Fast Food – Page 210 – The Impulsive Buy

REVIEW: Jack in the Box Munchie Meal Brunch Burger

Marvo / October 16, 2013 / Reviews / 16 Comments

Sadly, Jack in the Box’s Brunch Burger can’t be eaten at brunch time…or at breakfast, lunch, or dinner time. It’s available during the period of day that Taco Bell once called “The Fourth Meal” and others call “sleep.”

Because it’s part of Jack’s Munchie Meal menu, it’s available only from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. So insomniacs, clubgoers, vampires, night owls, prostitutes, and Panamanian night monkeys who are near one of Jack’s 2,200 restaurants can enjoy this burger that combines products from three major farm animals: a beef patty and cheese made from cows; bacon from pigs; and a fried egg from chickens. It also has the largest fast food hash brown patty I’ve ever seen, mayonnaise, and a croissant bun.

I think the Brunch Burger is the most intriguing of the four Munchie Meal entrees, mainly because of my fascination with mysterious Mc10:35, which involves purchasing an Egg McMuffin before 10:30 a.m., waiting around for breakfast to stop being served, ordering a McDouble after 10:30 a.m., and then combining the two sandwiches. With Jack’s Brunch Burger, I can now have a breakfast-lunch hybrid sandwich available at weird hours that I don’t need to build myself.

Although it appears to be more of a breakfast sandwich than a burger, the flavor balance between the two is about equal. The beef patty’s flavor, which isn’t masked by the usual burger condiments and toppings, stands out. The smoky bacon also helps give the sandwich a nice meaty flavor. Actually, because mayonnaise and its mild flavor is the only condiment on the sandwich, it’s easy for my taste buds to distinguish the different ingredients.

The large hash brown patty provided a slightly greasy potato flavor, but the characteristic I was hoping the fried potato would bring the most, its crispiness, wasn’t there. The fried egg’s butteriness and yolk helped prevent it from being overwhelmed by the other ingredients. The American cheese melted wonderfully between the fried bacon and hash brown patty, and it did well in giving the sandwich a bit more flavor beyond its meatiness.

As a whole, I enjoyed Jack in the Box’s Brunch Burger and it’s the best Jack’s Munchie Meal entree of the three I’ve tried so far. But even though I made the point that the lack of condiments is a good thing, I can’t help but think it could’ve used some kind of sauce to make it better. Mayo is fine, but a Hollandaise sauce, which is probably a tall order for a fast food joint, would’ve been perfect for this sandwich.

If you’re an insomniac, clubgoer, vampire, night owl, prostitute, or Panamanian night monkey and you find yourself at a Jack in the Box while many of us are sleeping, give the Brunch Burger a try.

(Nutrition Facts – Munchie Meal (JITB website doesn’t provide info for just the sandwich) – 1708 calories, 951 calories from fat, 106 grams of fat, 29 grams of saturated fat, 3 grams of trans fat, 340 milligrams of cholesterol, 2993 milligrams of sodium, 1588 milligrams of potassium, 135 grams of carbohydrates, 11 grams of fiber, 9 grams of sugar, and 54 grams of protein.)

Item: Jack in the Box Munchie Meal Brunch Burger
Purchased Price: $5.00 (burger only)
Size: N/A
Purchased at: Jack in the Box
Rating: 7 out of 10
Pros: Pleasant meatiness thanks to the beef patty and bacon. There’s a hash brown in it! Lack of condiments make it easier to taste the different parts of the sandwich. Huge hash brown patty. Equal flavor balance of breakfast sandwich and burger. Not as messy as the other Munchie Meal entrees. Cheese melts wonderfully. A variety of textures.
Cons: Not available for brunch. Available when most people are sleeping. It maybe could’ve used some kind of sauce. Hash brown and bacon weren’t crispy. It’s probably super bad for you. Insomnia.

*Because I live on a rock in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, things are a bit pricier here. You’ll probably pay less than I did.

QUICK REVIEW: Jack in the Box Loaded Nuggets Munchie Meal

Marvo / October 15, 2013 / Reviews / 9 Comments

Purchased Price: $7.00*
Size: N/A
Purchased at: Jack in the Box
Rating: 5 out of 10
Pros: Cheese and ranch are a pleasant salty, creamy, and tangy combo on the nuggets. Comes with 10 chicken nuggets. Jack in the Box Tacos satisfy my taste buds more than the Loaded Nuggets. Halfsie fries. Reasonably priced meal.
Cons: I think calling these “loaded” is like calling Keira Knightley “well-endowed” because there aren’t many toppings. Lacks bacon, and whatever bacon there is gets lost in the sea on cheese and ranch. Uneven distribution of cheese and ranch. Doesn’t look like a lot in the tray it comes in. Passing out drunk and landing face first into a tray of these Loaded Nuggets. Least impressive of the four Jack’s Munchie Meal entrees.

