go to the restaurant itself and have your food in less than ten minutes, it is important to note that DUH DELIVERY TAKES LONGER. As the reigning queen of Delivery.com, I am an expert in food delivery — I’ve had meals take up to 2.5 hours to arrive, with the average arrival time being 45 minutes or so…regardless of distance.

Amazing Photoshop skillz c/o KissRichmond.com

Now, I know NYC is not the norm — I have over 200 restaurants available for delivery at any given moment during the day, whereas in Bushwick I had five restaurants, and in Lexington, SC I had only three. I consider myself blessed to have a McDonalds on call, with the only drawback being its $10 delivery minimum, which means that either I have to order $10 worth of food or I have to find someone else willing to have McDonalds delivered. Most often, I stick with the former option.

Foodies, delivery of fast food challenges the very idea of “fast food,” in that it takes just as long to have McDonalds (or, more relevantly, Burger King) delivered to your door as it does to whip up a hearty salad full of health and beans. But you and I both know that fast food is only partly about the convenience — we eat fast food because its chemical composition makes us feel safe, and happy, and warm. We love it for its consistency, the fact that even if we’re miles away from home, a cheeseburger from McD will taste just like a cheeseburger from McD, regardless of whether your cashier calls you “hunny-pahhye” or offers you a “cwoawwfee” (honeypie; coffee. Phonetic spellings meant to connote regional accents).

BUT I DIGRESS. Burger King is offering home delivery in select locations, and they’ve even patented a system of packaging much like Domino’s insulated red bags, that will ensure your food won’t arrive at your home soggy and sucky (sidenote: isn’t that just the WORST feeling? Ordering food to go, then by the time you get home, the fries are droopy and chewy and the burger has already started to cardboardify itself?).

I KNOW IT'S A STOCK PHOTO OF BURGER KING, OKAY, I'M SORRY I CAN'T BE MORE CRE8TIVE

My favorite part of this whole to-do is the following line from the USA Today article:

And Domino’s, whose business is 70% delivery, is watching — with a smile. “We wish them luck,” spokesman Tim McIntyre says. “There is a reason that not all pizza places deliver: It isn’t easy.”

Uh, okay, Mr. Tim McIntyre, smile all you want…delivery is a popular thing, and if BK can manage to pull this off successfully, they might be able to pull themselves out of their recent spiral of failure. But I’m not holding my breath.

Et tu, foodies? How do you feel about delivery? Have you ever experienced fast food delivery? Do you wish BK would deliver to you? Will delivery services be BK’s saving grace? Question question?

Now, I’m no great Steak ‘n Shake fanatic. It’s pretty much the diner equivalent of a limp handshake. But like a relative visiting town who you have nothing in common with but blood, I was still curious about this Mid-American arrival.

What?

First impressions? Steak ‘n Shake has gussied itself up in the most outlandish way to “prepare” itself for its “Big City Debut.” And much like your out-of-town relative’s zeal for the M&M Store, it’s a little embarrassing? It’s kind of like, “Steak ‘n Shake, you’re sooo pretty, but I don’t know if that color of neon orange lipstick is popping for you.” I understand they have to compete with Shake Shack’s razzle-dazzle down the street, but come on! What exactly makes it “Signature”, anyway? If the “signature” Steak ‘n Shake aesthetic was preserved, they’d install the most soul-crushing fluorescent overhead lighting and a brain-dead waitstaff. BUT THEN–

Is this the 40/40 Club or something? Am I going to have to roll up with four of my best girls in heels and cross my fingers they take my fake? It’s a little sad, too, to have these ropes out when nobody needs to be corraled. Is there no storage in the back, Steak ‘n Shake? There was also two, two different employees waiting to greet me before I got to the counter. I understand job creation, but I’m not sure I need so many people congratulating me for entering a burger joint, unless one of those people is a doctor on call for cardiac events.

And as long as we’re on the subject of appearances, can we discuss the employee uniform? This is what I’ve grown accustomed to on a Steak ‘n Shake employee:

Granted, this uniform is for a sit-down Steak ‘n Shake. I understand that they need to redesign the uniform for counter service, and don’t get me wrong — I like the red and black polo. It’s definitely “fast food”, without humiliating the employee. But did you check those boots the hired model Steak ‘n Shake employee is wearing in the Letterman video? She wasn’t wearing those just because she’d made her late night debut. Those heeled, knee-high boots are part of the Steak ‘n Shake uniform. All of the female employees, even the ones behind the counter, were wearing those boots.

