“With more beef and cheese, the $1 ¼-pound Double Cheeseburger beats competitors’ sandwiches, such as McDonald’s Double Cheeseburger and Wendy’s Double Stack,”

“1/4 pound of hot, not so fresh, delicious preservative laden beef!”

Dollar menus or value menus have been all the rage in the fast food world in the last few years, as companies look to offer as many deals and variety as possible to bring in more customers. Consumers love it, because instead of paying $6 for a value meal, they can fill themselves up on the cheap. For example, a McChicken and a McDouble at McDonalds is my go-to order – only $2 and it leaves me pretty satisfied. Well, satisfied from a fullness perspective, I am never satisfied when I’m forced to eat McDonalds.

The dirty secret of dollar menus though, that I alluded to in my opening paragraph, is that franchise owners HATE them. They feel that dollar menus allow people to load up on a few cheap items, instead of paying more for a value meal, costing them valuable sales dollars. Burger King has been fighting this battle with their franchisees for nearly 2 years now, as BK owners aren’t exactly eager to sell a burger for $1 that has been retailing for nearly $2.50.

Just last year, McDonald’s gave up their $1 double cheeseburger gambit, raising the price to $1.19 and adding the “McDouble” (essentially a double cheeseburger, sans one slice of cheese) to the dollar menu in its place. Yet now, BK is offering up a 1/4 pound version of what McDonald’s couldn’t afford to keep on its dollar menu? Good luck with that BK.

On the topic of cheap burger sizes, do you remember when the quarter pounder was considered to be literally a huge thing? People were all “whoa dude, quarter pounder. Alright. You aren’t messing around at this meal.” Uh yeah. Not so much anymore. A quarter pounder ain’t shite anymore people. Sorry dudes, but you are definitely not ballin’ if you are all about the burger that the local homeless dude can afford with a good 20 minutes of panhandling. But hey, in this economy, that’s a lot of sustenance for not a lot of money, so go buy it. Or don’t. I really don’t care.

H/T to Fast Food Maven and GrubGrade.

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I always get mildly depressed by ideas that want to seem original, yet are just rehashed garbage. Enter McDonald’s and the product that they’ve been testing in certain markets for the last few months: the Mac Snack Wrap, previously mentioned on So Good here.  This is essentially a Big Mac without the bun, wrapped in a tortilla.  I know, you’re hooked already!  If this is this supposed to be a “healthy” alternative to the pop culture burger icon, then they are sadly mistaken.  The Consumerist calls this concoction the ‘Big Mac Burrito’ which makes me gag even more than the thought of the actual burger.  McDonald’s, like Hollywood, has run out of new ideas.  I can’t wait for the McRib enchiladas coming to a quick service restaurant near you!

H/t to Eat Me Daily for the picture and to YumSugar for a telling poll (55% of readers would try it).

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Yes, it’s a “sandwich” containing bacon, cheese and Colonel’s sauce, with two fried chicken patties serving as the bread.  Now some of you may be thinking, “Eick, I thought So Good was supposed to be on the cutting edge? I already read about this someplace else, why didn’t you see this sooner?” Valid question, and one the 15 (no exaggeration) people who have e-mailed me about this new product have asked.

I actually came across this last week, in the form of a post on Food Geekery that dated all the way back to July 28.  But do you know why I didn’t write about it right away? I didn’t believe it. Thought it was a fake. A spoof. A hoax. No WAY a national chain is actually using pieces of chicken as buns I thought. Considering it’s been a few months since I broke a major story on So Good, despite having done it quite often last year, I thought this was my golden bullet. I was going to expose the Double Down as a grand and elaborate hoax and reap the traffic benefits as everyone praised So Good for exposing the fraud that was the Double Down.  I Googled around. I read and re-read the post on Food Geekery. I freeze framed parts of the commercial on YouTube for clues that it might be a fake. At one point I even thought some of the “evidence” it was a hoax was that one of the actors in the commercial kind of, sort of, looked like one of the sketch comedy actors from Barats & Bereta.

