By Deanne Revel
Lately, the fast food industry has added some distressing menu items to their lineups: shrimp tacos at Taco Bell, the Grilled Cheese Bacon Thickburger at Hardee’s, the Shamrock Milkshake at McDonald’s.
In response to these increasingly poetic-sounding sandwiches, we decided to review two of the choices: the KFC Double Down and Krispy Kreme’s Campfire Treats doughnuts.
We wanted to take on the new Great American meal, to revel in its grotesque greasiness, to make a statement on the extremes of fast food.
What we got, instead, was a stomach ache.
The Great American Meal
The KFC Double Down started as an April Fool’s prank on the Internet. I mean, really, a sandwich with no buns, just chicken? Isn’t that ridiculous? Who would buy that? I mean, the purpose of bread is so your fingers don’t get greasy.
To me, it’s the perfect symbol of a society that doesn’t know when to stop or take things into perspective. People are painting swastikas in refried beans in Arizona. Politicians are throwing eggs at each other in the Ukraine. Oil is leaking by the hundreds of thousands of gallons into the ocean and our solution is to light it on fire.
But anyway, back to the “sandwich.” We drove to the KFC on Skidaway. Smug yet kind of embarrassed, I ordered it, but the cashier didn’t sense it. The combo meal itself was a steep $6.99. A little pricey for me, used to the manager’s special $3.99 Big Mac meal at McDonald’s.
It’s served in a flimsy paper bag, already soaked with grease. “Caution! Hot!” reads the bag. It was. I waited, watching the grease bloom on the paper and through the napkin it rested on.
To be sure, the Double Down looked nothing like the picture I sat in front of. The Swiss and pepperjack cheese slices looked a little snotty. The grease was overwhelming. The KFC sauce a little mayonnaise-y.
But you know what? It might’ve been my gloominess or the change in barometric pressure, but it was good. I read somewhere that humans eat fatty, sugary foods to excess because, back in the Cro-magnon days, it was scarce and a great source of high-octane energy for mammoth-hunting. But now, we don’t expend the energy so it builds up in our guts.
Maybe it was the evolutionary perfection of the KFC Double Down that drew me to it. Somewhere, the caveman in me had found a food source that could feed his family for weeks. I was exhilarated. I finished my macaroni and cheese and Mountain Dew. All was well, for now.
Lying in bed later, I felt the ubiquitous “food baby,” placed a few fingers on my distended belly, imagined the grease lubricating my arteries. Was the Double Down good?
Yeah, it was. It was good with the same exhilarating sensation you get from committing a petty crime, like going down a one-way street the wrong way because it’s late and you don’t feel like going around the block.
Sure, it’s a little shameful, but who’s going to see it?
My feelings on the Double Down are mixed. I feel a twinge of Catholic guilt when I admit I liked it, but I can’t help but think of what it says about the zeitgeist of our country.
Dessert, or, Why can’t a doughnut just be a doughnut?
After the Great American meal, we needed the Great American Dessert.
The Krispy Kreme Campfire Treats seemed just ridiculous enough to qualify.
Krispy Kreme’s Campfire Treats are the new S’mores and Chocolate Fudge Cake doughnuts.
The S’mores doughnut has 390 calories. The Chocolate Fudge Cake has 370 calories.
Offering doughnuts flavored like other desserts seems like a good idea. Stuffing a doughnut with creme and topping it would chocolate and graham cracker crumbs would suggest a taste similar to a s’more, but it doesn’t.
There are several things off with the S’mores Doughnut:
- The chocolate doesn’t taste like a melted chocolate bar. It tastes like leftover chocolate icing from a chocolate glazed doughnut.
- The graham cracker crumbs are soggy and the size resembles modest croutons. Perhaps a better way to imply the graham cracker taste would be incorporating graham cracker to the doughnut batter. Throwing crumbs on top doesn’t work.
- The creme doesn’t taste like marshmallows at all. It tastes like icing. The best part about a s’more is the subtle way the marshmallow adds to the sweetness of the chocolate. In the S’more Doughnut, the icing is overwhelming. This is s’more that will put you in a diabetic coma. Drink milk with this doughnut.
But at least this doughnut was named appropriately as a “campfire treat.”
Who brings a chocolate fudge cake while camping?
Hypothetical functionality aside, unlike the S’more Doughnut, the Chocolate Fudge Cake doughnut tasted like chocolate fudge cake.
But it brings up the question again: Why modify?
Why eat a Chocolate Fudge Cake doughnut when you can eat chocolate fudge cake?
After eating this cake-tasting doughnut, I realized fast food isn’t about the food anymore. Convenience has taken a back seat to novelty. It’s just a marketing extravaganza. A quick fix to increase sales.
“Limited time only” used to motivate me to go out and buy something immediately.
But now when I see these ads, I just ask, “Oh, no. What’s next?”
What was next for us
As soon as we left Krispy Kreme, our stomachs began whining to each other. If you’ve ever heard the piercing cry of a raccoon, you know the exact pitch of our stomach growls.
We developed “the symptoms”—symptoms that required a receptacle.