Weird, Hooters-y uniform aside, let’s zero in on the important part: the f–

Steak ‘n Shake, did you seriously just give me an Olive-Garden-style “this shit is gonna be a WHILE” buzzer after I ordered food … at the counter? What the actual hell! My food didn’t even take that long to make! Giving me this buzzer only gave me undue anxiety about the wait time. Why did you do that, Steak ‘n Shake? Why betray my trust that way?

Ok, ok, trying to be professional about this. Here’s the fries:

Points for packaging — we’ve got the Burger King “car-fry-holder” design going on, though that is a little strange considering there’s no drive-thru. This picture, unfortunately, doesn’t give you any sense of scale, but rest assured the fries are the same shoestring, need-to-grab-three-at-a-time-for-satisfaction skinny minis that Steak ‘n Shake normally schills. No surprises there.

I forewent the burger and went straight for the second part of their eponym: the SHAKE.

I went in for the Mint Cookies and Cream, which only comes in a single size. This, too, was Steak ‘n Shake fare as I remembered it. The shake itself tasted a lot like the Shamrock Shake — that is, it tasted like sweetened fluoride. The nice part about the Cookies and Cream, though, is that extra crunch within the shake, along with the large pieces of Oreo that collect at the bottom, waiting to be guzzled like a “victory drink”.

Like this, but with an upturned Steak 'n Shake cup.

The food was hardly disappointing, since I already set my expectations low when it comes to Steak ‘n Shake. It was even comforting to know I could get a Shamrock Shake taste-alike year-round, instead of having to schlep to Queens everyday in March. But this was all overshadowed by Steak ‘n Shake’s showy presentation. Maybe they’re changing their brand country-wide? Can anybody confirm or deny this?

Anyway, it’s nice to see a Midwestern burger chain moving on up to the east side. Now can we please get an In-n-Out burger already?

As we approach our one year anniversary of Fast Foodies (awww!), the initial burst of post ideas has reduced to a trickle. Even the most dedicated fast food fan can only write about how great Zaxby’s is so many times before she realizes that No One Gives a Crap. But it’s not all bleak, foodies! All this means is that it’s time to develop a new system of blogging: a renewed concentration on, well, the new. Moving forward, you can expect more new product reviews as we Fast Foodies travel outside our comfort zones and into the land of “for a limited time only.”

Yesterday I saw a friend on Twitter mention his love of something called “McBites.”

“Who the–?!” I said to myself. I scrawled “McBites” on the back of my hand as a reminder to myself to research this further. But alas, the workday passed with no opportunities for online research. I hedged my bets on this being a new McDonalds item and planned to stop by my local Macdo after work, though not before first getting a manicure wherein the manicurist held my left hand in her palms, turning it over and saying, “McBites? You want me to clean this?”

“No,” I said. “Leave it on.”

At McDonalds, the McBites were advertised as being “for a limited time only.” I ordered a “small” and the cashier pointed me to a diagram showing the variety of McBites — large, medium, small and SNACK SIZE. AW YEAH. I FREAKING LOVE snack size. Although I love to eat a lot of different foods, I like my portions small. So I ordered a snack size McBites, honey mustard sauce for the dippin’, and when I received my order I took it all the way to the back of the McDonalds where I could take pictures and be a glutton in peace.

And there you have it, the small carton of Chicken McBites. The carton itself featured a very intense architecture — in the way the Happy Meal box is comprised of a bunch of dotted lines with instructions to fold and crack and origami. The McBites carton features a flap that took me ~1 minute to fold correctly, a flap intended to serve as a holding dock for one’s sauce packet. Now, this is a bit unnecessary — name one situation where it would be more convenient to have your sauce elevated three inches off the table. Additionally, the physics of the sauce flap were none too appealing — as soon as the amount of chicken becomes less than the weight of the sauce, the carton becomes unwieldy and topples.

But back to the McBites.

A distant cousin of KFC’s popcorn chicken, the McBites are above all else TINY. I mean, holy God, the biggest one was hardly bigger than my thumbnail.

For comparison.

Now I’mma be honest with you. I’mma drop some truth nuggets SO TO SPEAK. These McBites were not very good. Because they are so small, the McBites are roughly 95% fried and only 5% chicken. And the 5% chicken isn’t really enough to enjoy. It tastes like the stringy, weird chicken you get from bad Chinese restaurants. Even after a liberal dose of honey mustard, and even with a hearty side order of fries, the McBites failed to impress me, much to my chagrin. Frankly, I wouldn’t even recommend you TRY the McBites. Just go get some KFC popcorn chicken, man.

