There was a time, about a year and change ago, when every single time I bought food in a pre-made fashion it was one of two limited-time burgers from Wendy's. The Bourbon Bacon cheeseburger and the Big Bacon Cheddar cheeseburger were, and continue to be, two of the best fast-food burgers I've ever eaten. When Wendy's pulled them from their Made To Crave menu I was, honestly and somewhat pathetically, genuinely kinda devastated. They introduced a new chicken sandwich at that point, a ghost-pepper inspired affair, and followed that up reasonably quickly with the Loaded Nacho cheeseburger.
Being less than a huge fan of spicy food as I've aged and also feeling freshly betrayed, I boycotted the new hamburger pretending at the throne of my dearly beloved bourbon bacon burger. This event drove something of a wedge between me an my favorite fast food joint.
As time passed, however, I realized that there was a certain amount of hypocrisy in my shopping around at all these other fast food places to compare their sandwiches to the menu I'm familiar with at Wendy's while also staunchly refusing to even try Wendy's new burger. So I swallowed my pride and bought one. And I feel like it's worth mentioning that if pride tasted as good as the loaded nacho burger, people would swallow it much more willingly.
This thing does, in fact, slap.
See, one of the things I like most about Wendy's is the fact that their menu shifts periodically. The whole point of the Made To Crave menu is that it isn't permanent. There are some sandwiches on there that have been around basically forever and aren't likely to go away, such as the big bacon classic or the asiago ranch chicken sandwich, but there's always been a certain amount of turnover on there. And rather than just pushing out a rotation of the same tired and effectively terrible sandwiches the way McDaffodil's does when they make changes to their menu, Wendy's actually puts new, experimental flavors on there. The bourbon sauce from the bourbon bacon burger was a revelation, and the big bacon cheddar burger had pepper jelly on it, of all things.
So to see a burger themed around nachos released onto that menu was not, in and of itself, surprising. But just about every specific detail of the burger itself managed to be. I mean, it makes sense that you'd put tortilla chips on a burger based around nachos, I suppose. What makes less sense is how much of a positive experience that is. The cheese sauce is also excellent, and taken together the burger strikes an amazing balance between being texturally smooth and juicy as well as crunchy and satisfying. But perhaps the most amazing thing this burger does is, weirdly, with the bun.
See, there are a lot of foods that have jalapenos in them. Too many, if I'm being honest. It's not that I don't like the flavor of jalapenos. Conversely, I actually love it. The problem is that too many things that have jalapenos in them over-emphasize the heat of the pepper such that the flavor essentially vanishes. This is true from hot sauces to burgers that include pickled jalapenos on them, so when I saw that the loaded nacho burger had jalapenos in the bun I figured that was going to be a sore spot for me.
It's not. It's the best part. There's heat from the peppers, for sure, but Wendy's has managed to balance this heat (along with the other sources of spice in the sandwich) with the non-spicy ingredients in such a way that the most prominent thing about the jalapeno peppers on this thing is their flavor. And I've gotta say, that flavor is excellent. It's genuinely quite hard to find something that features the flavor of a jalapeno quite as well as this sandwich, which is amazing. I love it.
So as it happens, Wendy's knows what they're doing with their Made To Crave sandwiches. They took some really good burgers off that menu a couple years back, but the burger they replaced them with is plenty worthy of taking their spot. I never should have doubted them, and I won't be so quick to judge in the future. The simple truth is that when I crave a fast food burger, it's not just quality that I'm looking for. It's an emphasis on experimentation, an intent to keep looking for new and delicious ways to put a twist on the beef'n'bun classic we've all come to love. That being the case, nobody else gets me to habitually review their menu quite like Wendy's does.
And it doesn't hurt that they're among the best quality as well.
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