With no clear evidence confirming or denying this products existence beyond the one initial source online,  I called the location in Nebraska where Foodgeekery allegedly bought this. No answer when I called twice on Thursday. When I called back on Friday, they did answer, and informed me that yes, they carried the Double Down sandwich.  Dammit. I was all primed to be the one that exposed to the world the great hoax that was the KFC Double Down. Alas, I was wrong. Dead wrong. And with that, my motivation to write about it before leaving the office vanished. The weekend awaited. That magical time of sleep, sex, drinking, more drinking, watching baseball and sleeping again.  The story would have to wait, because the sandwich is real, and it’s being tested in Nebraska and Rhode Island.

There were other skeptics out there, which is why Foodgeekery went BACK to the KFC and snapped a few confirmation photos:

KFC public relations finally got into the act and shared their “estimated” nutritional info with Huffington Post. They claim it is 590 calories with 31g of fat and 10g of saturated fat.

I don’t need to make some grand proclamation about what this sort of food offering says about our culture. I think these photos pretty much speak for themselves.

Additional coverage on Consumerist, This is Why You’re Fat and Slashfood.

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These are the final 10 stores on the list of the QSR 50.

Once again, this list is determined by total dollar sales.

• 41 Jimmy John’s
• 42 Captain D’s
• 43 Jason’s Deli
• 44 Qdoba
• 45 Jamba Juice
• 46 Cold Stone Creamery
• 47 Krystal
• 48 In-N-Out Burger
• 49 Einstein/Noah’s Bagels
• 50 Tim Hortons

This is where it probably gets dicey for some people in terms of knowing these chains.  I’m actually familiar with all of these except for Captain D’s and Jason’s Deli.

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Once again, this list is determined by total dollar sales.

• 31 Boston Market
• 32 Culvers
• 33 El Pollo Loco
• 34 Bojangles’
• 35 Papa Murphy’s
• 36 CiCi’s Pizza
• 37 White Castle
• 38 Del Taco
• 39 Baskin Robbins
• 40 Sbarro

It appears with numbers 31 – 40 we’ve entered the land of Chicken and pizza. FOUR chains in a row are all chicken focused, Boston Market, Culvers, El Pollo Loco and Bojangles.  Plus, with Papa Murphy’s, CiCi’s and Sbarro, you add three pizza chains to the list as well.

Sbarro is all the way down at #40 is SHOCKING for me.  I’ve never even heard of Papa Murphy’s or CiCi’s, but Sbarro is in just about every food court I’ve ever been in. Is this a regional thing?

Any chains in this batch of 10 surprise you? Any that STILL haven’t cracked the top 40 that you can’t believe?

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Once again, this list is determined by total dollar sales.

• 21 Carl’s Jr.
• 22 Chipotle
• 23 Panda Express
• 24 Whataburger
• 25 Church’s Chicken
• 26 Little Caesars
• 27 Long John Silver’s
• 28 Steak n Shake
• 29 Zaxby’s
• 30 Checkers/Rally’s

Wow. Who knew that Little Caesars still had enough stores open to clock in at #26. I thought that company was basically left for dead.  I knew all of the Top 20 pretty well, but in this next batch of restaurants is the first one I’ve never even heard of: Zaxby’s. Huh?

Also, I’ve never been to a Whataburger, Church’s Chicken, Long John Silvers, Steak n Shake, or Checkers.   Four of those five I’ve never been to largely because of the regions of the country I’ve lived in, but my never having been to a  Long John Silver’s is more based on a personal lifestyle choice to always avoid fast food fish.

Thoughts on #’s 21 – #30?  Who are you most surprised to STILL not see make the list, even after getting through the top 30?  How many of these chains are you familiar with?

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Any restaurants that are on (or not on) this list that surprise you?