It looks promising, though, right?

"Excuse me while I espouse on the latest Jonathan Franzen."

And you know, up until now, the coffee snobs had a point. See, it turns out when you don’t put milk or sugar in your coffee (thanks for raising me right, Grandma), you care about the taste of the roast. And I’m not the kind of girl who appreciates a medium roast that tastes like a dark roast because it’s badly brewed.

Ok, ok, maybe I’m a bit of a coffee snob, too. I’m perfectly content to eat a Filet-o-Fish, but put a bad drip coffee in front of me, and I’m as monocle-holding as the next Stumptowner. In the Midwest, all it took was a trip to Caribou, where a girl could choose from three different roasts in the morning, but at Starbucks, it’s usually Pike Place or bust, and I’ve lost count of the times my Pike Place has had a fine layer of grounds on the bottom. (And I’mma apologize for the lack of pictures in this post in advance, because coffee is Serious Business.)

So when my coworker told me Starbucks had introduced a new roast, the blonde roast, on Tuesday, a lighter roast than their normal drip, I was hesitant. I’ve always imagined Starbucks’ biggest problem was their brewing method, not their roast, so what difference would a new bean in the grinder make?

But lately my coworkers and I have been on a quest for the perfect coffee in Midtown — a quest filled with the perils of long walks to Milk Bar, hot coffee dribbled down hands, and the folly of flavor shots. “Could it really be that our saving grace was under the green mermaid’s guidance all along?” we thought, with wonder in our journey-weary hearts.

I gotta say, foodies — I walked in skeptical. My coffee had been burned by Starbucks so many times before. I ordered a small, and behind the counter, I nearly watched an employee fill it with Pike Place — only to have the cashier correct him at the last moment, and fill me up right.

The verdict?

I … I kind of liked it.

Its first impression is a strong, but not overwhelming, bitterness at the front of the palate, which quickly rounds out through the mouth into a full-bodied flavor. It’s not the offensive bitterness of accidental scorching, but the bitterness of a true coffee bean, unsullied by “dark roasting” or whatever you’d call it. Granted, it’s not a particularly complex flavor, but it’s miles better than Starbucks’ typical roast.

I’d give it a 7/10, though that might be slightly high, since I’m judging it in comparison to their original roast, which was virtually undrinkable. For the first time, though, I’m not mildly pissed that this huge corporate chain took a Moby-Dick character’s good name to schill crappy, expensive coffee. It’s not bad! But don’t take a foodies’ word for it. At select location, Starbucks is offering free samples through Sunday.

(POST-SCRIPT: “But Mary!” you cry. “Coffee is hardly fast food relevant!” Well, first I’d have to disagree on that, at least in Starbucks’ case, because not only do they have grab-and-go food, they’re heavily franchised — but second, apparently Starbucks is on this blonde roast game to try and “seduce McDonalds customers” since fast food brews tend to be a lighter roast than Starbucks. Why Starbucks  focus groups overlooked the fact that people probably buy McDonald’s coffee because a small is at least 50 cents cheaper, the world may never know.)

Yeahhh...So I just discovered Instagram...

A little while ago, Sbarro filed for bankruptcy and seemed to be on its way out. It made sense–I mean, come on, when you’re up against the big boys like Pizza Hut and Dominos, Little Caesers and Papa Johns and Godfather’s, what hope does a little pizza chain from Huntington have?

But as of late November, Sbarro is back in the game. And this Christmas, when my LaGuardia terminal only offered Auntie Anne’s and Sbarro as fast food options for the on-the-go traveller, I decided to partake.

I should begin my review with the caveat that my head was not in the game. I was en route to South Carolina, mere hours away from real sweet tea and Zaxby’s. I wasn’t planning to savor anything I ate until the spicy frieds made their way to my plate. In fact, immediately after eating at Sbarro, I ordered a small cone from TCBY and then used a napkin to wipe half the ice cream into the trash. I was just that over it.

I chose Sbarro over Auntie Anne’s because, let’s face it: although the smell of pretzels wafting through the terminal has got to be in the top five smells OF ALL TIME, a pretzel is just not a substantive meal. Even if that pretzel is covering a cheese-infused hot dog, I have a hard time wrapping my mind around the idea that I’m supposed to let a pretzel fill me up. Sbarro, with its strangely harsh lighting and sparse cafeteria-style options, seemed the logical choice for a hungry traveller such as myself.

Woop. There it is.

I placed a fairly tame order of a pepperoni slice and a breadstick. The one word I would use to describe  my meal is: “grease.” Ho-LY CRAP.

