The Test

I enjoy a good hamburger and I’m not ashamed to say that I enjoy eating fast food hamburgers.  Watching Super Size Me just makes me crave McDonalds.  So recently we got together with our dear friends Nick and Kellaura for a taste test to find the best fast food burger.

Competing for title of tastiest burger were the Whataburger, Sonic Burger #1, the Jumbo Jack, the Whopper, and the Quarter Pounder with Cheese, which was the closest thing McDonalds has to a classic hamburger.  None of us are big mayonnaise fans so we made sure all the burgers were with mustard, no mayo, but besides that we ordered them as they come.  When I say we’re not big mayonnaise fans, I mean three of the four of us would be gagging if we ate a hamburger with mayo.

The rules were simple:  It was literally a blind taste test, because we didn’t want to anything like sesame seeds to give away the chain.  We took turns, with each person trying every burger, rating it with one to five stars, and trying to guess the restaurant correctly.  Drinks and fries were available for pallet cleansing in between bites.

Our biggest realization was that as a fast food hamburger cools it becomes almost tasteless.  Kellaura and I were the last to test, and our ratings were lower than the guys.  We ended up with comments like “takes like air”, “doesn’t taste like much either”, and “also doesn’t takes like anything”.

In the end, there was a clear winner:

The Whopper!  Go Burger King.  It was the highest rated hamburger by all of us, four or five stars every time.

It was a little shocking for us, as we’re all loyal Whataburger enthusiasts and none of us frequent Burger King.  I think I’ve eaten at Burger King four times in the past ten years and two of those times were probably at airports.  But after the taste test I think we’re all looking at the King with a little more respect.  Flame broiled apparently does give it a lot of extra backyard grilling flavor.  It looks like we’ll all be reevaluating our choices next time we head out for fast food.

While this post may sound like product placement, we received no promotional consideration from Burger King.  But knowing how tasty Whoppers are, I would trade free food for blog posts…