Place: Arby's
Lunch: Meat Mountain, loaded curly fries, Mint Chocolate Swirl shake
There was an abandoned drive-in theatre in rural Wisconsin a guy re-opened around 15 years ago. He put a small grill in the snack bar to make hamburgers, planning to offer single and double patty burgers. As a joke, he decided to offer a three-patty burger called the "Gutbuster". Why not...it didn't require adding any ingredient to the kitchen. It cost nothing to put it on the menu.
It is, to this day, their best selling burger.
So it goes with Arby's, who have taken their "WE HAVE THE MEATS" slogan to new extremes with the all-inclusive Meat Mountain sandwich. It has nearly every meat in the kitchen piled on it. Roast beef, Angus steak, ham, brisket, turkey, corned beef, pepper bacon, and even deep fried chicken tenders. There's also...to quote their website..."cheddar and Swiss cheese somewhere in there." Ask for it Denali-style through this month and they'll even put a fish fillet on it. For FREE.
It's here because it can be. It's all stuff that was already in the kitchen anyway. And it gets people talking.
You can't call it a best-seller...yet. Meat Mountain has been an officially sanctioned "secret" menu item for a couple of years. But now they've started promoting the thing with in-store signage, which is how I found out about it.
Smiling Counter Girl: "I'll be with you in a minute!" *runs off, arms flailing*
Someone in Back: "She'll be with you in a minute!"
Smiling Counter Girl runs back: "Hi!"
Me: "Meat Mountain, Denali-Style."
Smiling Counter Girl: "Oooh!" She seems legit excited that somebody's ordering this.
Smiling Counter Girl, staring at screen: "I can't find the button. Oh! There it is. What size fry and drink do you want?"
Me: "I actually want loaded curly fries and the Mint Chocolate Swirl shake, so however that works."
Smiling Counter Girl: "Oh!"
Smiling Counter Girl: "We're just getting the shake machine working. It might be awhile, but we'll bring it out to you. Is that okay?"
Me: "Sure."
I'm willing to bet any amount of money in the world they'll forget about the shake completely.
Smiling Counter Girl: "Anything else?"
Me: "That's not enough food?"
Smiling Counter Girl: "We have to ask."
Somebody in Back: "DOES HE WANT IT HOT?"
Smiling Counter Girl: "Do you want that hot?"
Me: "The shake?"
Smiling Counter Girl: "Noooo, the sandwich."
Me: "Yes."
Smiling Counter Girl: "HE WANTS IT HOT!"
I'm assuming a cold Meat Mountain would mean the deli meats weren't heated, but the chicken tenders and fish fillet would be, right? I'm not going to find out.
The food arrives. The Meat Mountain is about five inches tall and could never fit in a conventional human bite, yet while very intimidating looking, I have to wonder if there's really more deli meat on the thing than, say, a Jimmy John's Gargantuan. It's just piled up on a conventional bun in this case.
First bite is across the lower half of the sandwich. The fish is overwhelming.
Second bite towards the top. A lot of distinct deli meat flavor profiles.
Ultimately, I decide the way to go is to remove the fish and the chicken tenders and eat those as sides. That leaves me with a perfectly manageable deli sandwich that doesn't seem much taller than a Beef & Cheddar Max. It could use mayo, though. Inexplicably, mayo is not one of the condiments Arby's keeps on hand.
Ultimately, I ate about half the sandwich, half the curly fries, and half the fish fillet. Arby's fish fillet is kind of nasty. It was luke warm at best and the breading wasn't really crispy. I did eat the chicken tenders. Arby's deli meats have strong and distinct flavors that I'm not sure really work together like this.
So...eh.
About twenty minutes after receiving my food, I walked back up to the counter. "Are we still waiting on shakes?"
Sure enough, they had completely forgotten. They make my shake immediately.
The Mint Chocolate Swirl shake is the highlight here. It's minty green, but it also tastes quite chocolaty. It's really good.
It's SUPPOSED to be Auto Show weekend coming up, but the forecast calls for possibly lots of snow, so I've rescheduled that trip for next weekend.
The cats are due a home weekend anyway.
