Burger King – A Second Chance
A hot and muggy Florida afternoon found us at the local big box hardware store picking up supplies for yet more home renovations and improvements. As we finished loading the car the wife asked me if I wanted to stop by Burger King, she had a new coupon book that just come in the mail, and save the need to cook dinner when we got home. Since I do dearly love hamburgers it was an easy yes to elicit. But then I had to stop and consider for a minute. I had reviewed the neighborhood Burger King back in February, 2011 (http://thatfoodguy.blogspot.com/2011_02_01_archive.html ). It was not a favorable review. Since it was bad once, did we want to go back again? The next closest Burger King is several miles away. We finally decided to give the local store a chance to show what it could do. Coupon book in hand, we drove to Burger King. Even though the order was to go, we went in rather than order from the drive-thru.
The coupon book had many different offers. There were buy one and get one free, buy this and get that, but what we finally decided on was a Family Bundle ($9.99) and two regular hamburgers ($1.98) on the side. The bundle included: 1 Whopper, 1 Whopper Jr., 1 10-piece chicken tenders, 3 small French fries, 3 small soft drinks, and two pies - one apple and the other a Hershey chocolate cream pie. It seemed like a good selection to compare against our last visit.
From where we were standing we could watch the servers unobtrusively. When the products came through the pass through, the bagged them in a careful manner and use multiple bags so as to not overfill and crush the bottom food items. I was happy with that. We collected our order when it was ready and took it directly home. The unloading of the hardware store items would wait until after we had dinner and sampled our Burger King order.
The wrapping of the food items was intact. Inside, the food, as we expected, did not look like the promotional photographs adorning the restaurant walls. It was, however, well within the range of what we normally expect a Burger King sandwich to look like. It was a tremendous improvement over our previous encounter. In biting into the Whopper, the bread and meat were still nice and warm after our ride home, but what I did notice was that the lettuce and tomato were still cool, not yet heated through by the meat which I took to mean the sandwich was freshly made to our order and had not sat for any length of time under a heat lamp which I considered a big plus. The taste of the Whopper, the Whopper Jr. and the regular hamburgers was just what you would expect from a Burger King product.
The Burger King French fries are small sized French fries, not as small as shoestrings, and that small size allows them to cool very fast. Our French fries were still warm and didn’t need a few seconds zap in the microwave when we got home, another plus. The chicken tenders were still warm in their cardboard box. Well formed breaded pieces and not at all greasy. The white meat chicken is tasty and the breading has a nice spicy taste that I liked very much. Perhaps I should have asked, but then I didn’t see any sauces for the chicken tenders on the counter. When we got home I got a bottle of ketchup out of the refrigerator but some of the other popular chicken tender dipping sauces would have served better. Perhaps Burger King doesn’t offer them, the server certainly didn’t offer, but then again I didn’t ask either.
All of the food served to us was of good quality and looked just as you would expect a Burger King product to look like; certainly not like the promotional photos but what we the public have come to accept as the close-enough facsimile. The food products were carefully handled and not crushed. The food seemed to have been prepared fresh and was still very presentable after transporting home. This Burger King will once again be on our list of local places to go for fast food.
The Family Bundle with the addition of the two regular hamburgers was more than adequate to feeds four people and could easily been stretched to feed five. For $12.81 ($11.97 plus tax) it was a reasonably priced meal. The pie slices are still in the refrigerator waiting for another time when we are not quite so full from dinner.