Longtime fans of the Lunch Guys know that if a national chain restaurant is offering something with “bacon” in the name, we’ve either already eaten it or are idling in the drive-through lane right now.
It’s no surprise, then, that we rushed out to get Burger King’s new Bacon Double Homestyle Melt. But did this sandwich melt our hearts?
Chris: Tom, I gotta give BK a lot of credit for making this melt a true melt, as if this sandwich was caught next to an erupting volcano.
The three promised slices of Swiss cheese were reduced to magma that was slowly cooling to a waxy ring around the outside of the patties, but still like liquid fire deep in the melt’s core. I was both frightened and amazed.
Another eye-popper was how BK created two buttery-tasting slabs of bread that weren’t buttery-greasy.
I took my fingers off these yellow slices and found them miraculously dry. It was as if the grain itself had been infused with yellow butteryness, similar to the technology in movie theater popcorn.
What made this a “homestyle” melt was the homestyle sauce — a light schmear of garlic goodness. To be honest, the flavor war between the Italian and the Swiss ingredients had my tongue the loser.
Overall, this sandwich is a winner with the two flame-broiled patties and healthy helping of bacon (by “healthy” I mean enough to satisfy your daily bacon requirement, Tom). And yet it didn’t quite win me over.
Tom: I know what you are talking about. I couldn’t decide if I loved or hated this burger even though I planned to love it.
As you know, Chris, I am a patty melt lover and I can’t understand why we don’t see more burgers on grilled bread.
Grilled bread almost always makes a burger special, so I wasn’t surprised when I bit into this one and started smiling.
But bread alone can’t carry a burger; I loved the way the two thick BK burgers are welded together with the three slices of cheese and plenty of bacon.
I’m sure you were reminded of BK’s great Stackers, just as I was.
Unfortunately, a couple bites in and my smile disappeared.
As I was mowing through this mound of meat and cheese I chomped into a glob of the terribly pungent cheesy garlic sauce. It tasted like a sharp Parmesan cheese gone bad and it completely ruined the burger.
Fortunately, as they taught us in Lunch Guy Academy, a condiment can’t ruin a sandwich, so I scrapped off the offending sauce and ended up having a great lunch.
Chris: I paired this Melt with a side of the new Cheesy Tots and left Burger King feeling not only plumper, but a little disappointed that this meal wasn’t all it could be.
More real butter and less garlic in the Melt, and more cheese, less potato in the tots, and this lunch would really be on fire.
Tom: Less garlic and this thing gets five sporks. But the real problem with the Bacon Double Homestyle Melt is that anything this bad for you should taste great right out of the box.
Tom James and Chris Tauber are Orlando, Fla.-based writers.