Burgers for Breakfast - The Diner Experience Recreated

Burger King Battles Back
As with many industries, success in fast-food depends on hype, momentum, seizing people's imagination, and of course giving the eating public what they want.  McDonald's proved this recently with all-day breakfast.  The novelty of noshing on pancakes or an Egg McMuffin at lunchtime, the lure of "getting away with something" by buying a cheaper breakfast item rather than a relatively pricey burger-based combo, the frisson of individuality that one experiences from eating one mass-produced item while everybody else consumes another; all these things have rallied the Golden Arches from the doldrums, and their revenues are surging based on first quarter earnings reports. Naturally, Burger King wants in on the action.

So why doesn't Burger King just copy McDonald's and offer all-day breakfast?  Well, breakfast at Burger King just isn't as popular as it is at McDonald's, where morning is the strongest part of the day, sales-wise.  People just don't have a jones for a Croissanwich in the noontime heat, never mind French Toast Sticks.  Managing the logistics of all-day breakfast would represent a sizeable investment in processes and equipment retooling that Burger King likely would never recoup.  So, how to steal a little bit of McDonald's thunder on the cheap, offering a popular item at an unexpected time of day?  The question practically answers itself: burgers for breakfast.

No cheerful backlit sign, no warmly glowing windows welcome the breakfast visitor to Burger King. The dominant mood is morose as our breakfast experiment begins.

The atmosphere is equally depressing once inside as the cranked-up flatscreen blares the morning news to no one.

My Own Private Idaho Potatoes
If you live near a Burger King that happens to run a busy breakfast business then your experience may vary, but my Burger King is situated in an open-air food court of sorts, a huge asphalt expanse off a highway exit ramp, that's home to about seven different fast-food chains that serve the commuter crowd that works at surrounding businesses.  Most workers don't arrive before 8AM, so both of the times I had burgers for breakfast, I was the only one in the restaurant.  The staff hasn't been exactly annoyed to see me, but they've certainly been surprised, even more so when I've ordered burgers.  The corporate office may be pushing this menu option, but employees seem to find it a bit eccentric.  Both times, they've politely warned me that there will be a wait since the burger would have to be made-to-order.  As you'll see, though, this is quite the blessing in disguise.  When you're the only one in the restaurant, the order takers and the cooks are fairly unstressed and are able to provide a welcome amount of individual attention.

Once you place your order and are informed of the delay, you're given your beverage, in my case black coffee, asked if you want hash browns or fries (I chose fries), and simply told to take a seat and wait.  As you can see in the pictures above, it can be a bit bleak, and if I were a more of an assertive and demanding personality, I might have asked that the television, set at full volume, I imagine, so that the staff can hear it in the back, be turned down.  Setting that aside though, the time passes fairly quickly as you read your morning paper or, in my case, a dystopian military techno-thriller.   When I sat down, the occupying forces of a Kazakh battalion in the American South was digging an all-terrain vehicle out of the mud.  By the time our heroes had begun their ambush of the Kazakhs, my freshly prepared Whopper and straight-from-the-fryer potatoes had arrived, delivered right to my table.  On the second visit, I was called to the counter to pick up the order, but in both cases the experience was more like being in a lonely diner off the interstate and less that of interfacing with the food-industrial complex.  The whole thing was poignantly civilized, a bit of culinary-philosophical meditation at the edge of the world.  Yea, ok, but how were the burger and fries?

In the slowly gathering morning light, black coffee and a Whopper with cheese (fries obscured by the thick and copious wrapping paper) await consumption.

The Early Bird Catches the Fresh Lettuce and Tomato
From the very first bite, the benefits of ordering a burger with lettuce and tomato early in the morning became clear.  Think about it: most restaurants do their prep work right when they open; at no time will the lettuce be crisper than when it has just been taken out of the walk-in refrigerator, its cells plumped with the water in which it's been rinsed, before the heat of the kitchen and the passage of time has even started to turn it limp.  At no point will the tomatoes taste fresher than right after they've been sliced, probably only an hour earlier.  Even the bun is at its freshest, for it only left the plastic storage bag minutes before when the cook opened it for the unexpected order.  You can even see this in the picture above, as the burger's posture is high and erect, steam having not caused any component to sag.  This is the Whopper as it was meant to be, with the hot stuff piping hot and the cool stuff cool and crisp.

The interior of the bun is fluffy, the June tomatoes are thick and ripe, the crisp lettuce is piled high, and the beef is flame broiled.  What would you rather munch on between sips of black coffee, this or a limp and stodgy Croissanwich?

The fries too could not have been better, for they were fried to order, slid into their holster the moment the doneness indicator on the fryer chirped.  It's worth noting that these are the recently redesigned fries, thicker cut and without much, if any, coating so that they boast a delicate crispness on the outside and fluffy moist starchiness within.  On both visits I also noticed that they were minimally salted, allowing me to season them to my preference with salt and a sprinkle of black pepper, just as I used to do at the Tastee 29 Diner on Route 29 in Fairfax, VA.  Completing the diner experience was the black coffee, which interacts with the brown caramel notes of broiled meat and golden fried potatoes in a different way than soft drinks.  As I alternated, in pensive solitude, between bites of fresh custom-seasoned fries, strong coffee, and a hearty but garden-fresh burger, it occurred to me how rare this private, intimate experience was.  It was a feeling entirely new in a fast-food restaurant and one that could become addictive for as long as BK decides to keep this experiment going.

Because the fries are thick-cut, you get more real potato taste than usual, and they stay hot longer because of the lower ratio of surface area to interior space.  Finally, because they are very modestly salted, it's possible to season them to taste with just the right amount of salt and pepper.

Conclusions
Burgers for breakfast are the best-kept secret going in fast food right now, and I encourage anyone with memories of eating burgers at Denny's or a diner at 3AM to activate nostalgia before what I predict will be low profitability prompts BK to pull the plug on this venture.  Don't doubt it til you've tried it.