Baconator: fantasy vs reality
An advertisement for the Baconator sandwich lured Timbotron of Blogadilla into a Wendy's restaurant. But the real thing (right) didn't look much like the advertisement (left).
It was like when I found out that Santa Claus wasn’t real.Minor Travesty of the Week: The BaconatorAll the ingredients were there, but they didn’t look like the advertisement photos and they tasted like greasy sadness.
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You expected a Bacon Double Cheeseburger not to taste greasy? Because of a photo of it in its ideal state? Huh.
You are aware that food is seldom photographed in its real state, right? That it is often plastic or lacquered and such to protect it from the lights, and to make it look ideal?
I think the first clue is the the name. Anything that is a crude portmanteau of "bacon" and "terminator" is doomed to failure.
Two strips does not a Baconater make.
Are the burgers even square in the real thing?
This poor guy is gonna be disappointed throughout most of his life, I'd say about .01% of the things/people we see in advertisements are true to reality. Check this out!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hibyAJOSW8U
The burger is truly sad, but you are mistaken about Santa Claus.
Aren't there laws in the US that require advertising photos of food to be of the food and only the food? This is one of the things that has given rise to a niche profession of food photographers who can make anything look good, even though it is, in fact, the same stuff you get from the store.
With some good lighting and strategic placement of ingredients you could probably make that right-hand photo look a lot more like the left-hand photo.
Wouldn't taste any better though.
Yes, Wendies burger patties are square. They never cut corners.
boing boing is a very poor source for any fast-food related news. i doubt any of the editors ever eat the stuff.
besides, didn't you all see Falling Down? didn't you learn that the picture of the burger never ever looks like the real thing?
"See this is what I'm talking about!"
Since when fast food burgers ever look like their advertised counter part?
What wasn't mentioned in the article is that Wendy's has raised their prices AND decreased the size of their burgers dramatically. Think Whitecastles - but only in terms of patty size.
Each patty is actually about 3 inches by 3 inches instead of the previous 4 or more. That's 7.6 cm vs 10.6 cm for the more progressive folks. That's a reduction of 50% in the amount of beef.
Interestingly enough, that's not stated in the advertisement OR at the place you order the burger at. Caveat Emptor, as usual.
While I'm not fond of Carl's Jr's lackadaisical staff, they at least are keeping the burger size the same while raising the price. However, I can easily get a sit down meal for what they charge now.
Nowadays, Red Robins seems like a great bargain.
Did Wendy's increase the thickness of their patties at all? The old patties were too big, IMO, as well as too thin. They'd do well to use smaller but fatter patties.
Red Robin does have good burgers, but like I told the waitress last time I was there, if I'm paying 9 bucks for a burger you need to keep those all-you-can-eat french fry baskets full!
An article about Bacon that hit BoingBoing before Scalzi snapped it up?
Did someone just turn on the LHC?
Not surprising at all - almost all restaurants ('real' ones and fast food chains) have warnings on their menus that the actual food you receive may not appear the same as the picture
Once, when quite young and much poorer, I stood in a fast food joint complaining until the manager made my sandwich look like the photo. He explained that they do indeed move everything to the front to give one a true image of everything that is in the sandwich. Today I would just be tasered and eating dinner on the counties dime.
You know... I'm pretty sure having that much differance between the ad and reality, in terms of the quantity of bacon, is illegal.
Otherwise, the differance isn't remotely surprising to anyone who has ever seen burgers at any fast-food place.
#10 - Bonus points for use of Falling Down clip.
Chris: "Each patty is actually about 3 inches by 3 inches instead of the previous 4 or more. That's 7.6 cm vs 10.6 cm for the more progressive folks. That's a reduction of 50% in the amount of beef."
Huh?
Where's the beef?
I'm surprised that I'm the first one to comment along these lines but I'm pretty sure this is the reality one must face upon ordering a "Baconator":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congestive_heart_failure
"...they tasted like greasy sadness." I think the post deserves to be boing boinged for that description alone.
#2 mgfarrelly
I respectfully disagree.
A portmanteau of "Bacon" and anything is tremendous enough, but throw in "Terminator" and you have a bona fide cash cow.
I got up and drove to Wendeys the second I saw the commercial.
In fairness, the Bacon Quadruple Bypass Stack from BK is better.
The baconator's "six strips" of bacon are not six FULL SIZE strips. If you note in the left image, they don't really overhang the patties. The two full length strips on the right is probably the same amount of bacon. I ordered one of these death plates and was really turned off as well - I love a big greasy burger, but this was just too soggy with the combination of the grease from the grade z quality beef, grade z quality bacon, and fake cheese each contributing its own vast quantity of vaguely disgusting off flavors. Too much.
I have yet to visit any establishment where the food comes out as pictured or advertised.
