SALON

Monday, Apr 12, 2010 5:13 PM UTC

KFC’s insane Double Down taste-tested: Release the cracklin’!

Bacon, cheese, mayo-ish sauce and two slabs of fried chicken as the bread. A bite-by-bite account

By

Topics: Sacrificial Lam, Nutrition, Obesity, Restaurant Culture, Food,

KFC's insane Double Down taste-tested: Release the cracklin'!Francis vs. the KFC Double Down

Ladies and gentlemen: It’s Double-D Day. After insane blogosphere buildup and a menacing countdown timer on its Web site, KFC finally released its Kraken: a sandwich made of bacon, cheese, mayo-ish sauce and two slabs of fried chicken as the bread.

Logic dictates that you have to look at the numbers. There are 540 calories in KFC’s Double Down, about the same as McDonald’s suddenly quaint Big Mac. But the Double Down, and everybody’s peeking-through-covered-eyes reaction to it, is not about logic. It’s about balls.

The balls of a fast food chain, in the middle of rational America’s hand-wringing about obesity and sustainable eating, to come out with a sandwich made of bacon, cheese, mayo-ish sauce and two slabs of fried chicken as the bread. The balls of KFC, which, in the weak-willed ’90s, changed its brand from Kentucky Fried Chicken to its lame initials because it didn’t want you to have to say the word “fried” every time you spoke its name. The Double-D is so macho, so deeply, dumbly dude, it’s a sandwich for people who want to take down Michelle Obama in an arm wrestle.

So, as a matter of art and science and anthropology, you know I was destined to try it. Make no mistake, I am a lover of fried chicken. Just yesterday, in fact, I cooked it and ate five pieces of it, in what I honestly believed to be a restrained fashion. But with the Double Down in hand, feeling its heft, seeing its weirdly pale skin, shining with oils and lipids, I’m suddenly intimidated. And seeing the square-ish cheese, floppy and flaccid where it sticks out from the tapered chicken breasts, this also suddenly looks … just kind of goofy. But here goes, homies!

Bite 1: Salt! Oh God, salt! And I can already feel the grease wrap itself around my lips.

Bite 2: Wow. This is really tender. Like, really tender. What’s the difference between chicken being supernaturally tender and unnaturally tender? You don’t need teeth to eat this chicken. I guess that’s a plus. But the question is, would it be responsible caretaking to feed this to anyone who doesn’t have teeth? Also: salt!

Bite 3: This might be unprecedented, but two bites into this thing and I’m already making a tactical decision. I’m going for the whole slice of bacon sticking out the side. It’s time to get this salt over with. But, in fairness to KFC, I didn’t get the featured soda pairing. I’m sure the carbonation, sugar and phosphoric acid in a Pepsi would work really well in scraping the sodium from my tongue. Ask any serious chef: You have to design your food to work with your beverage pairings.

Bite 4: I just put all the bacon in my mouth at once. This is how that feels:

 Bite 5: I’m making good headway, about halfway through. The gentle heat from the pepper jack cheese lets you know you’re still alive. But I have to say, the chicken-breasts-as-bread are still making for weird appearances. Right now they’re tilting apart from one another, cantilevering open, and I feel a little like I’m staring down a ghoulish mouth, with the second slice of bacon (Damn it, I thought I got rid of you!) like a tongue and the cheesy stalactites as teeth. Maybe this is more than you want to know.

Bites 6-9: I’m reduced to nibbling. I am meek. I whimper.

Bite 10: There is no bite 10. I refuse. I am not an animal. I am man. Hear me roar.

Walking back to the office, I feel a strange pull back toward the paper bag crumpled in my hand. The salt burn feels a bit better. The tang from the mayo-ish sauce intrigues. The MSG entices. I’m thinking about going back. You know how they say a palate that’s getting pounded with salt and fat and sugar acclimates, and soon wants only more salt and fat and sugar? It happens over weeks or months … or, for many, lifetimes. I think for me and the Double Ds, that just happened in five minutes.

Bite 13: Good dear sweet lord Jesus in Heaven … why did you make me finish it? WHY!? Can I blame the Masons?

In retrospect, though, the really funny thing about the Double Down is not that it exists, not that it’s a dare pretending to be a lunch, but that it would be nothing special if they added a bun to it. Think about it. It’d be like, “What’s that? A double chicken sandwich? Pffft. Snooze. Any jackass can make a double chicken sandwich.” Somehow, by taking off the processed-food bread, KFC made this thing look deadly.

But, aside from greasier-than-normal fingers, it kind of doesn’t work. I mean, I struggled for a minute, but I went right back and finished it. If they’re going to be serious about turning their restaurant over to the This Is Why You’re Fat crowd, they’ve got to come harder or don’t come at all to the brute-food arms race. And if they do, they should take a word of advice from the CEO of Gillette. When pressured with three-bladed competitors he manned up to say, “Fuck everything, we’re doing five blades.”

Francis Lam is Features Editor at Gilt Taste, provides color commentary for the Cooking Channel show Food(ography), and tweets at @francis_lam. More Francis Lam.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 52 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

Francis Lam eats the outlandish foods you want to try but probably shouldn't. An occasional series, per doctor's orders and decency's sake.

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
Journalists file suit against Manning's trial secrecy: Plaintiffs including Glenn Greenwald and Julian Assange demand press, public access to trial and documents
165 points166 points | comment
vote
Kaitlyn Hunt refuses plea offer, will go to court over high school relationship - The 18-year-old rejected a deal that would have labeled her a sex offender and placed her under house arrest
144 points145 points | 97 comments
vote
Report: Nearly a quarter of Americans struggle to afford food
140 points141 points | 13 comments
vote
Kaitlyn Hunt refuses plea offer, will go to court over high school relationship - The 18-year-old rejected a deal that would have labeled her a sex offender and placed her under house arrest
141 points142 points | 60 comments
vote
Ted Cruz against the world - How the Junior Senator is igniting the GOP civil war
81 points82 points | 21 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: Chekhov's story mirrors Russia's own

Recommendations