Monday, May 12, 2014

Penguin Point - Bacon Double Cheeseburger

Hold on, kiddies, as I might be getting a bit philosophical in this one. First, the coupon and the image presented: a glorious bacon double cheeseburger! Now of course only a fool would expect their sammich to arrive in such a pristine condition but as I look at this and the other equally tantalizing examples of foodstuffs presenting on their coupon page, I remember that this is a local company and that someone prepped and photographed these items and ya know, it kinda makes me feel a sense of local pride. There are advertising rules regarding food that is photographed and I once saw a clip where a burger was rushed from some New York Micky D's across the street to their official advertising agency where it was dissected and sterilized and preserved and restacked and layered to make the perfect image seen across this genetically modified land. Or at least that's what I remembered. I found the clip easily (and so can you) and I guess they use the exact same ingredients but it didn't have to be prepared in the store. And it wasn't even New York. I'd make a horrible witness.

Comparing Penguin Point to McDonalds would be like comparing my bank account to that of George Soros so I don't expect them to create such perfection. Here's a real burger and it actually looks pretty good. The bun, unlike that of their hot dog products, is nice and fresh. The bacon was decent as was the cheese. They didn't offer condiments so I took what they offered, which ended up being a thin red sauce. It wasn't ketchup and may have been BBQ sauce but I didn't detect a great change in the flavor because of said sauce.

Which brings up the philosophical. For some reason I have positive childhood memories linked to Penguin Point lodged in my brain. However when I eat their food, with few exceptions so far, I'm not getting a mouth full of flavor sensations. It's kinda generic. Decent but not amazing. Not to bring up the beast again, but if you go to McDonalds you find a distinctive flavor in their burger. No one else has this flavor and I strongly suspect it's opium-based or perhaps some addictive chemical brewed up by a pharmaceutical company. Like it or hate it (or addictively crave it) you can tell it's a McDonalds burger. Ditto for Burger King and Wendy's. But the burgers and such from Penguin Point are curiously non-descript, like they use the standard products available from our local restaurant food service and don't have their own recipe. In fact, I've seen the trucks from the local restaurant food service in their parking lot. Curious...

However I'm not giving up my quest! I shall push forward and try more items from their menu. Maybe their fried chicken is the total bomb! Maybe I'll have another order of chicken fingers and gravy! I mean, that was total YUM but there wasn't anything special about either the chicken fingers or the "mixed from a powder" gravy but still I enjoyed the surprise.

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