T w e n t y S i d e d
You know how this works. I did this before. Relevant background information: I think the Double Whopper (WITHOUT cheese, because I don’t like Burger King’s cheese) is the best fast-food burger, followed by the Impossible Whopper and the regular Whopper. And I’ll generally give Burger King higher marks for burgers and related items than other locations. Not on principle; just because I genuinely like them better. Except the cheese, or anything that heavily uses their cheese. It’s disgusting, IMO. Also, I don’t like their chicken fries. That’s a breaded chicken nugget in the shape of a french fry, if you didn’t know. Either the breading is AWFUL, or they use different chicken. Most likely it’s a completely different product that’s heated up, but I don’t know that. I have *accidentally* received chicken fries when I got the wrong order (and left the establishment before I checked…(*always* check your bag, even if it holds up the line. I understand that can be really hard for some people. Heck, *I* have moved forward and got out of the way before checking sometimes.) I took ONE bite, spit it out, and threw the chicken fries away. They stank, too. They *always* stink to me.
I like Arby’s broadly, but they aren’t as good as they were a decade or so ago. I remember the heyday (hay day? Hay Day? Hayday? -checks DDG- It’s “heyday.” I was right. And yet that doesn’t LOOK right. Hey–something you exclaim to get someone’s attention, like “Hey, you! Get back here!” Day–C’mon, everyone knows this one. Heyday–The period of greatest popularity, success, or power; prime. Right. Back to the story.) of the Market Fresh sandwiches. They still offer a couple, but they aren’t nearly as good as they used to be. Arby’s keeps trying to come up with some really good burger options to complement the Roast Beef Sandwiches™, but you will be happy to know they have *nothing* on offer at the moment. I mean, you can order a burger, or one with cheese, or one with bacon. I’m sure they are really good; they were the last time I tried them. Also, I cannot see “Roast Beef Sandwiches™” without hearing it in H. Jon Benjamin’s voice. Because of the Arby’s ads he did. Go look it up. Dude is great.
Also I like Jack In The Box. They don’t have anything different from last time, either; that I’ve noticed. Oh, wait. That’s wrong. They briefly offered an additional Sourdough burger that I apparently caught right before they ended the offer. It wasn’t particularly special; the regular Sourdough Burger is mostly just a burger on Sourdough toast with some kind of special sauce. I cannot find anything about the new burger *now*, but this was like a double Sourdough burger with some kind of different sauce, if I remember correctly. It wasn’t, as I said; much different, but I ate one. So….yay.
On with the show.
Whataburger has been offering the “Bacon Wrangler” and “Bacon Wrangler Double” burger for about a month, now. What makes it a Bacon Wrangler instead of a normal Whataburger? *Possibly* it’s only available in Texas, as the info sheet prominently mentions “The Lone Star State.” Not sure that’s a smart move at the moment; Texas isn’t the nations shining example of anything (positive) right now, but that *is* Whataburger’s whole “thing.” But I don’t know if it’s widely available or not. Probably, actually; since part of the advertising text is “You don’t actually have to be in Texas.” The burger comes with both American (this is normally the “if you want a cheeseburger, add this option) and Monterey Jack (I think this is the default cheese on the long-lasting popular “Patty Melt” burger) cheese. There’s also onion strings and chipotle aioli. You can see the aioli sauce in the pic. It’s the white stuff gushing out. And bacon, obviously. And it’s…fine. It’s a different way to eat a Whataburger, which is what *all* Whataburger specials are. Unless you’re eating the chicken. There’s more variety in the chicken options. Of all their fairly recent specials, the Bacon and Blue Cheese Whataburger from a couple of years ago was the big standout for flavor. Just not quite enough *different* about the Bacon Wrangler version. Just get a Whataburger, with or without cheese; or one of the “favorites” like the Patty Melt or BBQ Chicken Strip sandwich. In my opinion.