Now, I’m no stranger to the world of greasy pizza–I spent many a high school lunch enjoying everyone’s favorite vegetable, individual Tony’s pizzas, the contents of which were about 80% grease to 20% pizza-like substance. My classmates and I knew to accompany our meal with a hearty helping of paper towels, used to sop up the veritable lakes of grease that pooled in the center of our pizza. However, in terms of grease content, Sbarro makes Domino’s taste like that Amy’s organic pizza crap.

Observe dat sheen.

Foodies, I will advocate for an abundance of salt and cheese and fat until the day I die (or am stricken with diabetes or heart problems*). But grease is something else entirely. Don’t get me wrong: I love the post-Papaya-Dog-corndog glow of grease on my fingertips as much as anything else in this world. But there is a difference between a light mist of overabundance and a freaking torrential downpour of the stuff.

Yes, I ate my pizza, though even as I enjoyed the bursts of spice in the pepperoni, the gooeyness of the cheese, I regretted what I was doing. I regretted it more later, as I struggled to read my book on the plane amidst moments of strong self-loathing, hot flashes and stomach cramps. However, I didn’t regret the pizza itself as much as I regretted…the butter stick.

No...I don't mean "bread stick." I mean "butter stick."

Depending on the time of day/your level of sobriety, the above picture will make you feel very strongly in one way or another. To me, completely sober at 11AM on a Wednesday morning, the above picture makes me shudder. The butter stick was adorned with bread, soft and vaguely painful to the teeth in a way I’m not quite sure I can describe. The butter/oil made my lips glisten, and I’m fairly certain I developed three pimples from one bite alone.

Some might assume that due to the level of grease and fat, Sbarro would make a perfect hangover cure. In fact, I would argue the opposite. Although SOME grease/fat/carbs is good for nursing your body after a night of three glasses of wine (WELCOME TO MY WORLD, MAN), too much can be…horrifying.

In conclusion: the next time I’m in LaGuardia’s Terminal C, I’ll try to swallow my strange aversion and go for the pretzel instead. And for the sake of your stomach, your sense of self-worth and your fellow passengers on whatever flight you’re taking / the other shoppers at the mall (srsly, where else do you find Sbarro?)…I’d suggest you do the same.

The east coast has no Oberweis.

Those outside the Midwest — even outside the soybean paradise that is Illinois — might be rumpling their foreheads. Oberweis? they ponder. Is that some sort of Nazi uber-weapon? Well, maybe — if the Nazis had weaponized dairy to be fatally delicious.

I guess I can understand why Oberweis is an Illinois-exclusive chain. I mean, I’m no expert on agriculture in the United States, but from the few times I’ve been on a train in New York state versus a train in Illinois, the cow population in the Empire State just doesn’t compare to the Land of the Lincoln. Still, that just means that New York, nay, the ENTIRE COUNTRY, has something incredible to discover.

If I directed 2001: A Space Odyssey, this would be the monolith.

Here’s the 2 things you need to know about Oberweis: 1) their broad, distinctive glass bottle, which can be refilled, and delivered to your door in a 1950s fashion; 2) no one does egg nog this good.

You could milk a god damn reindeer and it wouldn't be this good.

What makes Oberweis egg nog distinct from other, lesser egg nog is how thick it is. It’s nearly a milkshake. I can’t even say it’s nearly a melted milkshake, because when milkshakes melt, they are not as thick as this egg nog. When you take a sip of this mid-American ambrosia, it adheres viscously to every nook, every ridge, every crevice in your mouth. Once the lips have been breached, no place in your mouth is safe against its creamy invasion.

You've been warned.

In addition to milk delivery and egg nog, Oberweis also has stand-alone locations that serves ice cream. While I was home for the holidays, I stopped in, intending to order one of their seasonal specials to review.

And that seasonal special is sweet, sweet Apple Crisp.

Alas, after my POS transaction, I was informed they were out of crumble. But in true Midwestern fashion, the manager compensated by letting me choose anything off the menu. Figuring I had been spurned by the fancy, I went for the simple: egg nog ice cream.

Pure love, solidified.

Check out that serving dish! Although it wasn’t glass, thus robbing it of some authenticity, it still has that classic “soda-jerk” shape, recalling the 1950s. That’s another thing I like about Oberweis. Along with the milk delivery service, it maintains that sort of post-war, hometown return-to-innocence Americana vibe.  Unlike Sonic or Steak ‘n Shake, though, it doesn’t have a kitschy flavor to it. It’s instead like an outdated attitude has been warped into the future, and can only exist within the walls of an Oberweis location.

