I remembered all these things, that particular flavor of innocence, when I pulled yesterday into the parking lot of an IHOP, preparing to grapple with its new Pancake Stackers, floppy pancakes with cheesecake jammed in between them. While KFC went all-out dude-style hawking the Double Down, The Sandwich That Uses Fried Chicken For The Bread, IHOP’s is a kinder, gentler this-is-why-we’re-fat food, with a sweetly dorky ad:

I got out of my car. The first thing I saw was a soda sitting on a car roof a few spots away, a Double Gulp from a 7-11 — 64 fluid ounces of pure corn syrup and bullshit. It was enormous, towering ominously in the distance. I rushed inside with a bad feeling.

But I opened the door and … the smell! It was wonderful: sweet syrup and diner coffee, scents floating in the air so long they worked their way into the walls forever ago. A customer walked away from the register, saying, “OK, I’ll give you a call later, honey,” and the whole room sounded fantastic — the soft, comforting murmurs of a family restaurant: chatter, children. It was 11:30 on a Wednesday, the place was full, and I felt utterly wholesome.

I started to look forward to my Pancake Stackers. It’s just a little cheesecake with your breakfast, I thought. Who can hate on just a little cheesecake? I perused the menu, affectionately puzzling over the note about how they make their omelets with a “splash of our pancake batter for fluffiness,” and the curious fact that despite the promotional buzz around the Stackers (we were on a one-name basis by now), they already had “New York Cheesecake Pancakes” on the menu. You see, for those, they put the cheesecake in the pancakes, not between the pancakes. (And my buns have no seeds.)

As I was contemplating the relative merits of cheesecake in-or-between, the server brought over my Stackers with the most winning smile. I took up my fork and instinctively pushed the tent of “whipped cream” off the strawberry sauce, toppling it over into a sad, busted pile at the end of my plate. I wasn’t supposed to do that — this is about getting the full experience. Clearly I was a little unprepared for this. Well, this is how it went:

Bite 1: Whoa, I think I just caught a crispy bite of pancake edge. That’s like the holy grail of pancake edges! That’s a good start.

Bite 2: OK, there’s not so much cheesecake in here, but it was weirdly, obviously squeezed on, like with one of those caulk guns Taco Bell uses for its “sour cream.” It tastes pretty good, though. Kinda tangy, kinda creamy. But man, that strawberry syrup is glowing lava red. And the crispy edge was pretty short-lived.

Bite 3: I never really want to eat as many pancakes as people will put on a plate, but this isn’t so ba… muh … exxxxcushe me, I jusht hit a geysher of cheeshcake. I can’t really open my mouth. It’s shtuck. Maybe forever.

Bite 4: Water, water, water. Clean it out. Focus. Concentrate. Oh look! I forgot about my side of sausage!

Bite 5: Here’s a little history. The word “sausage” comes from the Latin “salsus,” which means “salted.” This bit of trivia was not lost on the good people who made this particular sausage, because it’s burning my throat. The saltiness of it scares me, driving me back to the warm, smothering embrace of cheesecake-stuffed pancakes, even though they’re more pasty than fluffy, and even though I’m starting to taste the metallic tang of baking powder in them.

Bite 6: Swallowing another smushy bite, I swear I can actually feel it dropping into my gut. I’m thinking back to that old IHOP, to that big table, to my family, and I know my emotional self is rebelling against the fact of my stomach. I … want … to … like … the … Stacker.

Bite 7: I’m failing. I’ve given up on the pancakes, and just started to scrape the cheesecake off them, eating it with the strawberry-candy-flavored strawberries. I watch the “whipped cream” deflate into a shiny, bubbly puddle. It is very weird.

Bite 8: There wasn’t going to be a Bite 8. I considered another go at the sausage, reconsidered, started to write in my notebook about reconsidering, and then suddenly bit off a chunk. I got a bit of hard gristle, another bit of cold grease, and finished, wishing that I’d stopped after the first time I’d thought better of it.

The server came back, asking sweetly, so dulcetly, how everything was. I smiled at her, told her everything was great, and sat back for a minute to listen to the murmuring in the restaurant. It was getting toward noon and people were coming in, waiting for a table for lunch. The sun streamed through the windows. I got my check and, in a last moment of curiosity, took another look at the menu. They don’t serve the Spanish omelet anymore. 

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.”