• 11. Arby’s
• 12. Jack In The Box
• 13. Domino’s
• 14. Chick-fil-A
• 15. Panera Bread
• 16. Dairy Queen
• 17. Papa John’s
• 18. Hardee’s
• 19. Quiznos Subs
• 20. Popeyes

My first thought? Whoever is still going to Arby’s frequently enough to put them at #11 should probably be rounded up and deported.

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• 1. McDonald’s
• 2. Subway
• 3. Burger King
• 4. Starbucks
• 5. Wendy’s
• 6. Taco Bell
• 7. Pizza Hut
• 8. Dunkin’ Donuts
• 9. KFC
• 10. Sonic Drive-In

Wow, I had no idea that Sonic was a Top Ten chain. Also, McDonald’s just absolutely dominates: $30 billion in sales versus only $9.6 billion for the second place Subway.

What do you think readers? Are there any chains you would have expected to see on this list that didn’t make the cut? Any chains that are higher than you expected?

Update: Here is a top 10 list in order of total number of stores:

• Subway 21,881
• McDonald’s 13,958
• Starbucks Coffee 11,567
• Pizza Hut 7,564
• Burger King 7,512
• Wendy’s 6,630
• Dunkin’ Donuts 6,395
• Taco Bell 5,588
• KFC 5,253
• Domino’s 5,047

All info for this Top Ten list as well as other posts about the rest of the top 50 fast food chains by $$ sales comes from the QSR 50, published by QSR magazine.

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So what did Bill Clinton order? A double hamburger with all the fixings but no mayo. He opted for the combo side, which includes both fries and onion rings. To drink, he went with an apple pie flavored milkshake. NBC Washington has a collection of 9 photos from his trip.

Update: Everyone’s favorite right-wing host, Bill O’Reilly featured a segment on Bill Clinton’s visit, even calling Clinton a “pinhead”:

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Update: Also from the site Deviant Art is this cool imagining of fast food mascots as characters in a fighting game by Lysol-Jones.

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In no way am I calling for a bacon boycott.  I will still consume bacon on a semi-regular basis.

I’m just sick of the saturation.  Bacon in every food imaginable.  Bacon on t-shirts.  Bacon lube.  Bacon alternative fuel.  Bacon-replicas of famous bacon-cities and bacon-landmarks.  Bacon  has made its mark, but something occurred two days ago that made me believe that bacon is over.

Eick gives me coupons for free Taco Bell, so of course my interest is piqued by whatever insane burrito/taqui/nacho creation they are featuring.  In this case, it is the blood pressure escalator New Bacon Cheesy Potato Burrito. Stare at the picture.  Become mesmerized by the weird ground beef.  The strange bacon pieces.  The traditional oozing cheese, sour cream and special sauce exuding from within.

My first bite is awful.  All potato and sour cream.  And with the second bite, I encounter something soggy, wet, and long.  I pull it out of my mouth quickly.  BACON.  Not a neat little bacon crisp as shown in the advertisements, but a terrifying microwaved bit of porkstuff that had not crisped.  It has simply gone limp, like the body of a drowning victim.

Eating an entire Bacon Cheesey Potato Burrito is possible.  One must be intoxicated, and not eating any breakfast or lunch should help.  Otherwise, you’re in a for a horrible state of being – over-full.  You know, that feeling you get after you accidentally eat a foot-long sub even though you promised your girlfriend you’d save the other half for later?  Or you eat five plates of China Buffet King just because?  Any simple task after this act of consumption terrorism is simply impossible.  It’s as if your stomach is holding your body prisoner.  And the bacon……….oh man…

I tried.  I really did.  I wanted to write a point-by-point review of this Bacon Abomination, but my taste buds and stomach told me otherwise.  I felt nauseous from eating this Taco Bell product, which is painful for me to admit.  I’ve stood by Taco Bell for years, espousing it as the greatest late-night fast food option in existence.  Sober or intoxicated, veg or non-veggie, I defended it.