Burger King has two new burgers to try, although I’ve only seen one in person so far. And it’s the right one, because I know what the other one is and Burger King owes me a prize for it (not really, but more about that later.) Pictured above is the BBQ Brisket Whopper. It is very similar to a previous offering from a few years ago, the South Carolina Whopper or South Carolina BBQ Whopper or something like that. I can’t find it in a short bout of searching, but there’s probably a record of it on Reddit. The South Carolina Whopper was better. The flavor was stronger; it used a different BBQ sauce from BK’s standard, I think. But it’s good. I certainly recommend it.
The other new option that I hope I get a chance to try is the Crispy Onion Whopper. You know what this is? If you eat at BK regularly you can probably spot it. This is a Whopper-sized Rodeo Burger. The Rodeo Burger is one of Burger King’s junior-sized burgers and is probably their best value. In my opinion it’s one of the best “small” and “cheap” burgers you can get. Burger patty, onion ring, BBQ sauce. The NEW burger puts cheese on by default, which I would subtract. And recommend to everyone else, too. The Rodeo Burger doesn’t come with cheese, OR veggies for that matter. But I’m open to including veggies. One of the things that makes a Whopper a Whopper is the large amount of fresh veggies. The reason I say Burger King owes me for this is, remember when they started the contest for “Make Your Own Whopper” and you could submit ideas to BK? Well, I submitted “Make a full-sized Rodeo Burger. It’s one of the best things on the menu and BK already has everything they need to make it.” Voilà. Now Burger King has the “Crispy Onion Whopper.” But did they call me? NOOOOO.
Now, the reason I’m kidding about this: they ALREADY OWN the Rodeo Burger. A Whopper with onion rings and BBQ sauce is imminently obvious. And I would be willing to bet I was only one of tens if not hundreds of thousands of people who suggested the same thing. Sure, BK called attention to the weird ones; that was the point. The marketing. They only made the normal and easy ones (and the ones they had made before; see above.) I haven’t eaten one of these yet, but I’m looking forward to it.
Last of all is Pizza Hut’s new menu items, two “Crispy Chicken” Pizzas and their new “Flatzz” pizzas.
I tried the Flatzz right after they came out. They’re meant to be another lunch-type option, like the Hut Box or the Melts. Like many of Pizza Hut’s new menu items, this is clearly another separate product, not just another way to make a pizza (they have their new “Tavern” crust, which sounds like Domino’s “Thin and Crunchy” Crust in the description, combined with the “Edge-less” options that were briefly popular. I’ll eat it, but I won’t seek it out.) The Flatzz are overall about half again as big as a personal pan pizza, but smaller than a small pizza. Essentially thin crust, but again it’s different enough that this is clearly a different product. Reinforcing that idea is that despite having options that are essentially Cheese, Pepperoni, and Supreme; none of them use the same ingredients as the full-sized pizzas. The Three Cheese Flatzz uses cheese options not available anywhere else, the pepperoni uses meat slices different in size from the regular pepperoni and different in style from the cupped pepperoni Pizza Hut offers now, and the “Ultimate” (Supreme) pizza uses differently-sized and cut veggie and meat options. Although to give credit where it’s due, the Ultimate tastes and feels like a Supreme and likely offers the most value-for-money. The Three Cheese and Pepperoni are tasty enough. Considering they are $5 each (+tax and delivery fees if applicable, in September of 2025), it’s hard to find fault. The other two options pictured above are part of another new item as well; the Crispy Chicken options.
These are DIFFERENT new items, although you can get them as “Flatzz” as well. The Crispy Chickens are also available in every crust option *except* Pan, which does run contrary to my argument that the Flatzz are pre-prepared and just heated. Because if you can make these two pizzas in multiple crust types, then maybe the toppings for the other Flatzz are more-broadly-applicable, too. The fact that they’re not available for Pan could be economic. These two pizzas are sold at a fixed coast WITH a dip option. Pan pizzas usually have a surcharge. Surely they could just add a surcharge like everything else if they are made in-store? Is the dip option screwing this up? See, I’m getting lost now.
