No Frills
In keeping with the Burger King ethos, their new Fully Loaded Crossainwich is elementally that which it is and nothing else: filling the croissant roll is a nondescript egg patty, topped with ham, topped with a sausage patty, topped with cheese, topped with bacon. There is no special sauce, no slice of tomato, no herb spread, just a stomach-filling workingman's delight, a sandwich to stave off the hunger of a growing teenage boy, or to deliver into indigestive stupor a foolish man of middle age who aspires to eat as he did when he was young and unstoppable. M.F.K. Fisher warned us older men of this vaulting ambition, and to apparently little avail.
The Mysterious Smokestack
The greatest pleasure of the Fully Loaded Croissanwich is the sensation of one's teeth plunging through it's various layers, triumphantly, like a runaway piano crashing through multiple floors of an apartment building. First they crack the patina of the surprisingly flaky croissant, which seems to have gotten a recent upgrade. I can remember when the alleged croissant was more a hamburger bun that had been mechanically crimped into a clumsy crescent shape that routinely collapsed under the structural weakening of its own internally generated steam. This time there's a real interior fluffiness and layering, so kudos for that. Next we come to the carnal heart of the matter. In this day and age there is a concern over excess meat consumption, especially red meat. Burger King, as is its wont, takes these concerns, slashes them to pieces, heaves them into the trash bin and dances around the dumpster fire. The showcase of the F.L.C. is not just a triple serving of pork but a triple serving of smoked pork. The eater's teeth, once through the buttery flakiness, meets the firm, pleasingly leathery resistance of criss-crossed bacon slices, then encounters the stretchy net of American cheese that shields the hearty sausage patty with its knotty bits of gristle held in suspension by the oily tenderness of the finely ground pork. No sooner is this barrier breached than we now encounter folded layers of tender ham, before finally hitting bottom: the compressed final layer of Croissant. And you'll notice I haven't even mentioned the egg patty, so generic that its purpose must merely be airy textural counterpoint. So far, so triumphant, so we're now positioned to discuss the one truly strange and troubling aspect of the F.L.C., which is a counterintuitive excess of smokiness.
Too Much of a Good Thing?
It's indisputable that, without smoking, bacon would be barely a shell itself. Indeed, unsmoked bacon in Italy goes by the name of pancetta and while that ingredient has its uses, it can seem tasteless to the uninitiated in comparison to classic American smoked bacon. So we can hand out no demerits to B.K. for smokiness in the bacon. But left unconsidered was the taste impression that smoked bacon might leave when combined with ham that had also been somewhat differently smoked in combination with a sausage patty that was also smoked. Now, I regret to say that I didn't bother to taste the sausage patty all by itself, so I could be mistaken on this, but the taste impression I got was that BK had done to the sausage patty what they do to their hamburger patties, which is to say flame broil it. And while everyone loves smoked taste, the net result of smoke on top of smoke on top of smoke was overwhelming as well as more than a little artificial-seeming. If you've ever poured too much liquid smoke into your homemade barbecue sauce, you know what I mean. There's a sickly, bottled, chemical aspect to the F.L.C.'s aggressive smokiness akin to a taste stain that won't wash away. In fact, tasting the F.L.C. brought back a memory from high school that I hadn't considered for a couple decades. There was a fellow high-schooler that sat in front of me during early morning chemistry class, and he smelled immensely of garlic. There was no other possible proximate cause for the odor he gave off, for he was always immaculately groomed; his shirts were always crisply starched and brilliant white. His hair seemed to have been trimmed with razor precision almost daily. But an acrid sulphuric smell seemed to waft directly from the nape of his neck directly into my nostrils and I have since come to understand this smell as the smell of garlic that, when consumed in excess, works its way into the bloodstream and oozes out through the pores. If you eat garlic all the time, you'll never notice it. But if you wander into this cloud of human garlic fumes unawares, you will never forget it. This best describes the pervasiveness of the F.L.C.'s smoke cloud, which strikes you fairly strongly while you eat it, but even more so throughout the day as the smoke odor seems to linger in your mouth, in your nostrils, and on the fingers that have held the sandwich even after you've washed your hands. The morning after my encounter with the F.L.C., I sniffed my fingertips and somehow the smoke smell was still there. Perhaps it didn't really reside physically on my digits. Maybe it was just indelibly etched in my memory. Your individual results may vary, but I hope you're curious enough to find out and let me know.
Conclusions
The Fully Loaded Croissanwich has much to recommend it: its surprisingly flaky and rejuvenated croissant, its robust meatiness, its satisfying caloricity. But its industrial-strength smokiness is an experience that must be evaluated on an individual basis to see whether it's something your system wants to handle. One thing certain is this creation could only have come from Burger King, the most bludgeoningly insouciant fast food joint on the planet.