Who cares if the meat has the texture of belly button lint?  Who cares if the special sauce tastes like two week old mayo left out in the sun?  Taco Bell rarely has anything on the menu too insane to try, and…well…

I BLAME BACON!!!

The internet, newsprint and food television have created a perfect storm of bacon.  If you’re a fast food chain without bacon, GOD HELP YOU.  Bloggers won’t blog about you, twitterer’s won’t tweet shit, and people still reading the newspaper will bemoan the crumbling state of newsprint rather than try your bacon-less drivel.

I demand we take back bacon by not mentioning it every five seconds when talking about food.  In ten years time, bacon should then be under-appreciated, and we can all join together and start Bacon Fad 2.0 in 2019.

But for now, thanks to massive over-exposure and Taco Bell, me and bacon won’t be speaking for a while.  If you run into bacon on the street or something, just tell him I meant to call last night.  And yeah, I’ll totally call bacon back tomorrow, it’s just that I lost my phone.  And my facebook password.  Someone poke bacon for me.

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All the other bloggers that went with me were quick to post pictures and reviews of their trip in late May or early June. I did not, because, A) I’ve been busy as all hell, and B) my camera decided to start sucking that day.  By waiting a while, I’m able to *cheat* by incorporating photos from other bloggers into my write-up that aren’t the blurry, hideous ones I took. Thanks folks. Sorry my camera started sucking.

True to blogger stereotypes, we were a Motley Crew of hideously unattractive fatties, most of whom were dressed in their pajamas and clearly lived in their parent’s basement (except for one guy, who admitted his parents house was only one story, so he lived in the garage). I missed the dinner party the night before, but I did arrive in time to throw back a few beers at the hotel bar with John from Epic Portions while fending off a drunken, wannabe MILF, Ohio State fan.  I finally met up with the larger group the next morning, contributing my usual charm, engaging personality and stunningly handsome good looks to the group. Rather than start at the beginning, let’s start at the middle of the experience, when John from Epic Portions snapped this photo of me, on the line of the Taco Bell test kitchen, discovering the joys of squirting sour cream out of a caulking gun.

Of course to get into the test kitchen, we had to actually walk into the Taco Bell HQ first, as the below picture illustrates.  I’m the only one with a backpack, because I had to make a quick escape up to L.A. after the tour.  Scott Roberts is the only one with jean shorts, I assume because he had to continue being awesome after the tour concluded.

So where were we? Oh yes, test kitchen. We went in there and found a Taco Bell line similar to the set-up in all Taco Bell locations:

The purpose of the trip, at least from Taco Bell’s perspective, was to tell us all about the new Volcano menu, featuring spicy items designed to appeal to its core demographic of 25-44 year old big-eating males.

Click below for more details and photos.

The genesis of the Volcano menu is actually quite interesting. Noting the increase in popularity of spicy fast food items, Taco Bell set out to develop a product that was hot enough to satisfy spicy food lovers, but still palatable for the masses. What they came up with was the Volcano Taco, which was released last year. The star of the Volcano Taco is  “Lava Sauce,” a spicy, cheesy sauce that clocks in at 800 Scoville Units (50% hotter than Fire Sauce packets). This was the first thing Taco Bell let us taste, just straight up Lava Sauce in a cup:

This was actually my first time trying the Lava Sauce in any form, and I have to say, yum! The sauce is a great balance of spicy and cheesy, with a long, slow burn.  Even when they started putting actual food in front of us, I kept dabbing my spork (yes, they gave us sporks) into the cup of Lava Sauce over and over.  Good stuff.  The popularity of the Volcano taco led them to create additional Volcano menu items.  They let us try both of the two main components of the new Volcano Box, the Volcano Taco and the Volcano Burrito.