Case in point: the good-will of the manager. In addition to letting me pick whatever I wanted to eat post-Apple Crisp-disappointment, he also hooked me and my friend up with two tall glasses of chocolate milk on the house.

Are we in an episode of Leave It To Beaver?

Anyway, I don’t think I need to tell you the ice cream (and the milk) was delicious. What gives Oberweis that extra special flavor, though, is the atmosphere. Dairy products are notoriously reminiscent of home: that glass of milk your mom made you chug after school — dipping Oreos in milk — laughing at your sister’s milk moustache. Then again, these images are not so much home as home viewed through a nostalgic lens. Oberweis manages to turn that nostalgic lens upon its entire brand, making every visit a journey into the past. In my mind, that makes Oberweis the perfect Midwestern brand: a little naive, a little tacky, but hearty and homey to the core.

So in place of ever-expanding burgers, Burger King has gone back to the drawing board to reach new demographics. To wit: their new fries and the BK Chef’s Choice burger. However, while considering my experience with the burger, some more important things occurred to me. First the review, then the wider observations.

Well. There it is. Fancy pantsy hamburger.

The Chef’s Choice burger features a special sauce, smoked bacon, and a brioche bun. On and “red onions!” cuz apparently that’s gourmet or something. The bun, honestly, has the kind of bread that gets really flat and soggy as soon as it gets in your mouth. It’s not as tacky as it could be, so it doesn’t ruin the burger, but it’s not as hearty or hefty as a burger bun should be. The bacon is very good, although the smoky flavor tended to overwhelm the burger in general. All told, the burger is really rich, but not as cohesive as it should be, given that it was probably studied, marketed, and prodded for the last 18 months. I tried it once on a whim, and once for this article. I likely won’t try it again, since I loves me a Whopper, and the flame-broiled simplicity beats this amalgamation for me.

Oh, and the Chef’s Choice, just like Wendy’s new burgers, comes in paper AND a box which just seems ridiculous. Why that is going to convince me your food is higher quality and/or gourmet baffles me.

As to BK’s new fries, as far as I could tell they’re exactly the same as the old ones only bigger, and therefore mealier. And yet, still not particularly potato-y. Dunno what that means or how it happens, but for me, the fries at BK were never the point. As an accompaniment they are good, probably better than the old ones, but still nothing to write home about when held up against all the other fast food fry contenders.

Bigger? Yes. Better? Your mileage may vary. Not worse, at any rate.

Observation One: We’ve been here before. Note the picture below. The Chef’s Choice is basically the same burger as the Arch Deluxe, introduced by McDonalds in the latter half of the 1990s. Fancy bun, special sauce, showy bacon (smoked for the King, peppered for the Clown). McDonald’s introduced this option when they were trying to convince the market that they weren’t just Happy Meals and Playlands. You can argue as to whether the strategy worked or not, but a big part of the push was to let the public know that “McDonald’s is for adults, too.” So is this just part of the growing pains of a fast food chain, pandering to core demos, and then widening the scope? Or is Burger King applying 15-year-old lessons in the hopes of capturing something new? Either way, the main thought I have when considering the Chef’s Choice isn’t that Burger King is trying something new, it’s that they’re trying something their competitor tried, and cancelled, more than a decade ago.

Separated at birth?

Observation Two: Perhaps I’ve come late to the party, but Burger King is becoming BK. Eventually the signs won’t feature words at all just the initials. This is my prediction. I make it because I realized that there are a half-dozen menu items, Stacker, Chicken Fries, etc, which all start with “BK”. Kid’s club ads in the window had a logo that I assume will one day be the corporate symbol of Burger King.

Will this logo compete with the Big Arches? Expect to see it a lot more very soon.

What drove this home was the giant video screen menus behind the counter. Lots of flashy images and the words Burger King or the present logo were nowhere to be found. Branding is really important, and it struck me as borderline bizarre that the restaurant’s name and/or logo wasn’t, in fact, anywhere on the menu.

So whether the grown-up type burger takes or not, it’s pretty clear that in addition to trying new things (or really old things as the case may be), the King is not just dead, the King is changing, and we may just be seeing the beginning of Burger King’s metamorphosis into a different kind of burger joint, whatever they decide BK is going to be.

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Beau Prichard was born in Australia, raised in New Zealand, and educated by Quakers in Oregon. He lives and works in Seattle. He credits his semi-dependence on fast food partly to the fact that his college couldn’t make a decent hamburger.