Further to last week’s column about the McGriddle – the maple syrup-injected breakfast atrocity which is mercifully only available at Maccas in the US – Australia should brace itself for the arrival of another rogue foodstuff which makes the McGriddle look like an iceberg lettuce.
A group of culinary perverts in the employ of KFC has developed a truly astonishing “sandwich” called the Double Down. It has no bread. Instead, it’s two original recipe chicken breast fillets, with bacon, two types of cheese and the sinister-sounding “colonel’s sauce” sandwiched in between.
The only nice thing you can say about this atrocity is that at least it’s gluten-free. Other than that it’s merely the latest bit of comestible one-upmanship from a fast food industry which through its actions is really inviting government intervention of the most draconian kind.
This is what the website salon.com had to say about the Double Down, in a piece headed “KFC’s freakish all-meat sandwich, explained”:
At first glance, KFC’s newest sandwich offering, the Double Down, sounds like a gag prop from a Mel Brooks movie: It is a sandwich made almost entirely of meat—two pieces of bacon and cheese sandwiched between two cuts of chicken. The company’s Web site (which includes an ominous countdown to the Double Down’s Monday launch) helpfully explains that the sandwich “is so meaty, there’s no room for a bun!” Or as the manly men in the KFC commercial put it, “So long, bun!”
Given America’s current obsession with fighting obesity, it seems like a strange time to be premiering an all-meat sandwich with 32 grams of fat, and so far most of those covering it have been somewhat, err, baffled. The A.V. Club’s Nathan Rabin taste-tested the sandwich earlier this week with disastrous results (“each bite became a grueling endurance test ... the sandwich grew more revolting-looking with each bite”), and the folks at Eater have called it “the harbinger of the breadless apocalypse.”
Why, in God’s name, would KFC create something like the Double Down?
There are a few reasons: It’s unique, it’s shocking, it will appeal to younger generations, and people will talk about. But it’s also a product they can create without adding new elements to their restaurants—it can exist within the existing kitchen.
You can read the full Salon story here.
To my mind, the most troubling feature of the Double Down is the idea that it is simply a re-assembled version of the crisped-up chicken breasts the Colonel has lying around, tarted up by slathering some cheese and bacon in between. It launches this week, with a defibrillator available at selected restaurants.
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