Burger King Offer New Sweet-Savory Choice of Bacon Sundae {Fragrant Recipes & Taste Notes} {Food News}
The bacon in this new summer 2012 limited-edition Bacon Sundae by Burger King might actually be the healthiest part of it. When you look at the caramel drips and imagine how much standard white sugar there must be in the soft-serve (61 grams actually), you definitely want to grab onto the strip of bacon.
As for the newness in taste sensation, I will argue that it is probably more of a visual or conceptual shock initially than a taste shock. It is a visual shock because it epitomizes American food excesses. In fact, for some reason, a French media reported that it would be available only in Tennessee as if such excesses could only take place in the South. It is a conceptual shock because we still are not used to thinking that pairing meat and ice-cream is banal, or even any sweet-savory variation in ice-cream for that matter. It feels transgressive although it can be felt to be deliciously transgressive - I am reminiscing right now about a delightful dessert of balsamic fig vinegar poured onto vanilla ice-cream. People have however tasted sweet bacon - think maple syrup on breakfast pancakes and even Mo's Bacon Bar by Vosges (2007), more confidential, yet available...
The fact that the Bacon Sundae will be offered by a national fast food chain is what makes this dessert so surprising. It says this is not just a quirk, an accident of distinct foods meeting on a plate, but the result of market-research. It might be market-research in advertising though and it's working.
From a taste perspective, reviewers tend to say that the decadent dessert is not that well made from a flavor perspective and feels like bacon bits have been dumped into the frozen mess. It results in a sensation of two separate tastes, one more fugitive than the other. In other words, there is no sense of balance, blending and real taste research. It's vanilla soft-serve + bacon and the sum is no greater than its parts.
Elizabeth Gunnison from Esquire shows that the dessert really is more than anything else perhaps, a conversation piece,
"Next, let's examine the aesthetics. Without a doubt, the sundae's most salient visual feature is its swine garnish, which protrudes from the dish of soft-serve in a manner recalling the Iwo Jima Memorial, the feather in Yankee Doodle's cap, or something else equally proud and American (surely this, and its very debut on Flag Day, were fully intentional). Without the bacon twist, it would be easy for the casual observer to dismiss the dish as nothing more than your standard meat-free dessert sundae. But I can assure you that, should you be carrying this sundae down Sixth Avenue in Manhattan at 9:30 on a Thursday morning, that tall bacon flag will really turn heads."
