There seems to be another fast food item that's been blowing up the corners of the internet that I inhabit, so I had to take my crack at it. I purposely didn't read anything about this before I came into it, just a few pretty non-descript headlines saying that it exists. So I came into this with an open mind. Burger King has actually introduced three of these melts. I got the original, as that only seemed right. There are also bacon and spicy options. I'm not entirely sure what goes into the spicy version and I'm not super motivated to find out, frankly. So, if that's your jam, you'll have to do your own investigation. As far as the original goes, the BK site says it "features two slices of toast, layered with 1/4 lb. of flame-grilled beef, melty American cheese, caramelized onions and stacker sauce." That is their capitalization, by the way. I guess their stacker burgers with their version of special sauce is generic now. If you don't know, the stacker sauce is essentially the same thing as the sauce on a Big Mac, which is essentially jazzed-up Thousand Island dressing. I don't think that comes as a surprised to anybody at this point, but I just wanted to point it out for completeness' sake. If you're wondering, there is an official McDonald's recipe from the 60's that is floating around the internet if you're curious. Anyway, enough about McDonald's. I'm sure I've already mentioned them far too much in an article about Burger King. As far as this sandwich goes, I thought it was pretty good, though I found it awfully sweet. I get why the sauce was included here, it probably would have been too dry otherwise, but I did find the sweet from the sauce paired with the sweet from the caramelized onions was a bit much. Not enough to ruin it, but definitely enough to wish I could dial it back. I don't have a better suggestion, but I'm sure Burger King has some chefs somewhere that might have another idea. That said, I'm usually not a huge fan of onions. I handle them much better these days than I did when I was younger, but they still aren't my favorite. A patty melt kinda needs those onions by definition, though, and I didn't mind them here. They were well caramelized, no raw ones slipped through. So I appreciated the effort here, and I appreciated that they went with toast instead of putting it on a regular bun. That's another must for a patty melt for me. It was good, buttery toast, too. Many times the best thing you can say about fast food bread is you didn't notice it, but here it was actively helping the situation. The most baffling, and in many ways the most disappointing, thing was the meat itself. It tasted fine. If you've had Burger King patties before, you know what they taste like. The words flame broiled probably give you the faint taste of BK alone. So that wasn't really the problem, but I think I would dispute calling this a Whopper. It doesn't use Whopper patties, instead opting for two Whopper Jr. patties, which I believe are also used for their regular burgers. How can you call it a Whopper without using a Whopper patty? Seems like false advertising to me. I don't really know why they went that route. Was it too difficult to find toast that size? I don't know, but it was the first thing I noticed and the thing I kept thinking about the whole time I at the thing. So, end of the day, the Whopper Melt was okay. Not great, it could use some better balancing. But it's fine. But it's also not a Whopper, and I think that's its greatest sin. Comments are closed.
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