Face-to-Face With the Monster Thickburger

http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/national-news/portfolio/2008/01/13/Monster-Thickburger-Review

Face-to-Face With the Monster Thickburger
by Tucker Shaw
February 2008 Issue
Intrepid food critic Tucker Shaw tackles the biggest fast-food burgers.

As a professional critic, it’s my job to be a food snob—but an equal-opportunity one.

Which is why I found myself sitting at a table in a cheery, jam-packed Hardee's outpost in Casper, Wyoming, staring down not one but two S.U.V.-size sandwiches: a Monster Thickburger (two one-third-pound patties with bacon, American cheese, and mayonnaise on a buttered bun) and a Philly Cheese Steak Thickburger (as above, minus one patty plus grilled steak, onions, peppers, and swiss cheese).

Each was bigger than your head.

The Monster Thickburger was a thrill to behold—glistening, greasy, and plump with promise. However, at first grapple, it exceeded the range attainable by my average-size, if well-exercised, jaw. Daunted but undeterred, I squeezed the patties together and tilted my head about 15 degrees to the left, hoping a diagonal entry might be smoother.

Success was not mine, for as the irresistible force (M.T.) met the immovable object (my face), my grip failed. In one seamless, slo-mo movement, patty slipped across patty, mayo oozed, bacon flopped floorward, bun split, and the entire construction crumbled.

What I salvaged was divine—in the most disgusting way. Well-seasoned beef, appropriately gooey cheese, remarkably crispy bacon, fresh roll. Too big by half for mortal stomachs but perfect for extreme eaters. Less fulfilling, alas, was the Philly Cheese Steak Thickburger, a gilded lily that piles cheesesteak fixings—undercooked onions and shaved beef that gets stuck between your teeth—atop the burger mountain.

Carl's Jr.'s gargantuan Double Western Bacon Cheeseburger encompasses two massive patties, bacon, cheese, and onion rings. But where the M.T. seemed vital, the D.W.B.C. sagged under its own weight, more meat loaf than burger, "crispy" onion rings soggy and flaccid.

Wendy’s new go-big offering, the seductively named Baconator, slaps six strips of bacon, two patties, and two American-cheese slices onto a bun. Wendy's beef is coarsely ground, and its gimmicky square patties meaty but crumbly and sometimes underseasoned. The bacon was limp and the cheese unmelted—two deal-breakers.

Burger King recently introduced the BK Stacker, in double, triple, and quadruple sizes. But even the four-story Stacker is disappointingly compact and too greasy. Still tops on the menu, sizewise, is the Triple Whopper With Cheese. The flame-broiled patties are crispy on the edges, soft and meaty in the middle, and draped in a velvety swath of mayo. McDonald's wimpy-by-comparison menu offers the Big N' Tasty, which is neither all that big nor all that tasty.

Cardiac surgeons, expect a busy century. The era of the über-burger is upon us.