The “Crispy Chicken” part of the equation is, if you’ll look at the picture; “breaded chicken bites.” Now as awful as that sounds, I will say they are surprisingly good. These aren’t Dino Bites. I’ve tried the Crispy Chicken Chicken Bacon Ranch Pizza as well as the Flatzz Chicken Bacon Ranch. Neither is great, but they’re not bad, either. Although it might be telling that the Chicken Bacon Ranch’s strongest showing was how good it smelled re-heated. Tasted about the same, but it sure smelled good. I have NOT tried any version of the Nashville Hot Chicken OR the Pickle Sauce that’s supposed to make it really good; because my local Pizza Hut never got these in. I have not heard a reason. They use the same chicken bites, so I assume any difference is in the sauce and other toppings.
Would I recommend any of these as a non-Flatzz pizza? Ehhhh…not really. Pizza Hut has other, *better* chicken-based menu items. From mediocre Wingstop wings to the actually-good Backyard BBQ Chicken pizza (again, in my opinion), I would choose almost anything else. The Chicken Bacon Ranch is fine as a Flatzz, but I would get any of the more traditional offerings before the two Crispy Chickens. And yeah, a lot of it comes down to “they just put a chicken nugget on a piece of pizza. A CHICKEN NUGGET.” And while it’s not as bad as a frozen nugget (or bite) I would even take a McDonald’s McNugget™ over the “Crispy Chicken.” Would I take a McCrispy Strip? Maybe. Those keep changing. I don’t know if they’re supposed to.
So there’s some new fast food options. Do with this information as you will. I have not begun to check around for Fall options but I’m sure some are coming down soon. I saw Christmas decorations for sale in both Wal*Mart and Sam’s Club last week. CraigNotCreg was even complaining that the stores are getting their shipments of Christmas goods already. Sure, that’s in Britain; but like I said…Wal*Mart is selling Christmas stuff right next to the Halloween candy, and Halloween is almost two months away.
Stay sane out there, people.
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Went to check the Pizza Hut website for the Flatzz (which I had not heard of) to see if they were really $5 here in Hawaii, as that’d be a pretty great deal…and discovered they are apparently not available here. Oh well.
Ah. Well, other than the value, you’re not missing that much. $5 is a good value for a lunch item throughout the contiguous 48, from what I can tell. As prices are generally higher in Hawaii (hope the home-grown produce projects pay off in the long run), I’m not surprised the Flatzz aren’t available. As I mentioned, both of these new items have a fixed price. I wouldn’t say that’s necessarily unusual, but it doesn’t fit the normal model of pizza pricing.
Here in Norway I think the cheese is different, because I quite like burger king cheese. My favourite BK burger is one called “Steakhouse Bacon King”. I too dislike alternative fries, because most of them are hard to eat as finger food – regular fries are dry enough that I can finish the fries before I feel like I desperately need to wash my hands again.
I know the cheese is different in (what I would call) mainland Britain because the laws are different. I have been told that’s more or less true throughout Europe. The U.S. is noted for what other countries consider “lower quality” restaurant food. I don’t doubt it from what I’ve seen, but I have very little personal experience.
Not all fast food restaurants have cheese I dislike as much as Burger King’s. Whataburger, for example, usually has a few different types on different bugers, all of which are identifiable and tasty.
I often hear americans refer to “swiss” as if it is a specific type of cheese. I know what it would look like, Emmental is Swiss and there are other similar ones like Leerdammer I come across (Dutch). Oh, just looked it up, and yes it means Emmental and adjacent cheeses.