Big Macs, Whoppers, Chik-fil-A and any other sandwiches with a bun: always lopsided and the main item never covers the entire bottom of the bun
Quiznos: Never seem as fully stuffed as their posterized counterparts
Pizza Hut/Papa John's/etc: ridiculously wide crusts around the edge so they can skimp on the toppings even more
Instead of a $700b bailout, or posting calorie counts on menus, what we need is a "this-is-what-you-will-actually-get" statute
When I worked at Burger King (shudder) I never made a lopsided burger, and I always distributed the ingredients symmetrically or uniformly. Still didn't look like the picture, but it didn't look like slop either. Tasted better too, since you actually got the correct quantity of sauces in each bite (they, being the primary carriers of flavor, are critical to getting $1 worth of quality out of the relatively flavorless meat).
Actually, assembling burgers was a fairly satisfying job at that point in my life (high school senior). The work wasn't mentally taxing (good, as it left some brain juice for academic work), but it gave the physical challenge of correctly and precisely assembling product quickly whilst managing the par levels in the steamer doing dishes and keeping the work area neat. Good times. Still can't eat the fried food though.
At first I thought the Baconator was a wondrous device that would automatically add bacon to any foodstuff.
Then based on the image pair I thought: maybe it's an AI-driven image analysis service that transforms advertisement photos of baconated foodstuffs into photos of their real-world equivalent.
Imagine my disappointment that it is merely a sandwich.
I dream of the day when mos burger takes over the world
http://www.mos.co.jp/english/
really, i do, i can almost taste it
Maybe that's what the Wendy's suits were going for?
Personally, I love the taste of greasy sadness.
Give me a baconator, but hold the hamburger patties! Oh, and add extra bacon!
@#24
The world would be a better place if all fast food employees put as much thought and care into their work as you did.
It would also be a fatter, gassier place, but still better.
I'm going to go eat one of these right now. Hooray for poorly put together bacon burgers!!!
I remember Moss burger. Curiously, they didn't taste like moss.
Fast food is bad for you. Cook at home. Don't eat burgers.
Mark, your posts frequently mock FAST FOOD and FAST FOOD VENDORS. (No I don't buy for a minute that this post is solely about the INGREDIENTS and the GREASY SADNESS. You keep doing things like this too frequently for it not to be about FAST FOOD.) How you must hate IT; you sneer so openly and so frequently. It's also really hypocritical when liberal, supposedly open-minded people are anything but when it comes to FAST FOOD. I thought this blog was better than this, I'm disappointed.
As a FAST FOOD EATER I knew I didn't belong here but for the most part I thought I could be left in peace- but this is getting to be a pattern, and it's getting really old. Whatevers- it's your blog, not mine! I know where the exit door is!
"It was like when I found out that Santa Claus wasn’t real.
"All the ingredients were there, but they didn’t look like the advertisement photos and they tasted like greasy sadness."
Sounds exactly like some of my experiments in online dating. :(
It contains no nutrition for the cell!
The baconator is awesome. I feel like such an American each bite I take. I only wish they put one of those little US flag toothpick thingies in there to both hold it together better and to remind you that you're fighting terrrrism by eating it.
does FAST FOOD EATER has A SAD?
Mark: How dare you make fun of Christians with this post! Just because Jesus was able to replicate the loaves & fishes to look exactly like the photo, doesn't mean... Wait. Nevermind.
Damn, now that I refresh upon posting, I see HEYPAL@32 beat me to it.
Suddenly I don't think I am going to eat lunch today.
You know what people? You want something done right, you have to do it yourself. I had an awesome bacon cheeseburger for dinner last night. My wife and I cooked 'em together. Uncured applewood smoked bacon, sharp provolone cheese and a grassfed ground chuck patty. Add some lettuce and mayo--real mayo--and it's pure awesome.
Also, I'm surprised no one brought this up yet, but if you're going to call it the baconator, it better be this.
HeyPal @32: I applaud you - I'm unable to tell whether you are satirising, or are serious.
Dang. I had been planning to try one of these out just from the name alone. Disappointment reigns.
I'm thinking this has something to do with the franchise in question. There's not enough EXTRA bacon on a Baconator to really justify the price difference from just a 1/2 lb with bacon, but there is definitely more than just two sad little rashers when I get it from my local Wendies.
Although the burgers are often crooked, and they are indeed greasy, I think the taste of a properly constructed Baconator is better described as greasy, SALTY sadness.
However, it's a two-patty, extra-bacon cheeseburger from a chain that uses ugly beef and freeking cheeze wiz in some of their burgers (bacon mushroom melt, I'm looking at you).
If you expected anything BUT three different flavours of grease on a bun, you've never eaten at Wendies before.
Side Note: I'm still demanding a fast-food chain that will put a fried egg on my bacon cheese burger so I can finally achieve pure, heart-stopping, cholesterol badness to-go.
As is, I either have to go to a sit-down restaurant and confuse the waitress and the cook to get one, or do it at home.
I can't really look it up right now, but there was a very interesting case a few years ago where a fast food chain was actually sued for false advertising over using smaller-sized hand models in order to make the food itself look similar - IIRC, in GB, there are actually fairly strict requirements as far as what's advertised vs. what you receive.
