The Other Sandwich
Heh heh.
Jezebel said:Maybe Joni Mitchell was right when she sang that you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone, but I didn’t know what was gone until it came back. Since it launched nationally August 8, the Burger King Impossible Whopper, a diabolically engineered veggie burger, has occupied more real estate in my life than the absolutely possible, normal Whopper ever did back in the Dark Ages when I ate red meat. I ate an Impossible Whopper on Monday night. I would like to eat one tonight. And every night. I walked by my editor Alexis’s office yesterday and she was eating one. I had to consciously stop myself from asking her for a bite. What have I become? I know I am some sort of unwell, less because of what regular trips to a fast food restaurant are doing to my body (those effects are as yet unapparent) but because of what the trips (and endless potential for more) have done to my mind. I wish I never met you, Impossible Whopper.
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Why do I love this sandwich so much? It roughly shares its circumference with that of a CD. It hits the palate with a plop, like a semisolid something has just been ladled onto my tongue by a person in a hairnet. It’s a true gut punch, an assault on whatever associations you may have with daintiness or refinement in vegetarian eating. This is not a textural experience, but a taste-bud symphony. The earthiness of the vegetables (cut thin enough to allow their consistency to evaporate into the bread-soy leghemoglobin puck-bread design of mush) floats above the heavy flame-grilled burger taste. I go light on pickles, because I find that the amount in the Whopper’s protocol overpowers the sandwich. Each bite is finished with the dairy’s creaminess. I get mine with cheese, and this is the only sandwich whose mayo I don’t just tolerate but adore (it automatically comes with mayo unless you don’t ask for it). The sandwich paints my upper respiratory system with smokiness. I feel it coming out of my nose, like I’m a dragon with obnoxiously picky eating habits, like I’m living for the sandwich to the extent that I’m actually breathing it.
This is the most realistic veggie burger I’ve ever eaten, which is exactly what Burger King and Impossible Foods want me to say. Touché, corporations, touché. I haven’t felt this way about fast food since McDonalds’ bumbling attempts to woo the public on the McVeggie. The chain did it a few times, launching in 1999 and then relaunching in 2004, only to finally discontinue it in 2007. When I could get a McVeggie, which had the taste and texture of an actual hockey puck, I did so at least once a week. I’d get a craving and, boom, I’d be bathed in the golden glow of those arches. The burger was primarily a ketchup venue, anyway, and the novelty of being able to relive my childhood by eating a balanced meal of garbage (and not just French fries) was too strong to resist. It became a habit to break.
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Heh heh.