In keeping with the Burger King ethos, their new Fully Loaded Crossainwich is elementally that which it is and nothing else: filling the croissant roll is a nondescript egg patty, topped with ham, topped with a sausage patty, topped with cheese, topped with bacon. There is no special sauce, no slice of tomato, no herb spread, just a stomach-filling workingman's delight, a sandwich to stave off the hunger of a growing teenage boy, or to deliver into indigestive stupor a foolish man of middle age who aspires to eat as he did when he was young and unstoppable. M.F.K. Fisher warned us older men of this vaulting ambition, and to apparently little avail.
 |
| Protein Stacked on Protein Stacked on Protein Stacked on Protein |
The greatest pleasure of the Fully Loaded Croissanwich is the sensation of one's teeth plunging through it's various layers, triumphantly, like a runaway piano crashing through multiple floors of an apartment building. First they crack the patina of the surprisingly flaky croissant, which seems to have gotten a recent upgrade. I can remember when the alleged croissant was more a hamburger bun that had been mechanically crimped into a clumsy crescent shape that routinely collapsed under the structural weakening of its own internally generated steam. This time there's a real interior fluffiness and layering, so kudos for that. Next we come to the carnal heart of the matter. In this day and age there is a concern over excess meat consumption, especially red meat. Burger King, as is its wont, takes these concerns, slashes them to pieces, heaves them into the trash bin and dances around the dumpster fire. The showcase of the F.L.C. is not just a triple serving of pork but a triple serving of smoked pork. The eater's teeth, once through the buttery flakiness, meets the firm, pleasingly leathery resistance of criss-crossed bacon slices, then encounters the stretchy net of American cheese that shields the hearty sausage patty with its knotty bits of gristle held in suspension by the oily tenderness of the finely ground pork. No sooner is this barrier breached than we now encounter folded layers of tender ham, before finally hitting bottom: the compressed final layer of Croissant. And you'll notice I haven't even mentioned the egg patty, so generic that its purpose must merely be airy textural counterpoint. So far, so triumphant, so we're now positioned to discuss the one truly strange and troubling aspect of the F.L.C., which is a counterintuitive excess of smokiness.
 |
| Note the Visible Puffed Flakiness of the Croissant, Adding Needed Volumetric Fluffiness to Counteract the F.L.C.'s Thick, Weighty Meatiness |
It's indisputable that, without smoking, bacon would be barely a shell itself. Indeed, unsmoked bacon in Italy goes by the name of pancetta and while that ingredient has its uses, it can seem tasteless to the uninitiated in comparison to classic American smoked bacon. So we can hand out no demerits to B.K. for smokiness in the bacon. But left unconsidered was the taste impression that smoked bacon might leave when combined with ham that had also been somewhat differently smoked in combination with a sausage patty that was also smoked. Now, I regret to say that I didn't bother to taste the sausage patty all by itself, so I could be mistaken on this, but the taste impression I got was that BK had done to the sausage patty what they do to their hamburger patties, which is to say flame broil it. And while everyone loves smoked taste, the net result of smoke on top of smoke on top of smoke was overwhelming as well as more than a little artificial-seeming. If you've ever poured too much liquid smoke into your homemade barbecue sauce, you know what I mean. There's a sickly, bottled, chemical aspect to the F.L.C.'s aggressive smokiness akin to a taste stain that won't wash away. In fact, tasting the F.L.C. brought back a memory from high school that I hadn't considered for a couple decades. There was a fellow high-schooler that sat in front of me during early morning chemistry class, and he smelled immensely of garlic. There was no other possible proximate cause for the odor he gave off, for he was always immaculately groomed; his shirts were always crisply starched and brilliant white. His hair seemed to have been trimmed with razor precision almost daily. But an acrid sulphuric smell seemed to waft directly from the nape of his neck directly into my nostrils and I have since come to understand this smell as the smell of garlic that, when consumed in excess, works its way into the bloodstream and oozes out through the pores. If you eat garlic all the time, you'll never notice it. But if you wander into this cloud of human garlic fumes unawares, you will never forget it. This best describes the pervasiveness of the F.L.C.'s smoke cloud, which strikes you fairly strongly while you eat it, but even more so throughout the day as the smoke odor seems to linger in your mouth, in your nostrils, and on the fingers that have held the sandwich even after you've washed your hands. The morning after my encounter with the F.L.C., I sniffed my fingertips and somehow the smoke smell was still there. Perhaps it didn't really reside physically on my digits. Maybe it was just indelibly etched in my memory. Your individual results may vary, but I hope you're curious enough to find out and let me know.
Conclusions
The Fully Loaded Croissanwich has much to recommend it: its surprisingly flaky and rejuvenated croissant, its robust meatiness, its satisfying caloricity. But its industrial-strength smokiness is an experience that must be evaluated on an individual basis to see whether it's something your system wants to handle. One thing certain is this creation could only have come from Burger King, the most bludgeoningly insouciant fast food joint on the planet.
No comments:
Post a Comment
We at the Food Kingdom love comments! Leave one!