Nutrition Facts: 1592 calories, 921 calories from fat, 102 grams of fat, 20 grams of saturated fat, 1 gram of trans fat, 113 milligrams of cholesterol, 3593 milligrams of sodium, 1394 milligrams of potassium, 118 grams of carbohydrates, 10 grams of fiber, 7 grams of sugar, and 48 grams of protein.

*Because I live on a rock in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, things are a bit pricier here. You’ll probably pay six dollars for the meal.

Fast Food Jack in the Box

REVIEW: McDonald’s Baked Sweet Potato Pie

Adam / October 15, 2013 / Reviews / 8 Comments

Do you remember the great pumpkin shortage of 2011?

If not, lucky you. Here’s a brief history lesson: Hurricane Irene stifled the pumpkin crop that summer, and aside from leaving us with a dearth of pumpkin-flavored goodies, it also pretty much crippled society. Families cut ties when informed that there would be no pumpkin pie on the Thanksgiving dinner table; teenage girls broke up with their boyfriends en masse when they didn’t come back with Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Lattes; and many a tree suffered unspeakable damage as rowdy 12-year-old kids with no pumpkins to smash took to TP’ing trees on Halloween.

Dark times, indeed.

Through it all, McDonald’s remained a beacon of hope for pumpkin lovers. For just a buck, I remember getting their warm and sweet baked pumpkin pie even when grocery stores were out of orange Libby’s cans. So if my local McDonald’s could sell pumpkin pie even amidst a worldwide shortage, why are some areas of the country instead selling sweet potato pies this fall?

After hitting up a half-dozen Baltimore-area McDonald’s I really have no idea why, but the good news for pumpkin lovers is that we probably shouldn’t care. I know sweet potato pie is something of a regular occurrence in the land of Dixie, but considering I’m about as southern as Winston Churchill, well, let’s just say it was a new and wonderful experience for me. To borrow a line from an Alabama song that hasn’t made sense until now, this is a pie that will make you shut your mouth.

It all starts with the crust. The outside of the pie looks exactly like the McDonald’s Baked Pumpkin Pie, right down to the cinnamon dusted freckles and scored top. Like the pumpkin pie, the crust is an enjoyable upgrade over most cheap, prepackaged single-serving pies available in grocery stores. There’s enough sweetness and cinnamon flavor to convince you you’re not just eating layers of shortening and flour.

I was surprised the McDonald’s Sweet Potato Pie’s filling had a creamier texture than their pumpkin pie’s, although it doesn’t have a necessarily creamier taste. In fact, if I do have one complaint (okay, two complaints considering there are no pecans), it’s that the filling lacks the richness of cream and butter and the emulsified body of a baked custard. I worried about a stringy interior or fibrous texture, but the tubular center (hooray for vegetable puns!) was stuffed with a smooth and fully cooked purée that wasn’t excessively watery or diluted.

Even though it has more grams of sugar than McDonald’s Pumpkin Pie, its sweetness is mellow and just right with a hint of molasses and some cinnamon and cloves that help to round out the filling. Dare I say it, but the sweetness discrepancy between the pumpkin pie and sweet potato pie is a testament to the sweet potato’s natural and more starchy flavor. In this application, it just works. And with much better interior filling coverage than a Pop-Tart, it doesn’t feel like you’re getting shortchanged with nothing but crust.

McDonald’s Baked Sweet Potato Pie isn’t my beloved pumpkin pie, but it’s more than an acceptable substitute. The crust is flaky with a wonderful cinnamon sweetness, while the filling has a smoother, even creamier texture than McDonald’s Baked Pumpkin Pie. It’s so good that it might make you forget about driving around to look for their Baked Pumpkin Pie.

(Nutrition Facts – 270 calories, 110 calories from fat, 12 grams of fat, 6 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 150 milligrams of sodium, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 39 grams of carbohydrates, 6 gram of dietary fiber, 16 grams of sugars, and 4 grams of protein.)

Item: McDonald’s Baked Sweet Potato Pie
Purchased Price: 98 cents
Size: 2.7 oz.
Purchased at: McDonald’s
Rating: 8 out of 10
Pros: Flaky, slightly crunchy crust with tastes of cinnamon and sugar. Plenty of sweet potato filling with molasses-type sweetness. Creamy texture. Just a buck. A crapload of Vitamin A and fiber. Regional delicacies finally understood.
Cons: Lacks taste of cream and butter. Not a true custard filling. No pecans. More calories than McDonald’s Baked Pumpkin Pie. 1980s country music songs.

