The Dollar Menu Review : Burger King

Look, we all know it's cheaper and better to get your own food at the grocery store, bring home some veggies and rice and pasta and whatever and cook for yourself. But it's a pretty busy planet we live on and a man's got to be a fool to think for a minute that he'll always be able to cook at home. Especially if you travel, sometimes you just have to eat on the run. So I'm looking at the dollar menus of a lot of these chain places that you find everywhere, or nearly everywhere, to see how we can get a little something to keep the fires burning at a reasonable price.

This time out is Burger King, who have become a little more interesting lately with their introduction of a lot of $1 breakfast items. All food discussed is $1 unless otherwise mentioned. Let's wake up with the King (ugh creepy) and see what we can find.

BK Breakfast

* FRENCH TOAST STICKS - Well, they aren't very inspiring french toast sticks, but what can you expect for a buck I guess. Real french toast is a soft, delicious blend of toast and egg. This is just some fried crap, but it beats the hell out of Jack In The Box's french toast sticks and it's about 75 cents less. They might just satisfy an early morning craving for the toast francais, or then again it might backfire and just leave you wanting the real thing more. Plus the fake "maple syrup" they give you is like 90% high fructose corn syrup and 10% actual real syrup.

* SAUSAGE BISCUIT - Not much to say about this McMuffin clone except it's on a microwaved biscuit instead of an English muffin. Kind of a soggy overall texture and none too pleasing on the whole.

* HAMLETTE - The clogged artery's the thing, to catch the conscience of the King! Well, ham and eggs and cheese for a buck isn't all that bad, even if the eggs have that microwaved tasteless synth-food texture. Probably the best option here just for a morning protein blast, if you aren't too worried about the state of your arteries. Also kind of has that soggy thing going that most of BK's breakfast sandwiches seem to have.

* SMALL HASH BROWNS - I read somewhere that BK's fries and hash browns have the highest trans fat content of any fast food joint's fried stuff. I dunno if that's true, but it tends to keep me away. I realize the term "hash brown" is highly subjective depending on where you are, but I've never seen these coin shaped potato nuggets referred to as hash browns anywhere else. They don't taste too bad, but they're probably playing hell with your insides. You also get the small paper bag of them, which is actually probably better for you in the long run but certainly ain't gonna fill you up.

* CINNAMON BUN - Haven't tried this one, can't comment.

* SMALL BK JOE - Ahhh BK Joe, overroasted like Starbucks but at only half the price! And served at mouth-scalding temperatures. The only way I can get this stuff down is with hell of packets of cream and sugar, fortunately they give you as much cream as you want. I haven't tried the Turbo, normal coffee wires me enough as it is, I'm scared to see what the results would be.

* SMALL BOTTLE OF MILK - Haven't tried this but I imagine it's pretty standard milk, the bottle looks a bit puny. You could probably do better with a carton from a grocery store or something, pricewise.

* SMALL BOTTLE OF ORANGE JUICE - See the milk. I'm going to assume it's actually 100% orange juice and not some "orange drink" sort of deal, let's hope they don't let me down on that one.

Breakfast Summary - So it's actually five food items, only three of which are new, and the rest is just common beverages they put into small containers and charge $1 for. There's pretty much no healthy option at all here, unless you maybe just have an orange juice and that's it. I worked a really early shift for a few months recently and I used to sometimes get BK for breakfast simply out of desperation, because there was nothing else open within walking distance, but this was before they introduced this value menu. It would take similar desperate circumstances or borderline starvation to make me come back and try to cobble together another breakfast with the King.

BK Lunch / Dinner Menu

* THE WHOPPER JR. - Basically the same composition as the Whopper but in a smaller package. One advantage it has over other fast food burgers in the $1 range is that you actually get some toppings on this one, tomatoes, lettuce, mayo, pickles, onion etc. pretty much everything that goes on the regular Whopper.

* REGULAR HAMBURGER / CHEESEBURGER - Deliciously flame-grilled in the microwave, BK's burgers are coated with the finest in liquid smoke to trick your brain into thinking you are actually having a decent piece of meat off the grill. Well, at least they taste better than McDonalds grease-dripping shit, and they seem to be a little drier and have a texture more approaching that of actual meat. These are actually less than a buck (.79/.89 respectively, unless you're in one of those expensive cities).

* RODEO CHEESEBURGER - Yee haw! Ro-de-o Cheeseburger! Who the hell eats these things? NASCAR fans? I'm at a loss here. A regular BK cheeseburger with onion rings on top, then drowned in some really limp barbecue sauce. Ugh. This is a profanity of a burger.

* CHICKEN TENDERS - BK actually used to offer up a decent value chicken tenders, once upon a time. It was 5 pieces for a buck, and they were strips that resembled the things you get in those $1 microwave TV dinners, but you could get a couple big things of dipping sauce and drown em in it and it was a decent little snack or side order sort of thing. At some point in the past couple years they changed the chicken tenders over to these tiny little kids nugget things, and then they only give you *four* of them for a dollar! It's really kind of deceptive, because someone who has been away from BK for awhile can come in expecting the old style chicken tenders and then open their thing up to see these four little dinosaur shaped kiddie chunks or whatever the hell these things are supposed to be. This is by far the lamest item on BK's menu now, even more so than the YEEEEEEE HAW RO-DE-O CHEESEBURGER YEEHAW!

* TWO DOUBLE CHEESEBURGERS FOR $2 - OK, this is probably BK's most substantial offering on the dollar menu, but I notice that not every restaurant does this. Seemingly, it's only the ones in poorer areas, and even then some of them do $2 for two Bacon Cheeseburgers instead. Well, if you can find them, it's not the tastiest burger around but it's downable and that's hell of protein for 2 bucks.

* TENDERCRISPS SANDWICH - OK, so here's the original chicken tenders, they're hiding out now in this sandwich under a blanket of lettuce and slathered in mayo. This one isn't too bad for a little fat/protein bomb, but I've noticed some locations charge up to like $1.39 for this particular thing.

* VALUE SHAKE - This is an interesting one that only certain BKs seem to have. They make a passable shake and this little thing is just enough to quell a milkshake craving without having to spend like $3 on some gigantic tub that you won't finish anyway and doesn't contain 800% of your FDA daily recommended dosage of dead cow.

* DUTCH APPLE PIE - At first it seems like an awfully small wedge of pie for $1, but it actually somewhat resembles real pie in both taste and texture, with the whole apple crisp crumbly stuff on top and sizeable chunks of actual apple in there.

* SMALL FRIES AND ONION RINGS - They're both really bad for you, they're both among the most boring in fast food, and they both come in little tiny bags that are hardly worth opening your gullet for anyway.

Lunch / Dinner Summary - I happen to think that BK's dollar menu is overall one of the worst out there. Only thing I'll get here is maybe a Whopper Jr. and a Dutch Apple Pie when I'm not too hungry and looking to conserve money, the 2 for $2 cheeseburgers when I'm starving and don't really care what I put in my system, or a Value Shake when I'm in a shake sort of mood. Otherwise it's all pretty disappointing and dejecting. Lots of choices, but not many of them are any good and it's hell to find anything even approaching healthiness on this places menu. Boo BK.