I had an epiphany about “American cheese” the other day. I.e. ‘plastic cheese’ or ‘orange burger square’. It’s not about cheese at all! It’s solid-form cheese-sauce (aka weird orange/yellow gloop). For people who like that. I’ve had an antagonistic relationship with this alleged ‘cheese sauce’ in the last few years, whenever I order loaded fries which say that they come with cheese, instead of melted cheddar/mozzarella, them come with the sauce, and it’s not even cheesey like a sauce made with cheddar, it’s the gloop stuff or sometimes even silky and liquid. But the wetter it is the more it totally ruins the fries / chips by soaking them and changing the texture to that of uncooked potato, or the gloopier it is the more unpalatable it becomes over time. And its blandness isn’t much of an accompaniment to fries (as per my gravy comments in the other message.) Recently though I did enjoy some with bacon on fries, to be fair. Perhaps I saw the light. It was firm enough to not soak anything, more like a soft salty condiment. Solid orange gravy, we could call it. I’d like to go back there, he does amazing schnitzel burgers. A German-leaning menu, my gf tried to talk to him in German, but turned out he was Polish :D
So the orange slices on Big Macs in Britain are different to the ones in the US?
I don’t know, but it wouldn’t surprise me that Burger King had to use better cheese outside of the U.S.
“American” cheese, the actual cheese type (in a manner of speaking) is made from mixing mild cheddar, colby, maybe other pretty basic and simple cheeses with emulsifiers to *make* the different cheeses cooperate in a smooth, mold-able blend that can then be formed into any shape you want. That is, how it “functions” is much more important than how a person may enjoy imbibing it.
Burger squares in most American fast food restaurants are various implementations of, at best, regular American cheese…but usually the cheapest possible example of such. And, as you mentioned, some are little more than “stable cheese sauce.” Like slicing a millimeter off the end of a Velveeta block. Although actual Velveeta would taste a lot better than most of these “cheeses.”
“American Swiss” is, as you say; a very-mild to mild version of Emmentel. Some producers get a stronger flavor in their “Swiss Cheese.” I find it all inferior to actual Emmentel, although living in rural Texas my ability to obtain fresh quality samples of *any* good choose is practically non-existent.
I had to look up Velveeta, I’m sure I’ve heard of it before on TV, but have never known what it was, fascinating!
UPDATE: Had to head out of town a couple of times this week and was able to try the Arby’s “Loaded Italian” and Burger King’s “Crunchy Onion” Whopper. The Loaded Italian is essentially a heated, better version of the old Subway “Italian Cold Cuts Trio.” Quite good, and it’s included in a couple of deals currently, so worth the money. The Crunchy Onion Whopper is exactly what I said it was, BUT a) if you have the full load of Whopper veggies as I usually do, it does cut down on the tanginess from the onion rings and BBQ sauce. And b) A couple of full-sized onion rings would work better than the handful of mini-onion rings currently used. But it’s good. I would certainly get it again.
Just looked up those Arby’s adverts, the guy seems quite funny, but as a non-American there is something so odd about his accent, I’d almost think he was Irish, not American. Maybe it’s just his breathless way of talking. Also it’s fascinating to hear of a hot-roast-beef-sandwich-centric place (be that a in burger bun or sliced bread). In recent-ish years on the other side of the atlantic, various places that do carvery roast meats (beef, pork, lamb, chicken) have taken to offering it as a wrap. Not a sandwich though as far as I’ve seen. I think I did have a carvery burger once though. And that rings a bell now, I’m sure in an american-themed place there was a roast beef sandwich (in sliced bread) with gravy available. I’m no fan of american foods with gravy, be that the British or American version – for me the whole point in most american foods I have is the tangy sweet things like BBQ sauce, or just the flavours of the coatings/glazes. Why would I blandify the glory of the 11 herbs and spices with what appears to be chicken soup and a small scone. And certainly the only gravy I’d have in/with a sandwich would be the Moistmaker from Friends after christmas, which I’ve tried in vain in the past. Bland meaty gravies and mashed potato belong with carvery style roasts and the all important counterpoint of the apple/cranberry/horseradish/mint sauces, not with sandwiches – in this country anyway, given that bland gravies, roast meats, and sandwiches in sliced bread, make up most of our cuisine haha. This is why I resent the import of Sandos to this country of late, it makes no sense. If I want those delicious fillings, I’ll have them in a burger bun american style, or with sticky rice and nice chinese/japanese/korean sauces – not in rubbishy white bread – the point of having excellent foreign street foods is to get away from the humdrum nonsense we put up with in our own cuisine! Sandwiches made with rubbishy white bread, is our bread and butter, and it’s not very good, and is embarrassing given that we almost border France, and have a history of much nicer bread that we ignore. See also, Vada Pav, Pav Bhaji etc. Get this nice Indian food away from this rubbish bread roll. KFC biscuits and gravy. Katsu curry (okay that’s a very big stretch and it’s often very nice but still it gets an honourable mention as being a Japanese version of a British version of Indian curry, that is now eaten in Britain). It seems the worse parts of UK cuisine managed to permeate the rest of the world, and then made their way back here as contaminants in tasty foreign foods! I might even add Banh Mi as a special adjacent mention as well. Maybe soon there will be Deep Fried Mars Bar Sandos.
