Life in the Fast (food) Lane

As promised, yesterday Moe Greene and I coordinated a tag team review of the Wendy's Baconator. This was special for a few of reasons; first, all the reviews so far have come from one source, me, so having someone not named Joel to give an opinion is new*; secondly, this is the first review item that originated from the "Review Request" box (head nod to Eric, and yes, I'll eventually get to the other requests); and finally, this is the closest Moe and I can get to having lunch together now that we live an hour apart from each other. It's nice to recreate the old fast food lunch magic... You see, way before I ever thought of writing the LFFL column, even before I had a blog... Moe and I were, essentially, fast food critics; we just didn't know it. We didn't have an audience or a platform to share our thoughts, but that didn't stop up from having conversations like:

"I really prefer the McDonald's parking lot on Jefferson Street as opposed to the one on Rt. 40 because they have trees in their lot that provide shade to park in. The only downside is, the lot is smaller so sometimes you have to park near other people who are also eating lunch in their car and that's awkward."

or

"I would really prefer the whole Burger King experience a whole lot more if they used bigger cubes of ice. The BK ice is small so it melts faster and then the coke gets all watery; plus the straws are thinner..."

The fact that we now actually have a small but loyal group of people who are willing to read our critiques is great... but to be totally honest, even if you weren't reading we would probably still be having the same conversations.

Now having said that... please, keep reading, and we hope you enjoy the first tag-team review.

Wendy's Baconator

From the Wendy's website, "Six strips of hickory smoked bacon piled high atop two 1/4 lb. patties of fresh, never frozen, beef. Complete with two slices of American cheese, mayo and ketchup..."

Right away we've got an issue... Moe's sandwich only had 3 strips bacon. He says now that there may have been 3 thin strips placed perfectly atop 3 other thin strips, but if he couldn't tell then the entire intent of the "Baconator" has already fallen short of it's goal to overload your taste buds with bacon.

For what it's worth, mine definitely had 6 strips... I'm not sure if that qualifies as "piled high" or not, because I'm not really sure what "piled high" means in the first place... I just know that there was a lot of bacon.

Location: Moe ate his food at the Wendy's on West Patrick Street in Frederick, MD, which is inconveniently located right next to an Arby's... I say inconvenient because I can think of at least a half-dozen occasions where I drove there with the intention of eating at Wendy's, only to see Arby's and change my plans.

As for me, I picked up my burger at the Wendy's in the Briggs Chany Shopping Center in Silver Spring, MD. That's my "go-to" Wendy's because [a] it's close to home and [b] they're as quick and direct as a veteran stripper giving her 13th lap dance on a Friday night... A little eye contact, some boobs to your face, a knee rubbing your crotch, a nibble of the ear lobe, and the job is done.
Service: Excellent as always... we both flew threw our respective drive-thru's. Moe was actually on the phone with me during my order, trying his best to throw me off and make the process difficult. But I still had my food in under 2 minutes.

I don't know what Wendy's does differently than every other fast food chain in the world, but somehow they're almost always quick and accurate. Sometimes when you're at a really shaky McDonald's they'll nervously hand you that open bag of food and you can tell right away that even they aren't sure they got the order right! It's almost as if they want you to check the bag for them because they clearly have no clue..

The guy at the drive-thru window for me yesterday handed me the bag of food already folded shut. He had strong facial features, an almost cocky grin, and was basically daring me to double check his work. I wanted no parts of him. He was like a brutal and efficient SS Stormtrooper.**

As for Moe, he described his service with words like, "clear", "precise", "courteous", and "prompt." That's an awful lot of praise coming from Moe considering he has a long history of being abusive to restaurant workers, puppies, and small children (although to be fair, those last charges were eventually dropped).

Meal Review: The picture above is of my burger... and as you can see, it was overflowing with both bacon and burger. Let me say first that although I really love bacon, I'm almost always disappointed with it in the fast food setting. It tends to be either too thin to make an impact on the taste and texture of the sandwich, or has been sitting around so long that it has a consistency of beef jerky... I was pleased to find that this was not the case with my Baconator bacon... It wasn't quite as thick as I would have liked, but it was by no means thin. It wasn't too chewy, or too crispy. They got it right.

I also like the fact that they didn't try to add any unnecessary ingredients to the formula. Wendy's often times throws on a mountain of lettuce to the point where you have to open the sandwich up and pick off half of what they just piled on... But no need for that here; they keep it simple with mayo, cheese, bacon, and burger. I wouldn't have minded a slice of tomato thrown into the mix, but I certainly couldn't say it "needed" it.

The fires were crap, but we've already established my dislike for their fries in past reviews.

Here's what Moe had to say about his meal:

"The sandwich was quite large. It's quoted on the board as a 1/2 pounder. Featured three slices of bacon with ketchup and mayonnaise. Not too much of either condiment. No pickles, no lettuce. That's a good thing. The bacon was standard fast food bacon; flat, chewy, and cold. The nice thing is that the bacon wasn't too big for the sandwich. The burgers themselves are large. The first 3/4 of the sandwich I really liked. However, with every Wendy's burger I eat, I just get sick of it by the end. It's just TOO much of one thing."

"It's closest competitor/comparable would be the #11 at Burger King which is a double cheeseburger with bacon, cheddar, and some sort of sauce, I think. I prefer that sandwich over this one. It's smaller, but tastes better."

For what it's worth, he happens to like their fries but says the ones he got yesterday were a little on the cold side.

Cost: Somehow my meal came out to $7.93 whereas Moe only had to pay $7.83. We both ordered the Baconator meal with a large fry and large coke. We were in different counties but I'm pretty sure the sales tax is the same everywhere in Maryland.

Nearly $8 is a lot to pay for a single meal with no dollar menu upgrades (especially when the fries are such an inferior product), but you do get a lot of burger. We were both of the opinion however, that the price is a tad bit too much... nothing egregious, just a little pricey.

Obesity Breakdown: The figures here were pretty staggering. The burger contains 830 calories and 51 grams of fat... The fries come in at 550/26... throw in another 270 calories for the coke and suddenly we're looking at a grand total of 1650 calories and 77 grams of fat!

How much time did we take off our lives with that meal yesterday? Two, three weeks? A month?

Summary: I enjoyed my sandwich more than Moe did. I love that he complains that he always struggles to get down the final 1/4 of his burgers but never considers ordering a medium. He gave it a 7/10...

As for me, I enjoyed every bite of the burger but I only ate half the fries. And to be honest, I left plenty of Coke in my large cup. It would probably make a lot of sense for both of us to go with the medium next time. And yes, I can see myself ordering the Baconator again.





*Did Joel just use his name in the 3rd person? Yes, Joel did...

**I'm sure Wendy's would love to know that I've referred to them as both a veteran stripper and Nazi soldiers in the same post... But, I meant it in a good way!