Text 6297, 66 rader
Skriven 2008-04-30 12:52:12 av DAVE SACERDOTE (1:123/140)
Ärende: BK Steakhouse Burger
============================
Burger King introduced another new burger to their menu recently. 
Thanks to a buy-one-get-one-free coupon in the paper last week, 
my daughter and I tried out the new Steakhouse Burger.

Burger King advertises it as "Angus Beef, melted cheese, crispy 
onions, lettuce and tomatoes, all smothered in A-1 Thick & Hearty 
Steak Sauce." Their model burger (pictured in a photo on my blog) 
shows the idealized presentation, and it certainly is enough to 
make your mouth water. Too bad the reality doesn't come anywhere 
near that lovely fantasy.


To be fair, no one expects the real-life burger to look anything 
like the pictures, but you should be aware of a couple of really 
significant differences: For one thing, Burger King really doesn't 
use curly leaf lettuce as a rule. They use whatever they can get 
most cheaply, and around here that means iceburg lettuce that's 
been roughly cut to fit. And there are no red tomatoes in New 
England in April, so our burgers were topped with two sad-ass 
slices of barely pink flavorless things that resembled tomatoes 
if you squinted from three feet away. You can pretty much forget 
about the big handful of "crispy onions" promised in the advertising, 
too. You'll be lucky to get the barest sprinkling of fried onion 
straws and they will likely be found in a tiny puddle of A-1 sauce. 
It adds up to a kind of slapped-together oversized gimmicburger 
that probably isn't going to be on the menu for very long (not too
surprising, actually, since Burger King holds the record for largest 
number of failed sandwiches introduced and then later quietly dropped 
from their menu.)

But the strangest - and most offputting - thing about the Steakhouse 
Burger is the meat. Burger King says it's made with Angus Beef, and 
that may be true, but by the time it goes through their processing 
and into your mouth it's barely recognizable. My daughter and I 
noticed it with the very first bite: the meat is spongy and feels 
almost artificial. There's a weird "enhanced" flavor to it as well - 
we identified it as related to the "Grill Flavoring" found in many 
other processed foods. A quick trip over to Burger King's website 
reveals the reason for the strange taste and mouthfeel of the meat - 
the ingredients listed are: Beef, Encapsulated Salt (Salt, Partially
Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil), Flavorings, Beef Fat, Beef Stock, 
Dextrose. Every other burger on BK's menu has only one ingredient: 
"100% USDA inspected Ground Beef (Fire-Grilled)." Why did they 
think they needed such an overprocessed patty for the Steakhouse 
Burger?

As tempting as the Steakhouse Burger may look in the ads, it 
really isn't worth the price. The garbage pile of flavors compete 
with rather than compliment one another, and the "salty bouillon 
sponge" taste of the beef will give you the impression that Burger 
King is trying to dress up a substandard patty rather than provide 
an actual high-quality "Angus" product. If you have a hankering 
for a Burger King burger, you'd be far better off with a Whopper 
or a Stacker - at least then you can be sure of getting unadulterated 
100% ground beef.

Blogged with photos - see the address in my sig.

---
http://davescupboard.blogspot.com/ - Dave's Cupboard - Food and 
Restaurant Reviews; If I post it here in NCE, you'll find it 
blogged with photos at Dave's Cupboard.

http://bacon-labels.blogspot.com/ - A gallery of bacon package labels.
(The extra shelf in Dave's Cupboard.
 * Origin: Doc's Place BBS Fido Since 1991 docsplace.tzo.com (1:123/140)