Actually what am I talking about. Roast beef sandwiches are probably common in pubs, I’ve had one in a baguette within recent-ish memory. I need to get out more.
Gravy usually isn’t available with fast food options here outside of chicken-centered places. And that’s usually what is commonly called here “cream gravy,” sometimes referred to as “white gravy.” Mixes are much more common these days and produce a thin, watery gravy; but the traditional method mixes some fat (usually the grease collected from frying the main meat dish) with flour and milk, then add pepper. In the “Southern” states, people tend to swear it must be made with Bacon grease. When I was much younger, Brown Gravy was still a popular option for meat and starch dishes. This uses a beef broth base mixed with flour and some form of onion seasoning. Arby’s is essentially the “surviving” roast beef sandwich chain; there used to be a couple more in the U.S. The only real common “gravy”-connected dish they do is the “French Dip” sandwich, which is also a common deli option (fast food and local), and can usually be found in every “home cooking” or “casual dining” menu…especially local cafes. This is typically made from a shredded roast (which gives you your roast beef sandwich connection) but I’ve also seen brisket used. The “dip” or gravy is just the drippings from the meat. This is almost always referred to as “the ‘au jus’ sauce’ although my understanding of the term is that “au jus” *means* “with juice.” So Roast au jus would be “roast served with juice.”
It’s a shame that dripping-based sauces and items have faded from the mainstream – we used to get “dripping cake” in bakeries in the (English) midlands, but eventually the large bakery chain which bought up most of the independent bakeries, Greggs, stopped baking in-store, instead shipping in everything to around the country frozen from a mega-bakery, and thereby removing regional items such as dripping cake. It was just some sort of fruity bread stuff baked/roasted in dripping and sugar, very nice. Same as lardy cake, but with beef dripping instead of pork lard.
Speaking of pork and fast food, perhaps it was reading your post and writing these comments, but I found myself ordering from KFC the other day. I knew that some of the KFCs around here are halal these days, and it seems those ones handle no pork products at all, which is unacceptable to my bacon/sausage requirements (I always regret not getting the Double Down when it was available for a limited time here), so I sought to find a non-halal one, and ineed there was one, in a nearby region of the city where many of the people leaving the increasingly muslim areas have moved to, although unfortunately it didn’t seem to have bacon on the menu in any of the burgers anyway. I’m sure the burgers are much smaller now than they once were. Do you remember the pulled chicken burger they did that one year, it was amazing.
