Taste Test: KFC Cheesy Bacon Bowl

I SAW this advert­ised on telly last night and knew imme­di­ately that I had to try one and, thanks to Mapquest, I picked up my first Cheesy Bacon Bowl at the KFC on Glend­ale Avenue this after­noon. Much like Gregg’s chilli cup­cakes, the photo isn’t quite what you get, espe­cially if you’ve seen the ads for this thing:

How do they stay so thin when shov­el­ling 700 cal­or­ies down their faces?

“Come on, you fat bas­tard,” I hear you cry. “What was it like?” To which my responses would be, “piss off” and “salty”. But, amaz­ingly, not too salty, and not as salty as a serving of basic KFC chicken. To be hon­est it was pretty bland; even the Double Down had some taste to it once you got past the microwaved bacon and stringy, dry chicken. The bacon fla­vour doesn’t really announce its pres­cence, the gravy is the usual KFC middle-of-the-road brown­ish liquid and the chicken nug­gets are basic­ally gravy-soaked salt bombs. On the upside, the mash is good and adds some much-needed relief from all the salt and fat.

The most strik­ing thing, though, is the cheese - or lack of it. Des­pite the “Cheesy” in its name, the Cheesy Bacon Bowl (CBB) is bereft of any semb­lance of cheese taste. A quick primer for those of you used to real cheese: there are four basic Amer­ican cheeses - Swiss (bland), Amer­ican (blander), ched­dar (no it bloody isn’t) and jack (bland­ish). The CBB uses the usual three-cheese blend that you find every­where in the States - Swiss, Amer­ican and jack - which seems cal­cu­lated not so much to add taste but just as a quick and cheap fat deliv­ery sys­tem. Any chees­iness is con­spicu­ous by its absence.

The only nutri­tional val­ues I can find online are way to much for what I had, lead­ing me to think that it comes in small and large sizes (or, for the rest of the world, “massive” and “Amer­ican”) and that I must have got a small one. I’m very glad I did, for the fig­ures for the 525 gram bowl are 680 cal­or­ies (280 from fat), 31 grams of fat, 8 grams of sat­ur­ated fat and and kidney-buggering 2130 mgs of sodium. (Think­ing about it, it must have been the small one as it weighed less than my medium Coke.)

After try­ing the Cheesy Bacon Bowl and the Double Down, I’m com­ing to the con­clu­sion that KFC holds its cus­tom­ers in utter con­tempt. That’s the only reason I can think of for its con­tinual unleash­ing of the most God-awful unhealthy food, worse even than the utter rub­bish that is McDon­alds. But the CBB’s main claim to fame isn’t its cal­orie count or insane salt con­tent, it’s its unre­lent­ing bland­ness and mediocrity and, for a dish that com­bines fried chicken and bacon - two foods that are manna from heaven - that’s unfor­giv­able.

Amaz­ingly, to pro­mote this KFC are offer­ing one poor sod luck­ing win­ner a year’s worth of Cheesy Bacon Bowls. All you have to do, accord­ing to the rules, are:

Dur­ing the Con­test Period, become a fol­lower of the @kfc_colonel brand on Twit­ter at http://twitter.com/kfc_colonel and tweet using the hashtag #bacon­bowls what you love about KFC’s Cheesy Bacon Bowls in one hun­dred and forty (140) char­ac­ters or less (each, an “Entry”) includ­ing #bacon­bowls.

I’m fol­low­ing the @kfc_colonel brand and I’m about to sub­mit this as my entry. Christ knows what I’ll do if I win as not even the local home­less shel­ter would accept a year’s worth of these things.