Returning with Denny's free Grand Slam breakfast

Food fans, it's once again time for me to offer my apologies for leaving you dining alone for an extended time. I last served you a new post 66 days ago, leaving you to face a devilish stretch of winter with no intellectual nourishment. I am sorry.

I could offer you a large menu of excuses: Winter blahs, a job hunt siphoning my time or just general holiday business. But excuses are like The Who singing at halftime of the Superbowl -- no one wants to hear them, and they get old rapidly.

While you are, no doubt, a polite reading public willing to grant me some weeks for R&R, you needed some food critique to guide you through the long holiday months. At very least you deserved a repost of last year's Super Bowl special and the Bacon Explosion before this year's big game. And I'm sure everyone could have stood to reread my pontifications on ham while planning this year's Christmas dinner.

I promise to make it up to you. Today I'll start with a review of Denny's free Grand Slam breakfast. After you've had time to digest that we'll move on to a review of Wendy's Spicy Chicken Nuggets. And I'm in the process of preparing the annual Spork Awards for 2009 -- better late than never, I always say. The way back into your hearts is through your stomachs, and I'm ready to start making up.

Denny's Free Grand Slam

I wasn't alone in following up on Sunday's Super Bowl ads and ordering my free breakfast at Denny's. The restaurant Tuesday was full of folks ordering the free Grand Slam breakfasts, which consist of two eggs, two sausage links, two bacon strips and two flapjacks.

Seeing identical breakfast foods on every table in the restaurant was downright creepy, similar to seeing 40 men in matching suits walking toward you. It makes you think you're headed for the funny farm.

If it was the funny farm, it wasn't the freshest farm. My sausage links and eggs had an extra-processed quality to them that screamed "impending heart attack." That's not a bad thing from a taste standpoint, but I was worried I was dumping enough extra preservatives into my digestive tract to keep my stomach around for the benefit of future generations.

The same can be said for the bacon, but I refuse to criticize bacon for having preservatives. It is, after all, bacon. What I will criticize my bacon for is its limpness. Surely Denny's could have crisped it up a bit.

By contrast my pancakes were beyond reproach, packing a good balance of fluffiness and butteriness. My only complaint is that I was given a dinky container of syrup. A few ounces was not enough to cover the broad stretch of flapjack on my plate.

I must pick one final nit. My food was served merely warm. On a related note, my service was fairly slow. It's a small complaint considering the restaurant was busy and giving me free food, but worth noting nonetheless.

So it's time to rank the free breakfast. The price was right. The food was decent. Sounds like five sporks to me.

The rating would, of course, be a little different if I had to pay for the meal. I'll try to do that at some point for the sake of future generations.

Five Guys, five sporks

This may be the only time you ever see me tell you to pay ten bucks for a burger and fries.

Until the far away day when the rising tide of inflation picks up candy bar prices to $5, you won't see me endorse many meals this pricey. I could be rich enough to eat a surf and turf of manatee and polar bear every night, but I would still shudder at the thought of handing over ten Washingtons for the traditionally inexpensive American meal.

But oh what a burger and fries Five Guys cooks.

The Virginia-based chain makes a big deal about the fact that it offers no frozen ingredients and uses only peanut oil on its fries. Normally I'd ignore all that woofing, but something makes a difference at Five Guys. And it may well be the no-frozen all-peanut formula.

Five Guys' burgers are truly hot off the grill. They drip taste (grease) and have ground beef that tastes closer to "off the farm" than "out of the food processor." Five Guys fries are the closest thing to fresh cut potatoes that I've seen outside of sliced-in-front-of-you fair fries. They aren't too salty and have an actual potato flavor -- a rarity in fast food fries.

A real selling point on the burgers is their customizability. Toppings are free -- provided you're willing to pay the already premium price of a burger -- and give you plenty of chances to mix and match. I counted sixteen different toppings, including green peppers, hot sauce and grilled onions.

... And then there's my favorite topping, jalapeno peppers. Five Guys has taken the high road and offers actual fresh jalapenos. As in not the pickled peppers you see at so many other fast food restaurants. While I love pickled jalapenos, the fresh ones provide a much longer-lasting heat that builds upon itself, simultaneously building deliciousness.

