The culmination of everything that is wrong with the fast-food culture in America has been realized in the latest product offered by KFC. When I first heard the name of the product, I thought that it sounded unappetizing. When I saw the commercial I was absolutely disgusted.
This is one step away from a feeding trough. KFC thinks so highly of its patrons that it is basically taking its cheapest ingredients, mashing it into a ball and shoving it in your face. The only way they could make it worse is if you drove up to the window with your gaping maw and an air cannon shot it into your mouth. “That’ll be $4.99 please.”
Are we getting to the point where everything can be eaten with a spoon? No knowledge of how to use cutlery needed! I am aghast.
This has already been through the wringer over in The Pit. Of course, many of us dismissed the arguments with one salient fact: those things are fricking delicious.
Hmmm. No idea if these have or ever will reach our shores, but I just looked them up on KFC’s website, and it looks like you could get rid of the corn and the cheese and the chicken, and just put in a few decent pork sasuages and have a decent meal. More amusing (or disturbing) is the nutritional information, where they go over the entire daily guideline for sodium. How much fucking salt do they add to the stuff?!
As a fan of Putting A Bunch Of Stuff Together In A Big Bowl, I was inspired to go out and try one after reading that Pit thread. I wholeheartedly approve of the concept. The actual food was pretty good, though not great: the chicken chunks were a little too big for eating with just a spork, and the corn had that institution-sized-can-o-corn taste.
But from the way they were promoting it in the KFC store, it looked like it might be just the first in a whole series of Bowls. In which case, I welcome this new trend.
Purely for research purposes, of course, I’ve tried both the mashed potato and rice variants, and have to go with the rice version for its slightly lower overall density. They’re both pretty heavy, though. The potato one gave me the impression that five or six of those things placed in proximity to each other would instantly condense into a singularity and disrupt the local time-space continuum. Or something.
I’ve gotta think that as disgusting as they may appear, they are instant classics of Guy Food. You know, the sort of thing you grab at the drive-through after rushing home from the game to get there in time for the recap on Sportscenter. or something.
As opposed to KFC’s more usual bucket-enclosed fare, which is of course served with a complete set of silver forks, spoons, knives, and specialized deboning instruments.
Odd, our local Popeyes just closed down too, but I didn’t hear anything about food poisioning causing it. I love Popeyes and I had a friend who worked there in HS and his job was to cut up the raw chicken, batter and fry the pieces. Just the fact that they use real chickens, and not frozen-precooked-chicken-in-a-bag makes Popeyes A-OK in my book. That and since in my opinion their spicy chicken, red beans & rice, mashed potatos, and biscuits all put KFC to shame.
I used to do a lot of camping back in another life, and on our way to Maine my (then) girlfriend and I would usually pick up some biscuits. We’d always save a few for Saturday morning breakfast - little butter and fry 'em up in a pan over the campfire. Damn. My mouth is watering.
The first time I saw that commercial I looked over at my wife and said, “That sounds great”. Her mouth dropped open and then she said, “That looks like a bowl full of grease. They look nasty”. Could it be boy girl thing? Maybe it’s a low standards thing, after all I used to think the dehydrated pork patty with dehydrated ketchup in the old MRE’s was good eats.
Yeah really! Where’s the chili? Where’s the jalapeno option? How 'bout some butter, sour cream and garlic in those tateys? Plain mashed potatoes? Mold and deep fry them suckers! Corn??? That’s a veggie idiots! Get that crap outta here!
