Posted
by Jay Holley
September 10, 2007 at 8:34 p.m.
Review: Wendy's "Baconator"
Wendy's "Baconator" sandwich is a culinary failure. Commercials advertising the burger boast of its "six strips of bacon piled high atop two fresh, never-frozen beef patties," but while Wendy's delivers the beef, upon first unwrapping the sample sandwich this reviewer was left wondering where they'd concealed the bacon. I lifted up the warm kaiser roll and found six translucent strips of pork, each about the width of a piece Scotch-brand 'Magic tape' and the thickness of 20 lb. copy paper. These six fragments of reconstituted bacon were set in a thin mortar of ketchup and mayonnaise, the only standard condiments on this double 1/4 pounder with double cheese — there's no pickle unless you order it, no onions unless you ask. The Baconator is conceptually intriguing — like the Dogme 95 movement did for cinema and Spoon does with rock'n'roll, the Baconator formula seems like it will strip the extraneous and leave just the essence of a bacon cheeseburger: two hot patties, two slices of cheese, a thick layer of bacon, and just enough condiments to bind bacon, burger, and bun. The formula might've worked if Wendy's included enough bacon to compete with the burger, but six tiny pieces do not warrant the '-nator' suffix; in this reviewer's opinion they barely justify the generic 'bacon cheeseburger'. Contemplate the word "Baconator" as if it were one of Plato's Forms. "Baconator" implies not only an adequate bacon ratio, as Wendy's burger almost delivers, but a ratio so high as to be capable of great destruction. Wendy's had the vision to see the word — Baconator — but there their vision halted. They might've ground bacon strips into bacon bits and mixed them in into their fresh all beef patties, adding a healthy dose of real bacon atop for overkill. Such a burger might earn the name "Baconator."They could've weaved their thin strips into a kind of crude cloth of pork, folding it over three, four times, or with the right machinery perhaps knitting bacon into a sort of greasy mobius strip. Such a burger might earn the name "Baconator." Instead Wendy's phoned it in.
[Johnny America][1] is a Lawrence.com blog as well as a print zine, available at Love Garden on the little magazine rack just south of the 45s.
Comments
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matt (Matt Armstrong) says…
Well played. May I point you in the direction of the Jack In The Box Ultimate Bacon Cheeseburger? That is a sandwich that earns the "Ultimate" moniker. There are bacon bits in the cheese and mayonnaise, so that even when you not directly aiming for bacon, you are eating bacon! It is a porky harvest. And also, quite plausibly, the only food that inverts itself in the presence of too much gin, becoming good for you, a greasy shield against morning after worries. Brilliance enacted!
feeble (anonymous) says…
Clearly, the only fast food burger to warrant the "-nator" suffix is the 10x10 (or any of its larger, more gluttonous cousins, like the 20x20 or 100x100) from In And Out Burger, which sadly does not operate in Kansas.
It is interesting to note that Johnny America is not alone in his scorn for the Baconator (http://giantfreakinrobot.com/theburge...)
altheasus (Althea Schnacke) says…
I love the Baconator. First of all the name, second of all the taste. I hate the after effects of the Baconator on top of beer. Nasty, nasty.
OtherJoel (anonymous) says…
I've stayed away from the Baconator as Wendy's seems to be incapable of fully cooking their bacon on anything. Not one bit of crunch. I think the mom from "Better Off Dead" taught them how to prepare it.
I can throw down with a 1/2 lb. double with cheese any day, though. Once in a while I'll go for a triple, but that gets cumbersome as I can't get my mouth to open that wide. Which is probably a good measure of foods to avoid.
GbGb (anonymous) says…
the baconator can sense fear