I do not walk into a fast food restaurant and expect to receive my food looking as picturesque as it does in the ads.
That being said, i think in this particular case the guy just got ripped off by a lazy employee. I have only a little shame in admitting my consumption of fast food. And i do so now to say this: I've had several baconators and all of them have had a happy medium between the two pictures on display. I would say maybe 6 or 7 strips of bacon.
...i feel like i should be getting paid for saying this.
Hate to say it but I just had one almost 48 hours ago. It looked close to the picture on the left.
Why is this on boingboing?
If you remove all the bacon strips, would it be a Brazilian Burger?
That's a sorry-looking burger alright. Why didn't he complain about it to the manager?
I tried a baconator once, just to see how it was. It looked much better than what's linked here, but it really wasn't anything special. Fast food restaurants use such thin, flavorless bacon and shitty, low-rent cheese substitute that the burger just ends up tasting like any other bacon cheeseburger. The only difference is the somewhat inflated price.
If I'm going to eat fast food, I prefer either Arby's or Steak & Shake. If.
Wow, what a story. "It doesn't look like the picture!" That's editorial content at its freshest.
What's next? Newsflash: American lager beer is colorless and tastes almost like water.
Yea. Viva, bloggers. Keep bypassing those traditional hoity-toity media outlets and bringing us the _real_ stories.
Memo to self: Think up snappy way to draw analogy between blogs and the Hoveround power chair.
#33
Your dates tasted like greasy sadness? *shivers*
it doesn't matter which wendy's 'restaurant' i've ever been to, i always have to re-assemble the sandwich...'contents may shift in transit'
Jerril,
Fatburger has the fried egg option, with no drive-thru does it qualify as "fast food"?
Bacon+Terminator = Baconator... with a name like that I expect the burger to kill me with bacony goodness, unfortunately(?) that isn't going to happen.
I had one of those this weekend. Honestly, I enjoy having a burger like that from time to time. I used to get one at Jack in the Box, but they don't have those around here, so I have one at Hardee's about once every six months or so. Basically, bread + two burger patties + two pieces of cheese + bacon = greasy goodness. Some of the places throw a little mayonnaise on there as well, which just adds to the greasiness.
I was disappointed with the Wendy's Baconator(TM). The problem wasn't the meat, which was fine, or the cheese, which was melted American cheese (cheap cheese, but not fake cheese like someone suggested). It wasn't even the bacon although there could have been a little more of that, since their strips are really thin. The problem was that they put ketchup on it. I could taste the flavor that I like, but the ketchup kept threatening to overwhelm it, and sometimes succeeding. If I wanted to taste ketchup, I could've just eaten ketchup for a lot less money and calories. I bought the Baconator(TM) because I wanted to taste beef, cheese, and bacon. The ketchup just threw the whole thing off.
Ah, see, your problem here is that you were not drunk and on the floor when eating your Baconator. That's the only way one can have a Wendy's.
"Two strips does not a Baconater make."
...This is true. I get the Baconator every time I eat at Wendy's, and it's usually 6 strips. You got shorted, and you should have taken it back. Also, it's obvious they didn't put the cheese on right away, because it's not melted. That burger probably sat for a while.
...On a side note, if you *REALLY* want to see a burger that's not only overpriced but doesn't come anywhere near what the photos show, check out anything from Red Robin. I did an OMBlog piece on this last year, and gave a very accurate review of just how lousy the place is. I'd rather eat at Fuddruckers, and that place also sucks.
OMG, that is so sad! I remember when this happened to me too, when I was four.
Count the strips of bacon in the ad photo. I see about six vs. the two actually on the burger.
Listen, I've had enough of these to say, in spite of their looks, they're totally delicious. Anytime pig and cow are mixed = delicious.
I had this same exact experience. I do not know why I was so naive to think the Baconator would be so much better than other fast food burgers. It was a let down in every possible way. I've never been back to Wendy's since.
@32 HeyPal, I'm ruling that an inside pitch. lol
I really don't care what it looks like.
It is still delicious.
Yes, really, I like the Wendy's burgers. And this is burger, and then more burger, and some bacon and cheese added for flavor, with a bun thrown over it all in a valiant effort to provide it with a modicum of decency.
And unlike #53, I have no problem with plenty of ketchup.
As a bacon lover, this image shakes my faith in humanity to its very core.
That's what you get for going to Wendy's instead of Carl's Junior.
i've been a vegetarian for almost twenty three years, and i just read sixty three comments about a bacon cheeseburger. boingboing, i salute you.
"...they tasted like greasy sadness." I think the post deserves to be boing boinged for that description alone.
Isn't that how Patton Oswalt described the KFC Famous Bowl?
@ #65 - close it seems - he describes it as a "...failure pile in a sadness bowl." I wasn't familiar with Oswalt prior to your comment - thanks for the info, ADAMNVILLANI.
Fast food : Ads vs Reality
http://www.thewvsr.com/adsvsreality.htm
Shows you the ad picture and actual picture of some fast foods, very interesting :)
They also have a baconator review, more positive than this i think ;)