Why Did I Eat This? Burger King's Mac 'n' Cheetos

Down with the King

I live an inevitable food truth: If it's 50% Cheetos and 50% macaroni and cheese, there's a 100% chance I'll eat it. Enter Burger King's Mac n' Cheetos, my self-fulfilling prophecy of sadness and sodium.

First came the sponsored post. Then, a straightforward #MACnCHEETOS hashtag. Finally, I'm making actual phone calls to BK locations in and around Philadelphia* to find out whether any of them are holding. Marketing really does work (at least on my own feeble mind).

And so there I was on a Friday evening, racing toward the local Burger King with my son in tow, who also happened to be stoked to eat a few neon orange mozzarella sticks (this makes me proud beyond belief). Rather than go full meal, we ordered nothing but the Mac n' Cheetos, lest we pollute our palates with flame broil.

$2.49 plus tax gets you five warm cheese puffs fresh out of the microwave. While we waited for them to cool, we scrolled through Snapchat geofilters until we got to the site/product specific "YASS CHEEEESE!"overlay (the marketing onslaught is worse than that time in Game of Thrones when all the dudes from Ramsay Bolton's army surrounded Jon Snow's army and then did that badass thing where they slowly closed their circle of spears whilst hiding behind shields), then we dug in.

Note the absence of Cheetos powder on the napkin

The outer shell, according to the BK product website, is covered with crispy Cheetos flavor. I didn't realize you could "cover" something with flavor, but I am neither a scientist nor a copywriter. Regardless of how it's accomplished, the consumer is rewarded with not having to deal with the dreaded Cheetofinger**. The innards were nice and creamy (like that one weird bite of a fried soft shell crab but without the briney poop taste), and the overall experience was a success in that I wanted to eat at least three or four orders. Seriously, if these were passed h'ors doeuvres (and they probably should be), I'd stand by the kitchen door and obliterate the tray before they made their way out to the crowd. I'm probably in the minority by saying this, but they might even have a slight edge over Taco Bell's Doritos Locos Taco.

And in case you're wondering, the answer is yes, I ordered a Whopper meal following the taste test. Please feel free to judge me. Buen provecho.


*I actually only made one phone call.
*An all-time favorite "Would You Rather?" of mine is, "Permanent Cheetos residue on your fingers? Or always (even in blistering July heat) having to wear a black suede jacket with fringe?". 

The Worst Shit I Ate All Year

Wow.  What a deplorable showing in the blog post department this year.  I won't make excuses (twitter), but I will agree with Che Gruyere's father Jim that "Having two kids is like having three."  Better words have never been spoken.  Still, judging by my waistline and the fact that I currently fit into only two of the twelve pairs of pants in my closet, I must have eaten some pretty bad shit in 2011.  It's a shame that much of it went undocumented, but it makes it easy to put together a Top 10.  Better yet, here's a Top 5, because I barely made it past that number in total.  Buen provecho.

5. Manhattan Burger, Tokyo Airport McDonald's: This went undocumented on Fidel, but I did put a video on YouTube. Happy to be alive after a massive earthquake, I unhappily scarfed this sandwich down while the aftershocks continued to taunt my own insignificance.
4. BK Minis, Burger King: These sliders should be knocked out of the park, couldn't get past the catcher, or any other baseball analogy apropos for saying that we'd be happier without ever knowing they existed.
3. Big 'n' Toasty Breakfast Sandwich, Dunkin' Donuts: An annual offender, Dunkin' Donuts sold me on the idea of a fast food fried egg.  It was a lie bigger than the moon landing and the creation story combined.
2. Durian Chips: Almost missing its 2011 eligibility, it was a Christmas miracle that I could stomach this.  The dehydrated version of this foul fruit has all the fart-tastic qualities of the fresh version.
1. Ghost Pepper Steak, Jake's Sandwich Board: This was actually pretty good, but the ensuing havoc it wreaked on my insides was really really bad.

Why Did I Eat This?

By now, you've probably seen the latest Burger King commercial advertising their version of the slider, the BK Mini.  If you haven't, it's basically a montage of people stealing other people's food, the food being a miniature hamburger or chicken sandwich.  Burger King's thought process was probably, "These things taste so good that you'll want to steal them."  Philosophically, however, it is proof once again that humans are dicks.  Alas, marketing makes me curious, and a rushed lunch the other day presented the perfect opportunity excuse for me to see whether or not these sliders were theft-worthy.

At $4.99, the value meal includes a 4-pack of the Minis.  I wanted two chicken and two beef, but you can't mix and match, so I opted for beef.  When I got the box, which was about the size of a McDonald's Big Breakfast container, I realized why.  The meat and buns are attached in fours and you need to rip them apart.  You could probably leave the whole thing intact, but then you would just be eating an enormous burger.  Not necessarily a bad thing, but when you're stuffed in the driver's seat of a parked car blasting both the AC and XM's Hair Nation channel, you don't really need the extra attention.

And how did they taste? Definitely not theft-worthy.  Without the extra shit that typically goes on a Whopper (the Minis are just ketchup, pickles, and cheese if you want it) you get the standard BK artificially flavored flame-broiled taste, but not much more.  I also caught a bad batch of fries, making the already crappy BK fries that much worse.  I'll probably go back for the chicken Minis, but in the meantime, I'll get my slider fix at White Castle.  Buen provecho.