Category: Food Critic

burger challenge at Cheeburger

Last week the Buffet o’ Blog staff and a few friends met at Cheeburger Cheeburger in Little Rock, AR, to conquer their so-called burger challenge.  Their “challenge” is called “Our Famous Pounder”, and it starts with 20 oz. of beef plus whatever toppings you want.  It doesn’t sound too intimidating to me! If you eat it, they take your picture and put it on the wall with the other “Wall of Famers”.

Two of the guys in our group attempted and both conquered the burger, plus some fries and/or onion rings, and a regular milkshake.  While it’s an achievement worthy of recognition (hence the post), one of them requested his secret identity remain secret (probably so his wife wouldn’t know he ate the whole thing).

Of course more pictures could’ve been taken, but I had food of my own to eat, so this is all you get.  Besides, it’s not that much of a challenge.  I’ve eaten meals larger than that before.

About the food — the burgers tasted great.  There are many choices of toppings, including peanut butter.   None of us tried that, but one guy put pepperoni on his and recommended it.  We all added bacon to our cheeseburgers, which was good, but there were the usual comments of “needs more bacon”.  (For those not in the know, that is a recurring phrase on this blog. Just about any food could be made better with more bacon.)

The fries were average to me, but the onion rings left something to be desired.   (Maybe it was an off-night — I don’t know; this was my first time to this restaurant.)

The milkshakes were excellent!  Mine was chocolate with brownie batter, peanut butter, and Oreos.  They have a LOT of choices for milkshakes and malts — looks like around 70 options.  Someone at the table suggested a huge conglomeration of toppings, but it got to the point where there wouldn’t have been room for ice cream.  I suppose a line has to be drawn somewhere, unless they keep making the glass bigger as you add more toppings.

All in all, it was a great time.  It was a great choice for a guys’ night out.  Highly recommended!

the ultimate soup

I’m not usually a big fan of soups.  Some are good, but usually I’d rather have other things for my meal.  But for the past month, my orthodontist had me on a no-chew diet, which equates to eating lots of soup.  So I’ve been trying a lot of different varieties.

All this got me to wondering — why doesn’t someone invent a gravy-based soup?  I don’t mean brown gravy (though there may be a place for that), but using milk-based gravy made from the grease of some meat like fried chicken or sausage.  It could have other ingredients in it like cornbread, or crumbled-up biscuits.  (And if you’re putting cornbread or biscuits in there, you might as well add the butter you’d put on them.)  The gravy soup should also have chunks of the fried chicken or sausage.  This would be the ultimate soup.

Any other suggestions to make it better?

review of Paula Deen’s restaurant

This past weekend I ate at Paula Deen Buffet restaurant at Harrah’s Casino in Tunica, MS.  For those of you who don’t know who she is, she’s one of the stars on The Food Network, and she’s famous for Southern-style cooking.  She’s also famous for using butter in almost everything she cooks.  As you might guess, the food was great.  I don’t even want to know how many calories I consumed.

The restaurant has 7 different buffet lines, and none of them were the kind that are just there for looks (like fruit*) — there was something scrumptious on every one.   The fried chicken was the best I’d ever eaten from a restaurant — it was very close to what my mom makes.  The baked macaroni and cheese was incredible.  I could go on and on about how great the food is.  Let’s just say I could eat there every day.   I do need to mention that one of the buffet lines has only desserts, and from the ones I sampled, it was all good.  I have to recommend the chocolate ooey-gooey butter bars — I even brought back a box of those for later.   🙂

If you ever get the chance to eat there, by all means, do so.  (I wonder what needs to happen to get one of those to open in central Arkansas…)

* I have nothing against fruit, but when I go to an all-you-can-eat buffet, I’m not there for fruit.

Burger King NY Pizza Burger

Burger King is about to debut a New York Pizza Burger, which contains: four quarter-pound patties topped with pepperoni and mozzarella and smothered in marinara sauce — all on a sesame seed bun that spans nine-and-a-half inches.   If you think about it, that’s like four Whoppers plus pizza toppings, all in one burger.   (If you plan to eat one by yourself, you should stop reading now.)  It adds up to 2,530 calories, 144 grams of fat (59 grams saturated) and 380 mg of cholesterol.  (For reference, a Whopper is comparatively healthy, delivering 670 calories, 40 grams of fat (11 saturated), and 75 mg of cholesterol.)  You probably know that those first statistics are extremely unhealthy, but to put them in context, nutritional guidelines say most people should consume no more than 2,500 calories, 65 grams of total fat, 20 grams of saturated fat, and 300 mg of cholesterol in an entire day.

One website called it a “fat bomb”.   That could be a valid description.  Another way to look at it is that you’re getting your whole day’s worth of food in one burger.  🙂