The Volcano Taco was meh. It tasted fine, but I realized the other ingredients were hiding the wonderful spicy taste of the Lava Sauce. For those of you curious, the red taco shell tastes the same as a regular one, it’s just colored red to convey that sense of spicy excitement.  My other complaint about the Volcano Taco is the same I have about all Taco Bell tacos: the cheese is UNMELTED. Why, Taco Bell, do you insist on putting the meat on the bottom, piling veggies on top, then sprinkling cold, shredded cheese on top of all of that? Why wouldn’t you just put the cheese either directly under, or directly on top of the warm meat so that it melts? Ridiculous.

The Volcano Burrito was superior to the taco. The Lava Sauce really shined in this one, as it was perfectly dispersed throughout the burrito, and unlike in the taco, cheese was nice and melty. I’m pretty sure I left half my taco but CRUSHED an entire burrito (this is at 11:30 am, right after a big hotel buffet breakfast mind you).  I would definitely get the Volcano Burrito if I ever step foot in a Taco Bell again.

After trying the two Volcano items, the Taco Bell PR team announced it was time for us to “go behind the line and make something.”  Food Beast, in its coverage of this portion of the visit, snapped this photo of me and added the following commentary:

Stand-up comic and food writer John from So Good stood confused, stating that he was unclear about the creativity portion of our visit. He covered himself mentioning that he found pleasure in wrapping the taco, regardless of its simplicity.

Ok, for starters, I was the FIRST one to go down the line, and we were given no direction, so I was thinking, “what the F?” I thought they wanted me to attempt to make something from their actual menu.  Having just crushed a whole burrito, and knowing I wasn’t that hungry, I just started making the double decker taco to see if I could make it right. It was only when people started lining up behind me and making crazy shit that I realized, dammit, I could have made whatever crazy creation I wanted.  Also, if you are thinking that Food Beast’s line of,  “he found pleasure in wrapping the taco” sounds like thinly veiled sexual inneundo, I would say you probably aren’t alone in thinking that.  Do I wish I had made something crazy? Sure. But at that point I was full and wasn’t really eating anything else, just shoveling down the Lava Sauce by the sporkful.

All in all, an interesting trip, which culminated with this adorable group photo. Grub Grade and Scott Roberts went for the “hold a prop from the kitchen” look, while I went with the, “hands-in-the-pocket-because-that-PR-girl-is-hot-and-I’m-too-cool-for-school” look.

To read more about the Taco Bell experience and see other photos, check out Grub Grade, Endless Simmer, Pleasure Palate, Fast Food News, Epic Portions, Scott Roberts and Food Beast. Thanks to all the other terrific bloggers who were a pleasure to experience the trip with and who took rocking photos that made this post possible.

Big thanks to Taco Bell for having us out to Cali, hosting us, and letting us see things behind the scenes. They were professional, well organized and accomodating.  I’m definitely all about the Lava Sauce, so I’d love to see them start selling it in stores at some point. Whether I get the courage to venture into a Taco Bell anytime soon, I can’t say, but who knows, intoxication can make me do interesting things.

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In my online travels, in search for all things food, I often see attempts at innovation that seldom hit their mark.  However, I recently came upon a site, Fancy Fast Food, that tries an interesting angle – the “extreme makeovers of actual fast food items purchased at popular fast food restaurants.”  Apparently, the person/team behind this site buys an assortment of goods from a certain fast food establishment, and thereafter totally deconstructs the food in order to create a new and far more compelling meal.  Hmmm….

In one instance, FFF buys two sack meals from White Castle (along with fried clams) and turns it into Tapas de Castillo Blanco (see above).   
Understanding how they got from A to B requires reading a laundry list of steps ranging from the following tasks:

Bring the remaining Coke to a boil under medium heat in a non-stick saucepan and evaporate it down to a dark, sweet syrup.

Using a food processor, blend the french fries into a pulp with a little water.

Grate the buns with a grater to make a bowl of fine breadcrumbs.

I said the same thing – someone has lots of time on their hands.  However, I do admire the effort, even though I would still not eat any of this stuff, before or after.

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