Place: Burger King
Lunch: BK 'fire-grilled' Ribs, onion rings, Dr. Pepper
The heat is here. The humidity is here. It's hot. Stupid sucky sweaty hot. I need to move to the desert. Or back to the Northwest. Or invent time travel and pass summer up completely. Fast-forward straight to football season and caramel apple milkshakes.
Over the past couple of years, BK has been moving away from their traditional conveyor rack flame broiler to something called a "batch broiler", which is said to reduce energy consumption by 90 percent and allow smaller batches of burgers to be cooked faster, allowing for a fresher tasting product. It also had an unintended side effect...Customers said the burgers tasted better. "More like they used to". (My opinion on that...they've gone from tasting charbroiled to intensely charbroiled. Unnaturally charbroiled.)
BK showed off the batch broiler at some recent convention or event or something by cooking all sorts of odd stuff in one, making the point that they would be able to expand menu offerings. They didn't waste time doing so...Some BK's last week started offering a rib meal.
This isn't the pressed pork boneless McDonald's McRib (whose popularity continues to baffle me). It's six (or eight if you move up) bone-in ribs, sold in a combo for what has been reported as high as $7.99 in some markets. The local BK's are corporate-owned, so I figured they'd have them here. They did...starting at $5.99. The eight-piece was $6.99.
So while literally everybody else in the building was ordering off the value menu, I tried the ribs.
These are not "I went to Tony Roma's and ordered a half rack of baby back ribs" ribs. They're individual pieces about three inches long and aren't covered with sauce (they come with two dipping packets of barbecue sauce of such a quality that the main ingredient...even before water...is high fructose corn syrup). They remind you more of wings wrapped around a bone. They're a finger food to be sure. You can probably eat them while driving without making a mess as long as you're not dipping.
Taste? Ever tried KFC's grilled chicken? That's what I immediately thought of. It's an intense flavor that doesn't come off as natural. In fact, this would make more sense on KFC's menu than Burger King's. I'm guessing they probably have a really heavy sodium content, but I don't know that for sure (I couldn't find them on BK's website).
I don't see them becoming a cult favorite.
I don't blame BK for trying this, though. They need SOMETHING to get people to move up from the value menu.
