About a week ago I tried out the new "KFC Big Boss", their take on the Big Mac. It looked promising: two big crunch patties between three bun halves? Awesome.
The reality? It's unbelievably shitty. As in, I can't believe they tried pulling this stunt. Let's start with the Big Mac, the famous McDonald's hamburger we all know and love (though we know and love it more when you get a double big mac. add bacon). If you're over 40 you know the rhyme off by heart:
Two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions – on a sesame seed bun."Well if you liked that about a Big Mac, does KFC have a special deal for you.
Yes that's right, the new hit sandwich from KFC is exactly like a Big Mac...except they use chicken instead of beef. Let me just cut in right there to say how god-awful a decision that is. No, seriously. It's unspeakably bad. Well, not so much I won't speak a bit of it.
To wit, the same combination that tastes so delicious with beef just doesn't work with chicken. No Chinese restaurant is going to serve you Pineapple Beef Balls, nor are they going to foist ginger chicken on you. Get some honey mustard sauce and swiss cheese, and you can liven up a chicken patty. Put them on a hamburger and nobody outside some weirdo California foodies would dare put their lips to it. The pickles alone made this sandwich practically inedible. Pickles as a topping just don't liven up a chicken burger the same way they do a beef burger. You can have a pickle on the side, though even then typically you'd only do that with a buffalo chicken burger or something along those lines. You definitely don't use it to spruce up a KFC chicken patty.
But what really destroys the burger is the use of the special sauce. Yes, it's the same special sauce. Exactly the same as a Big Mac. With a couple Mickey D's patties, that sauce tastes heavenly. On a couple KFC chicken patties, with pickles, it's absolutely disgusting. It just doesn't belong there. In fact, the KFC Big Boss is so horrible that since I had it, I haven't had any desire for a Big Mac. This is a unique sandwich in the world: the scorched-earth sandwich. It not only turns you off of itself, it not only turns you off of its restaurant, it in fact turns you off Big Macs as well. That's a horrible track record to have, and yes indeed the KFC Big Boss does it: it kills any interest you have in the future in Big Macs. I haven't had the urge to have lunch at McDonald's since that fateful day. Were it not for the insanely awesome Steak and Egg Bagel, I wouldn't have even darkened their door.
And it's not like the Big Boss didn't have potential. It could have been the next Double Down -- instead, it's the antithesis of the Double Down: extra bun, and it tastes horrible. Just imagine, if you will: two Big Crunch patties in between three halves of a bun...we can make it sesame seed if you insist, but I think that's just another nail in the "too much like a Big Mac" coffin. Only no pickles. Not even onions. Cheese, of course...and lettuce...but instead of pickles and special sauce, how about a delicious combination of mayonnaise on one patty and zinger sauce on the other. Of, if KFC wanted to try a new flavour, why not the aforementioned honey mustard sauce? Maybe that could be the gag, you could get your Big Boss in one of 3 flavours: traditional (mayo), honey mustard, or spicy (zinger sauce). Now wouldn't that kick ass? You'd get even more delicious KFC chicken, a nice little saucy flavour, and at the end of the day you wouldn't avoid their restaurant like the plague.
Unless you're in a hurry. The were still their usual atrocious level of slowness when I went. 15 minutes for a shitty chicken sandwich. Next time I'll just go to McDonalds. If I ever get my taste for them back.