But enough about the peppers. You're probably wondering how it all adds up to a $10 meal. And in truth you could order a burger and fries for less than that. But you'd have to order a single burger, which Five Guys mockingly calls a "Little Burger." I say don't go little, stay beefy!

Or you could leave out the drink. My bacon cheeseburger cost $5.49, my fries cost $2.39 and my drink cost $1.79. Toss in some tax, and you have a $10.26 meal -- that was worth it.

Five Guys is getting the same number of sporks as it has guys. Five. Each full dollar I paid for my burger was worth a spork.

Plus I'm ready to go back to spend another ten bucks. I have an awfully inflated opinion of this place.

Wendy's Applewood smoked bacon

Wendy's sure has been making a big deal out of its Applewood smoked bacon lately.

Commercials have been telling us it's way better than fast food. They've shown cubicle wars over the hog slices, complete with dramatic shots of leaping old women.

My suggestion, though, is that you look before bringing home the bacon.

It's not that you won't have a tasty meal. Wendy's burgers are good on their own and bacon generally adds some scrumptiousness. So tossing bacon onto an Wendy's burger is a recipe for something yummy.

Unfortunately it isn't a recipe that lives up to all the hype.

I ordered a "Deluxe Double" with smoked Applewood strips and was surprised by how average the bacon tasted. The overwhelming flavor of the burger is ... burger. No bacon flavor jumped out and grabbed my by the throat.

After all the talk, I halfway expected a pig to climb out of the burger, wring my neck and scream "Eat more bacon!" I at least expected smokey bacon flavor to tempt me to order another burger.

Instead I picked up a complimentary bacon flavor -- that was pleasantly smokey -- and a slightly rubbery texture. It may have simply been the Wendy's franchise I ordered from, but my bacon was dry and a bit overdone.

It should have been way better than three sporks out of five. Yet that's the rating it earned.

KFC Grilled Chicken

Oh my loyal foodie followers, how I've neglected you these past few weeks! Just as the winter months set in, limiting your time outside and giving you more time to eat, I've been head-spinningly busy and unable to give you the palatory guidance you so deserve!

Let me apologize. Let me also make it up to you with what today's review. I promise it's juicy.

It's juicy because it's reviewing a juicy food. KFC's Grilled Chicken.

Actually, "juicy" doesn't do justice to KFC's latest attempt at non-fried yet appetizing bird chunks. "Saturated" is more like it. My memories of the chicken will forever drip with the moisture that was soaked into the bird.

See, one of the problems with grilled chicken is that it's not as juicy as fried chicken. The grill can extract moisture from the meat where deep frying adds oil to it. KFC, deriving its namesake from Kentucky (deep)Fried Chicken, couldn't put out a dry offering and expect anyone to eat it.

And Kentucky Grilled Chicken, henceforth referred to as KGC, certainly isn't dry. And if you could ever get around to focusing on the chicken's flavor, you'd find it's actually pretty good.

The problem is that you never can focus on the flavor for more than three seconds because biting into KGC is like gnawing on a sponge. Juiciness floods your mouth. It drips down your hands and forms a small puddle at your feet.

Picture the puddle of drool at Odie's feet in "Garfield" comics. That's what you look like after eating KGC.

Worse, that puddle is in large part grease. And a portion of it made it into your mouth and sits in your tummy like a lead weight pulling you desperately into bed to sleep off the calorie-hangover. But when you get to bed it keeps you awake with cramps.

It is cheap at the register, though. I got two pieces of the grilled chicken, (I chose a breast and a drumstick), mac and cheese, a biscuit and a drink for $5 ... plus the future cost of the balloon angioplasty I'll no doubt need after ingesting all that grease -- 110 milligrams of cholesterol in the breast!

KGC could be worse. It could be dry and a hazard to your health. But if you're going to eat badly, you might as well enjoy something that's deep fried.

Two sporks out of five. They should serve this with a shop towel and that a packet of auto mechanic soap that's specially formulated to cut through motor oil.