Fast Food Review: Burger King's Firecracker Tendercrisp

I'll say it right now: I have a soft spot for fast food in all of its greasy, salty, meat-and-vegetable byproduct glory. I know full well that it's not for good me, the environment, the cows, my wallet, the chickens, etc. I make no apologies for eating it when a craving strikes, mostly because I'll down a giant box of chicken nuggets or a quadruple burger or something and then realize I'm hungry half an hour later because there was no actual nutritive value to what I was eating, then feel massively ripped off and avoid doing it again for a month or two, until I smell that awesomely alluring greasiness from a gas station parking lot and go do it again.

That said, Z and I were coming back from a weekend of skiing (well, he was skiing and I was faceplanting down the mountain with a snowboard attached to my feet) at Sunrise and we were hungry. Donger Needed Food because that $3.25 hot dog from the lodge was exactly how you'd expect a $3.25 hot dog from a ski lodge to be - a pathetic little weiner on a bun that couldn't even hold itself together for a pathetic little weiner (I'll go for the Indian fry bread next time - caaaarbs!). Aside from the rather good Fiesta Mexicana, the Show Low area doesn't have any food that we've found to be worth stopping for, and at 4pm we weren't in the mood for a full-blown sit-down meal anyway. Hence: fast food.

We stopped at a Burger King since Z likes to get a Whopper every now and then. The Burger King in Show Low had the words WE HAVE FIRECRACKER TENDERCRISP on its signboard, and not being someone who watches much television or pays attention to fast food advertising, I was completely confused and amused because it's got such a ridiculous ring to it (in part because of the grammatical awkwardness of the statement), spurring a "WTF? Is it food?" reaction. Sure enough, the drive-thru signs clarified to me that it was basically a spicy, breaded chicken sandwich. Cool, I like those. Wendy's is pretty decent. I got one, in value meal form.

Sidenote: I think I like Burger King's fries better than all the other fast food fries. Important main part of this review and blog post: the Firecracker Tendercrisp is really, really fucking spicy. Not just spicy for fast food, but spicy on the level of spicy Thai food (which I eat all the time, with no problems, and I can qualify the fact that it is actually spicy because I am Asian and they give me Asian-person spicy when I want spicy food). I don't know if the sauce is premixed or if the folks at the Burger King in Show Low like freaking their customers out, but this was actually a really great chicken sandwich. The sauce is like ranch dressing with a massive thai red curry-esque kick to it, and the chicken is breaded white meat and actually holds the sauce well. I actually got some good crunchy lettuce on it, and the bun didn't fall apart, and everything melded together really well. And the kicker: I wasn't hungry for a whole three hours after I ate it, which is how long a normal good meal tides the Donger over.

I want to try another one to see if the sandwich was a fluke, but I haven't craved it (possibly because I am still terrified at how spicy it was) and will thus avoid stepping foot into a Burger King for the greater good of chickens everywhere. For now.