Johnny America

 

Re­view: Wendy’s “Ba­cona­tor”

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Wendy’s “Ba­cona­tor” sand­wich is a culi­nary fail­ure. Com­mer­cials ad­ver­tis­ing the burg­er boast of its “six strips of ba­con piled high atop two fresh, nev­er-frozen beef pat­ties,” but while Wendy’s de­liv­ers the beef, up­on first un­wrap­ping the sam­ple sand­wich this re­view­er was left won­der­ing where they’d con­cealed the ba­con. I lift­ed up the warm kaiser roll and found six translu­cent strips of pork, each about the width of a piece Scotch-brand ‘Mag­ic tape’ and the thick­ness of 20 lb. copy pa­per. These six frag­ments of re­con­sti­tut­ed ba­con were set in a thin mor­tar of ketchup and may­on­naise, the on­ly stan­dard condi­ments on this dou­ble 14 pounder with dou­ble cheese — there’s no pick­le un­less you or­der it, no onions un­less you ask. The Ba­cona­tor is con­cep­tu­al­ly in­trigu­ing: like what the Dogme 95 move­ment did for cin­e­ma and Spoon does with rock­’n’roll, the Ba­cona­tor for­mu­la seems as though it will strip the ex­tra­ne­ous and leave just the essence of a ba­con cheese­burg­er: two hot pat­ties, two slices of cheese, a thick lay­er of ba­con, and just enough condi­ments to bind ba­con, burg­er, and bun. The for­mu­la might’ve worked if Wendy’s in­clud­ed enough ba­con to com­pete with the burg­er, but six tiny pieces do not war­rant the ‘-na­tor’ suf­fix; in this re­view­er’s opin­ion they bare­ly jus­ti­fy the gener­ic ‘ba­con cheese­burg­er’. Con­tem­plate the word “Ba­cona­tor” as if it were one of Pla­to’s Forms. “Ba­cona­tor” im­plies not on­ly an ad­e­quate ba­con ra­tio, as Wendy’s burg­er al­most de­liv­ers, but a ra­tio so high as to be ca­pa­ble of great de­struc­tion. Wendy’s had the vi­sion to see the word — Ba­cona­tor — but there their vi­sion halt­ed. They might’ve ground ba­con strips in­to ba­con bits and mixed them in in­to their fresh all beef pat­ties, adding a healthy dose of re­al ba­con atop for overkill. Such a burg­er might earn the name “Ba­cona­tor.” They could’ve weaved their thin strips in­to a kind of crude cloth of pork, fold­ing it over three, four times, or with the right ma­chin­ery per­haps knit­ting ba­con in­to a sort of greasy mo­bius strip. Such a burg­er might earn the name “Ba­cona­tor.” In­stead Wendy’s phoned it in.

Filed under Food on September 12th, 2007

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