Portable Delicacies
2/17/04
"Burger King® has a hit on its hands!" -Chicago Tribune
"The bread is the best part, bread can make or break a sandwich and these baguettes are just what the doctor ordered." -Houston Chronicle
First, let me express disbelief: The Chicago Tribune, serving almost 2 million readers daily* in America's third largest metropolis, has a fast-food critic on staff? Is there really so little going on in Chicago that the Trib feels compelled to devote a dozen column inches to the latest Burger King roll-outs? Is this critic locally known, and do Windy City fast food managers ply him/her with a free supersize fry and pop in hopes of getting the coveted two-greasy-thumbs-up for their latest tacos, burgers, and breakfast sandwiches? ("Well, we don't usually do this, but for you, we'll let you have a shake instead of a cola.") I imagine stoner college journalists across the country thinking, "Aaaaah, now THAT'S a job I could sink my teeth into."
Second, The Houston Chronicle, George W's home town, is hyping a sandwich made on French bread? (You can try to sneak it by as a "baguette", BK, but "baguette" is a French word whose literal meaning is, "thinly disguised French bread.")** Be careful folks: If you get the baguette and the french fries, then for your own safety, order a Coke. An inquiry to the clerk regarding the availability of Evian bottled water is sure to log your transaction in a database somewhere in Washington DC.
Overlooking these minor grievances, the Burger King advertisement featuring these accolades led to my realization that OSF has been negligent to its readers in the realm of affordable culinary recommendations, leaving our faithful adrift in a sea of fast food choices with nothing to guide them but incessant jingles and mere geographical convenience. I apologize on behalf of all of the writers. I believe I speak for all of us when I express our heartfelt regret---no, dismay---that you have been helplessly subjected to laps full of fabric-staining, barely-identifiable sauces from your Carl's Jr.® burger; that you have had to ponder strenuously in your efforts to discern the ingredients of the Burger King onion ring dipping solvent; that you have been forced to consult with the barely-qualified help at Wendy's® when sorting through the complex syntactical rhetoric used to delineate*** The Single, The Double,The Triple; or worse, that you have pulled into one of the amazingly efficient parking lots of McRestaurants nation-wide, only to drive away hungry because you weren't fortunate enough to live in Chicago or Houston. and
Well, dear readers, the people of Chicago will no longer be the drive-thru literati. Residents of Houston will no longer be able to awe you with references to "the piquant sapidity of the condiments", as you will know that what they are really saying is, "Yum, good ketchup." Read on, and bon appetite.
The McChicken Sandwichtm brought to you by McDonalds®
Such delicious harmony for such a paltry pittance---Ray Kroc, you rock.
At 99 cents, this offering wins the fast food trifecta: cheap, easy, and inexpensive. And while the sum of the parts is a savory delight, an examination of its elements demonstrates how this motley collection of ingredients manages to transcend function and attain a near-ideal aesthetic form.
The Bun: As has been noted in the Houston Chronicle, the bread can make or break a sandwich. However, in this case, a third option is explored, bread as a simple vehicle for the other ingredients, a sort of comestible napkin. This sesame seeded bun (not to be confused with the sesame seed bun of "Big Mac" song fame, which is a tri-level, edible-architectural marvel) seems to have no flavor of its own, and yet that has never interrupted my enjoyment of the sandwich.
The Lettuce: no foofy Romaine or Butterleaf here, folks: this is old-school iceberg lettuce. Underappreciated as what our Southeastern American neighbors call "a fixin'", lettuce is given a strong supporting role in this epicurious endeavor, and its crisp contribution to the McChicken has not received the national press that it deserves. Perhaps it's because the McChicken is made ahead of time then stored interminably under heat lamps, the result being lettuce of unappetizing translucence with the gastronomic resilience of over-cooked rice noodles. This reviewer avoids this issue by ordering said sandwich as a "grill" (to use the parlance of the industry), "with extra lettuce." By doing so, I occasionally get a fresh made sandwich, though at least as often, it's clearly just a regular heat-lamp-lolling premade, the employees apparently expecting (correctly) that it will not be discovered until I am pointed away from their establishment and in the flow of 35 mile-per-hour traffic. But the occasional laziness of a minimum-wage fast-food employee should not negate the value of this seemingly-nutritional (though in fact near-nutrionless) sandwich addition.
The Mayo: I'm not going to talk about mayo. There is no condiment that elicits a wider array of consumer reactions, and certainly none that rivals mayo for its ability to induce queasiness. I don't even like hearing the word "mayonnaise", which upon cursory examination appears to be a derivation of root words "malaise" and "yawn". Let's simply say this: The mayo is fine, and it cannot be thanked enough for its ability to keep the lettuce in place.
The Deep-Fried Chicken: For years I have enlightened the curious by describing the metaphorical entree portion of this sandwich as "a big, Cajun McNugget." For those of you who have long avoided the fine fare at Mickey D's, there used to be a regular McChicken, then there was the Cajun McChicken, but for some reason the two could not coexist, perhaps because the Chicago Tribune failed to illuminate the finer culinary differences and 2 million daily McChicken eaters were lost.(Those Chitown managers should have been more proactive with the free supersize upgrades.) Now, there is but the one, adjusted to a zest midway between its two poultry-based parents.
However, I cannot help but notice that McDonald's is bragging endlessly about it's new "all white meat" chicken nuggets, and the McChicken is the elephant in the room about which no one will speak. I am neither a bon vivant when it comes to my cuisine, nor a fool when it comes to my curiosity, so I do not ask the question, "Well, how accurate was the old "parts is parts" accusation?", fearing that there is no answer that will not cause me to regret the question. After all, the 99 cent price tag clearly does not include rights to a nutritional inquisition; Just eat your food and be glad you aren't collapsing from hypoglycemic shock.
Now stack all of those things up and you have the delicious (well, if you stretch the definition of the word slightly), nutritious (well, there's nothing slight about that stretch) McChicken Sandwich! If McDonald's is looking for a sound byte to use in their next ad campaign, here it is:
"Despite everything, I still eat them." -Olympian Shadow Farm
(At least that's better than what they said in The New York Times.)
(Views expressed herein are the opinion of the author, and may not reflect the editorial position of OSF staff, most of whom prefer Wendy's.)
* Source: Chicago Tribune
** that is not actually what it means, but using the "freedom fries" nonsense as a precedent, does it matter what it actually means?
*** It should be noted that despite the noted power of this word to cause the fairer sex to swoon, I use it with no such amorous intentions here. (Had that been my intention, I would have worked "effervescent delineation" into the sentence.)
©2004 wpreagan
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