At Burger King, “Your way” Isn’t Necessarily a Good Way
I’ve been excited about the news that Burger King has started offering a vegetarian sandwich. It gives me an excuse to go to Burger King again, where I have the opportunity to see people grumpier than myself-often harried, put-upon fathers ahead of me in line, trying to order for huge numbers of screaming children, or the employees, who generally look as if they’d rather do their own dental work than serve me.
“NEXT!” bellows the woman at the cash register, glaring at me, challenging me to just try and customize my meal. She makes it abundantly clear, even without words, that special orders do upset her. I order my veggie burger ($1.99, $3.99 for a meal) and get out of her way before she can hurt me.
I remember seeing a documentary on PBS a few years ago decrying the evils of corporate globalism. One of the points that the film made was that Burger King, McDonald’s and the rest all do big business in South Asia, particularly India, by offering vegetarian food. Ever since, I’ve wondered why the big fast food chains don’t do the same here. After all, if they’ve already worked up the formula for a veggie burger, they could easily release it here without much additional research and development. So why haven’t they?
The answer comes to me as I bite into my burger. It is because it is so truly awful-“food” only in the most vague and loose sense of the word.
Burger King keeps food this bad 9,000 miles and two oceans away from us in order to keep angry customers from descending on corporate headquarters with pitchforks and torches. It’s not as if the whole sandwich is bad-the bun is fine, the special mutant iceberg lettuce and supernaturally ripe tomato are fine. The problem is with the “burger” itself. Imagine a patty that somehow manages to have no flavor or texture yet still manages to sit in your belly like a quarter-pound sack of BBs.
Inevitably, Burger King CEOs and other bigwigs will look at the disappointing sales figures for these truly awful crap-patties and decide that there is no market for vegetarian food. So be it. Do not subject yourself to this.
An interesting side note: Like all BK burgers, these come wrapped in a paper wrapper covered with icons to remind the kitchen help what you want on it. Looking at this, you will notice that one of the possible add-ons for this vegetarian sandwich is bacon. Yet another sign that they don’t quite grasp what vegetarians are looking for in a meal.