Fast Food McDonald's

REVIEW: Papa John’s Mega Chocolate Chip Cookie

Matt / October 14, 2013 / Reviews / 23 Comments

Happy National Cookie Month! Break out the Oreos and snickerdoodles, because this October, we’re celebrating cookies.

Though I can find no record of the origins of this commemorative month on the Internet, it’s safe to assume its birth can be traced back to 1904, when President Theodore Roosevelt held the Nabisco Conference in Washington, D.C. There, Roosevelt mediated the signing of a peace treaty between Ambassador Pop N. Fresh of the Pillsbury Republic and Lieutenant Bertha “Mrs.” Fields of the Cookie Rebellion Army, ending a ninety year civil war. To celebrate the momentous occasion, Roosevelt signed a federal enactment declaring the month of October in honor of the newly found peace.

This year, Papa John’s will be celebrating National Cookie Month by offering to fatten you up. After you finish stuffing your face with copious amounts of grease, processed cheese, and tomato sauce, you now have the opportunity to indulge in dough and chocolate chips with the pizza chain’s new Mega Chocolate Chip Cookie. The fresh-baked, family-sized cookie regularly costs six dollars, but can be purchased for only five dollars with any pizza through October 27.

After witnessing the promotional photos of the Mega Chocolate Chip Cookie, it’s clear to me that Papa John’s is relying upon the gimmick of a cookie in pizza form. This pizza-cookie duality is familiar to me. As a child, I recall numerous kindergarteners bringing to school a “cookie pizza” for their birthdays. It was always a treat, especially when the center of the cookie failed to cook through, providing each and every tumbling tot with a yummy serving of salmonellosis. Nothing’s more entertaining than a classroom bursting with sugar-high kindergarteners suffering from explosive diarrhea.

The Mega Chocolate Chip Cookie comes packaged in a miniature pizza box. The cookie was much smaller than expected, appearing rather measly in its flimsy aluminum tin. The promotional photos had made it seem enormous, large enough to feed an entire orphanage of impoverished street urchins or a single Honey Boo Boo. What sat before me was an eight inch pan of cookie resembling a circular plate of baklava, capable of realistically feeding four to eight people of average appetite as a dessert.

As promised, the cookie was warm, even after sitting in its cardboard box during the preceding pizza feast. In both taste and aroma, the Mega Chocolate Chip Cookie reminded me of freshly-baked Nestlé Toll House cookies. Super rich from the melty chocolate chips, the cookie possessed a soft and moist interior, evoking memories of homemade chocolate chip cookies, warm out of the oven during a cold winter.

Too often, the pleasantries of a chocolate chip cookie are ruined by a rubbery, overcooked bottom. Fortunately, even the underside of the Mega Chocolate Chip Cookie was soft. The edges of the cookie were similar to brownie edges, offering a bit more of a crunch than the center.

Warm and gooey, Papa John’s Mega Chocolate Chip Cookie is delightfully sweet and somewhat addictive. However, after gobbling up my second slice of the cookie, I found myself in desperate need of a glass of milk. The Mega Chocolate Chip Cookie is extremely dense, and will potentially clump in the back of your throat when consumed devoid of cow-juice.

I also found myself in desperate need of a copy of Richard Simmons’ Sweatin’ to the Oldies. Upon reading the nutrition facts on the Papa John’s website, I was shocked to discover that a single portion of the Mega Chocolate Chip Cookie contains 4.5 grams of saturated fat, 22 percent of the daily value. By eating two-and-a-half slices, I consumed more than half of the recommended amount of saturated fat. And that doesn’t include the pizza I ate beforehand.

As a strapping and chiseled young buck, I have to watch my figure. If I’m not careful, all of those lipids could go straight to my thighs. Then, much like Shakira, my hips won’t lie. They’ll tell the complete and unadulterated truth — that I’m a lazy, overweight American whose diet consists mostly of jelly donuts and Cheetos.

Papa John’s new Mega Chocolate Chip Cookie was a tasty treat, but I can’t see myself purchasing this cookie again in the future, especially after seeing the nutrition facts. In addition, the portion seems rather small for a price tag of five or six dollars. I could easily eat this entire tray by myself on a Friday night, slumped on the sofa while watching the movie Mannequin. (I don’t care what you think. It’s a good movie.)

If I’m looking to experience a gigantic chocolate chip cookie, I’ll gladly buy a package of Toll House cookie dough and mush it all together into one giant cookie. After all, it would taste pretty much the same as the Papa John’s Mega Chocolate Chip Cookie.

If you really must, be sure to try out the Mega Chocolate Chip Cookie while the five dollar promotion is still in effect. Grab your wallets, cookieholics.

I’m looking at you, Cookie Monster.

