Fast Food Review: Carl's Jr. Steakhouse Burger

It's no secret that I don't think much of Carl's Jr. Their much-hyped turkey burger was the worst turkey burger I have ever had - possibly the worst burger of any kind I have ever tasted. Their habanero-bacon cheeseburger had zero heat; their hand-breaded chicken strips were no better than any truck stop's; their prime rib burger was a monstrosity; their Philly cheesesteak burger is in contention as the ugliest fast food burger I have ever had. The only two things I can think of that I didn't mind are their chili cheese fries and their Kentucky Bourbon burger and, looking back at those posts, I am amused to see that the adjective I used to describe both was "Okay."

Carl's Jr. seems to spend their money on commercials, not product development. Still, when I read about their new steakhouse burger, advertised with the are-you-f**king-kidding-me tagline "Tastes like it's made by the God of Hamburgers," I decided to give it a try. (With more than 4,000 views in slightly under six months, the post about the turkey burgers is the most popular one I have written by a wide margin. Obviously lots of you want to read about these things, and I am a servant to my readers.)

I went through the drive-through and ordered the "Six Dollar" version of the burger. I'm not sure why; I had a brain freeze. More on that in a minute. The total was $6.08. (Pulling up to the window, my thought was Wow I can get two burgers at In-n-Out for that price. I doubted this would be better, but I was willing to give it a shot.) The girl at the window handed me the burger in a remarkably short time.

This is what the burger looks like in the promotional ad.

And this is what the thing looks like in person. Now, that's not entirely fair; no burger actually looks like it does in an advertisement. But the contrast between the juicy, fresh-looking patty in the ad and the grey, floppy patty in front of me was startling.

The "crispy onion strings" were more like greasy onion noodles. They didn't taste bad... they didn't really taste like anything. Except grease.

The blue cheese was the highlight of the burger. Too often - especially when dealing with fast food - blue cheese is one of two things: overpowering or completely flavorless. This was a nice balance and would have been a good complement to the A.1. steak sauce... if there had been more than a drop of the sauce.

Most of the burger's height came from the two slices of tomato: together they were an inch thick, far thicker than the beef patty. But of course I got rid of them.

So this is what a cross-section of my burger looked like.

With a better bun and higher-quality meat, this would not be a bad burger. But that's like saying "If Shaq had stayed in shape and practiced free-throws he would have been a better center." It is what it is. And the bottom line is that the bun was the same two-days-past-fresh-tasting bun that every Carl's Jr. burger utilizes, and, more importantly, the beef patty was terrible. I don't know why I ordered the thicker patty. This happened the last time I tried one of these Six Dollar burgers a few years ago: I thought 'Wow, why did I think I would actually want more of this meat?'

I suppose I liked the Steakhouse Burger more than most that Carl's Jr. offers - the lack of bacon and American cheese is addition by subtraction and I enjoyed the blue cheese - but that's not saying much. When you factor in the cost and the 1060 calories and 67 grams of fat, this is not something I recommend nor anything I would ever eat again.