I do not remember the pulled chicken burger. I don’t know if it wasn’t an option in the U.S., was too limited (regional offerings are still a thing with some chains) or if I just missed it. I don’t have a KFC locally anymore; we had a franchised store here and the manager was discovered to be skimming from the register for several years. The owner fired them; hired a new manager, who was actually in on the previous skim and did it for another couple of years. When this was discovered KFC sent a team down to check the store out and found out the owner wasn’t maintaining the store and had been lying about his finances. They tried to get another owner to buy the place out but apparently failed; this was many years ago when KFC was first starting to feel the pressure from increasing competition and the big move to lower quality to increase profits in the U.S. (I mean, that’s *always* been part of the formula; we’re an ultra-capitalist society; but generally people acknowledge a huge change in the late 1990’s when everything simultanously got worse, objectively.) These days KFC is viewed a bit suspicously in the U.S. because so many locations *look* and *act* run down and neglected. That’s what I’ve heard online and in real-life, and it matches all my remotely reachable locations, but I don’t doubt there must be good ones. They’re still going, somehow.
I don’t know for sure if I had them when I was young, but lard cakes and dripping cakes seem to be making a comeback. I know the TikTok’er and YouTuber B. Dylan Hollis has covered a few different versions of these. But, to be fair, he is from Bermuda, so he does have some British influences. But almost all his recipes are from American cookbooks, as he was in college in Wyoming when he started the baking videos.
That’s fascinating, the way you describe the way KFC looks and acts, is the way I’ve seen Burger King look and act over here in the last 10 years. Always seemingly running on a very low number of staff (two?), dark and dingey, takes ages to get the order – almost like they don’t want any customers at all and haven’t noticed McDonalds literally across the road is packed full and efficient. More like the Wimpey you’ll find only in the back of the lower end shopping centres here populated by a sliver of the the OAP caff crowd – except in BK’s case just a small number of general people who apparently still remember it exists. By contrast, KFC seems to have gone in the opposite direction, I don’t remember too much what they used to be like (just generic fast food shops I think), but now they have shiny drive throughs and a clean slick aesthetic. And there are quite a few near me it turns out, I had the choice of about 5, all with 10-30 minutes against them for delivery. There’s one about a mile walk away. I do live in a city though, one of the larger ones here, I’m not sure I can comprehend the concept of rural Texas, I can barely comprehend the concept of rural England. In Chester (75,000-100,000) we had one KFC, in a retail park, whereas the Burger King was on the high street, across from McDonalds, and as I described above. Actually there was another BK in another retail park near there, less dingey but even fewer people, and surprisingly expensive. I used to use the high street one for £1.99 Big King or Long Big King, using vouchers on bus tickets, not too long ago actually, maybe 7-8 years ago – realised I might actually prefer the Big King to the Big Mac. Speaking of quality, I remember way back now, 20 years ago at least, the bacon double cheeseburgers in BK being tiny. In fact whenever we’d go to these sorts of places we’d end up getting two burgers when we were younger, with our parents.
Now we have Popeyes, Taco Bell, Wendy’s, Tim Horton among others. I think I’ve mentioned on here before, we may have discussed it, but I don’t really understand the point, I didn’t realise we had a market for more lower-end US/Canadian fast food options, or rather the worse smaller versions they’ll give us here, especially when they’re not much cheaper than the alternatives any more, and the street-food sort of places provide better fare. In fact the pubs often do better too. The one which I’m interested to try is Sbarro, it’s popped up at a couple of filling stations.
There are definitely Burger Kings like that in the U.S. I would imagine it’s 50/50 at best. There is one just at the edge of reasonable driving distance that I eat at more than others which is quite good. Of two cities I visit regularly, one has only one out of maybe a half dozen locations that is worth visiting. All the rest are short-staffed, slow, and usually dirty and in disrepair. In the other city there are only three locations, all of which are better than the bad ones I just mentioned yet non of which are quite as good as the good locations. I know in the U.S. franchise ownership plays a major role in any given location’s quality. This seems to be true of every restaurant that uses the franchise model over the chain model. Chains seem to exercise more control over the quality of individual stores (but of course franchises relieve a corporation of financial and some legal liability, while making regular money.) I don’t know how the legalities of franchises work in other countries, although I would imagine the law is more stringent than in the U.S. probably everywhere (except maybe Russia. They seem to depend mostly on bribes.)