(Nutrition Facts – 1 Slice (39 grams) – 195 calories, 80 calories from fat, 9 grams of total fat, 4.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 13 milligrams of cholesterol, 105 milligrams of sodium, 26 grams of total carbohydrates, 1 gram of dietary fiber, 17 grams of sugars, and 2 grams of protein.)

Item: Papa John’s Mega Chocolate Chip Cookie
Purchased Price: $5.00
Size: 1 cookie (8 slices)
Purchased at: Papa John’s
Rating: 7 out of 10
Pros: Warm, gooey, and soft. Slightly crispy edges. Ambassador Pop N. Fresh.
Cons: Extremely dense. Ridiculously fatty. Seems overpriced. Kindergarteners with salmonellosis.

Fast Food Papa John's

REVIEW: Jack in the Box Stacked Grilled Cheese Burger Munchie Meal

Marvo / October 9, 2013 / Reviews / 6 Comments

Above is what the Jack in the Box Stacked Grilled Cheese Burger looks like…if you’re winding down your long night of imbibing fermented beverages. Below is what the Stacked Grilled Cheese Burger looks like without beer goggles.

The Stacked Grilled Cheese Burger sounds impressive, but it’s just a grilled cheese sandwich on top of a cheeseburger. It would’ve been spectacular if another grilled cheese was used as the bottom bun but, being my own buzzkill here, that would’ve helped boost this particular Munchie Meal’s nutrition facts past the 1,679 calorie, 97 grams of fat, and 3,538 milligrams of sodium it already has.

The meal not only contains the Stacked Grilled Cheese Burger and a soft drink, it also comes with two tacos and halfsie fries (half regular and half curly) in a special Munchie Meal box, which may come in handy if your Munchie Meal decides it doesn’t want to be digested.

Even though the Stacked Grilled Cheese Burger Munchie Meal’s price is reasonable for the amount of food it offers, deciding whether or not you should purchase it is probably something you shouldn’t do drunk, like driving, taking home a stranger from a bar, dialing exes, boiling water, and sneaking into a zoo.

I’m not going to write much about the other stuff that comes with the meal because the cheeseburger/grilled cheese sandwich hybrid is more interesting than all the other parts combined. But I will say, Jack in the Box tacos have really grown on me (it’s probably the grease), I wonder if I can ask for halfsie fries any time of day (just Googled it and yes I can), and I miss stealing Jack in the Box antenna balls.

Now back to the Stacked Grilled Cheese Burger. If you’re sober, you may think it’s just going to be a cheesier cheeseburger. But if drunk, you may blurt out something like, “It’s like there’s a cheese fondue fountain in my mouth. Let’s find out if my mouth turns into a cheese fountain when I open it. Get your bread ready. Bleeeh.” Both assessments are correct.

The burger felt like a giant savory Fruit Gusher in my mouth. After biting into it, I could feel cheese oozing, but it wasn’t the American cheese which goes from melty to congealed quickly, it was the creamy white sauce. The two toppings give the burger a cheesiness that drowns out most of the other ingredients. If it weren’t for the pickles, this burger wouldn’t have any flavor beyond a whole lot of cheese, buttery buns, and a little bit of meat. Thank goodness, Jack in the Box wasn’t as stupid as me and thought it would be awesome to include a second grilled cheese sandwich.

Overall, it’s a decent burger, but it’s also one I won’t be buying again sober. Its over the top cheesiness makes my mouth feel like I’m sucking down melted Velveeta with a cheese bong. However, if inebriated, who knows what I’ll do.

(Nutrition Facts – 1 meal w/o beverage – 1679 calories, 871 calories from fat, 97 grams of fat, 28 grams of saturated fat, 3 grams of trans fat, 129 milligrams of cholesterol, 3538 milligrams of sodium, 1496 milligrams of potassium, 144 grams of carbohydrates, 12 grams of fiber, 13 grams of sugar, and 56 grams of protein.)

Item: Jack in the Box Stacked Grilled Cheese Burger Munchie Meal
Purchased Price: $7.00*
Size: N/A
Purchased at: Jack in the Box
Rating: 6 out of 10
Pros: Decent burger. Great burger if you’re an inventor named Wallace who has a dog named Gromit. Pickles help it from being just cheese, meat, cheese, bread, cheese. Good price for the amount of food it offers. Halfsie fries can be ordered any time of the day. Jack in the Box tacos. Stealing Jack in the Box antenna balls.
Cons: Burger makes my mouth feel like I’m suck down melted Velveeta with a cheese bong. Drunk dialing exes. Excessive amounts of calories, fat, and sodium for a meal eaten late at night. Drunk driving. Available during the hours of 9 p.m. and 5 a.m. only. Sneaking into a zoo drunk.

*Because I live on a rock in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, things are a bit pricier here. You’ll probably pay less than I did.

Fast Food Jack in the Box