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KFC Double Down: Hype Meets Reality
By
John Del Signore
Published Apr 12, 2010
Modified Apr 12, 2010
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By
John Del Signore
Published Apr 12, 2010
Modified Apr 12, 2010
Share
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As you may have heard, today KFC rolls out a new food product, The Double Down. It is a sandwich with two chicken fillets instead of bread slices; in between you will find two pieces of bacon, melted slices of Monterey Jack and Pepper Jack cheese and the Colonel's sauce (which is akin to mayo). The Double Down also comes with 540 calories, 32 grams of fat, 1,380 milligrams of sodium, and definitively wipes away any remaining crumbs of moderation or dignity left on the American bib. But does it live up to the hype?
The intrepid eaters at Always Hungry put their lives on the line to try the new product this morning, reporting that [SPOILER!] "you feel fat while eating it. But as out-there as the sandwich is supposed to be, it would have done better to go further. Each fried chicken breast (crisp on the edges, a softer fry elsewhere), is almost ¾ of an inch thick. That’s a lot of chicken—the bacon and cheese kind of get lost. KFC would do better to double the cheese and the bacon; more crunchy bacon, more gooey, drippy cheese coming out the sides of the fried chicken. If you’re going to go there, might as well really go there."
And New York Times chief dining critic Sam Sifton also filed on the Double Down. You get the sense that if it were possible to give out negative stars (black holes?) the Double Down would be minus four. Sifton deems it "a new low: a greasy entree dish of chicken with bacon and cheese on it, slathered in sauce, that the company asks customers to eat with their hands. The chicken is watery within its soft casing of 'crust,' the cheese familiar to anyone who has eaten food prepared by the United States government, the bacon chemical in its smokiness, the mayonnaise sauce tangy, salty, and sweet, all at once." But The Awl's David Cho raves, "America, we did it! We, like the Double Down, are pretty much exactly what people think we are." Liberators!
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double down
kfc
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John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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