The annual World Cheese Dip Competition will be held again this weekend. Some day I will attend this, and talks are already in discussion among the Buffet o’ Blog staff to conquer this challenge next year. (Copious amounts of research will be required, which will be fun!)
Anyhow, I looked at the Facebook page for the event, and saw a couple of ads worth passing along:
I’m married, so I’m not commenting on that! Moving along…
The way I understand the event, everyone who attends gets to sample cheese dip and vote for a People’s Choice Award. So the last ad really does apply. (Don’t tell my doctor!)
I saw a commercial the other night for an “Ultimate BLT” from Arby’s. It had my attention because of how often they said bacon (probably 7 times). They used big grandiose terms like “monument to bacon”, etc. So naturally I was expecting good things from this new food of theirs.
Then they actually shows the sandwich, which contains only 5 pieces of bacon. I was suddenly disappointed. And that’s with their commercial depiction. Here’s a picture of one that someone purchased.
Arby’s “Ultimate BLT”. There might be 5 pieces of bacon, but not 5 full strips of bacon. This is so not the ultimate BLT.
I realize fast food often does not look like the commercials — I get that — but this is not an “Ultimate BLT” by any stretch!
So a question arises. For something to be declared the ultimate BLT, how many slices of bacon are required? And should any other ingredients be included? (I realize there may be purists who say a BLT cannot have extra ingredients, but what if it makes it better? Plus, we are talking about a modified title of “Ultimate BLT”, which implies it should be the best possible BLT.)
I’d like to hear your thoughts on this, because you might have ideas I haven’t thought of. To get the discussion started, the Buffet o’ Blog staff talked about it around the virtual water cooler:
* I think anything to be declared the “ultimate” in bacon should have a minimum of 1/4 lbs of bacon… anything less and it just sounds a bit puny. I’d laugh if I saw a commercial touting something like 1/8 a pound of bacon!
* Even if one cares about the other 2/3 of a BLT, you’d still need bacon to be prominent over the LT. I’d say at least 1/4 lbs, but I’d recommend (and like to research) 1/2 lbs.
* To be “ultimate”, they’ve got to take it to the next level. BAM! For starters, add melted cheese to it, and Miracle Whip. Some chipotle sauce would go well with it, too, I think. For the cheese, could probably use cheese dip with Rotel to pour on it, just make it thick enough to stay in the sandwich.
* Add a fried egg to it! Well, if you’re gonna call it ultimate, add several eggs and more bacon. And cheese, of course. Tell me this wouldn’t sell like hotcakes! I would eat this for any meal of the day.
Taco Bell has a new commercial that says they’re “taking tacos where they’ve never been before”. That sounds like a good figurative phrase, but they were actually using it literally — they used a helicopter to take a food delivery truck filled with 10,000 Doritos Locos Tacos to a town in Alaska, because of the prank/hoax someone had played on the entire town.
That’s a neat idea. It also would’ve been cool if they had dropped 10,000 tacos over the town from an airplane. That would be something to see! (Well, I wouldn’t want that to happen in my area, because it would also create a huge mess. But hey, free tacos.)
So, um, I’d like to start a rumor that a Taco Bell is coming soon to my house… 🙂
Let’s take the phrase more figuratively. What would you do to make tacos better than ever? One taco variation I’m waiting for is the chicken-bacon-ranch taco. If you use quality ingredients, it would surely be most awesome. (The Buffet o’ Blog staff are all huge fans of the chicken-bacon-ranch pizza at Larry’s Pizza. Just put that in a taco shell and it would be great.) I figure a pizza taco would be great, too — use pork sausage and pepperoni with pizza sauce and lots of cheese, inside a taco shell.
Burger King has for years said you can “have it your way”, and in Japan, you can add 15 strips of bacon to a burger for an extra $1.25. (I don’t know what it costs at Burger King in America, but many restaurants charge an extra $1 for 2 small strips of bacon.) It may not be premium bacon, but, it’s bacon.
Adding 15 strips of bacon to one burger should be plenty for most people. However, there is always someone who will say, “Needs more bacon.” (Check out our Food Critic series for evidence of that.) So one guy in Japan added 1,050 extra slices of bacon to his burger, which made it $90. I don’t know how he arrived at that total — maybe he just checked how much money was in his wallet. Either way, that’s a LOT of bacon. It doesn’t even look like a burger anymore — more like the tower of bacon.
To no one’s surprise, he was unable to finish the burger himself. On a related note, sharing bacon with co-workers is a great way to improve morale around the office and build friendships.
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