OK … so you pride yourself on being both a dedicated “Bacon Freak” as well as a legitimate gourmet, and you’re out on the road feeling hungry and wanting something truly deliciously satisfying. Or you’re busy on an important, “life changing” project and don’t really have time to cook up any of your monthly gourmet “Bacon Club” bacon to give a little pork protein pump-up to a nice healthy salad.

So what do you do?

Wendy’s has the answer … and I really think you are going to LOVE what they’ve come up with, cause I know that I most certainly do. Introducing the BLT Cobb Salad, one of four new Wendy’s creations designed to specifically accentuate and expand upon the highly acclaimed and increasingly popular “Garden Sensations” line of freshly prepared salads at the fast food franchise who has consistently been rising higher and higher up the ladder and now ranked # 3, behind “The B King” and “Micky D’s.”

Wendy’s, with it’s nearly 7,000 drive thru and sit down is one of the very few “burger joints” who seems to truly take both the taste and sensibilities of the gourmet diner, as well as the health conscious concerns of those seeking a truly premium quality salad … seriously!

First of all, they are using a lot of top notch ingredients that most popular “hamburger” stands and drive thru “greasy sporks” simply don’t bother to stock up on or utilize on their menus.

With the new Wendy’s BLT Cobb Salad, here’s what you get:

They start you off with an impressively diverse and eclectic blend of fresh lettuce and various “spring mix greens,” including red and green Romaine lettuce, red and green oak lettuce, red and green leaf lettuce, spinach, mizuna arugula, tatsoi, red chard and green chard. WOW, were talking about a collection of very impressive greens, including some that many supermarket produce sections simply don’t carry.

That masterful mix is then topped off with two nice, big hearty and flavorful strips of impressively decent quality, Applewood Smoked Bacon. This isn’t at all like at a lot of other places, where you have to actually have to get underneath a very bright light with a pair of tweezers and a microscope to actually verify the existence of bacon in your food, it’s definitely right there and very satisfying.

Add to that some delicious, freshly chopped tomatoes, authentic blue cheese crumbles, real, freshly boiled and chopped; hard-boiled eggs and freshly grilled chicken, served with a side of creamy Avocado Ranch dressing, that actually tastes like avocado … because it “IS!”

By the way, these salads are completely fresh and totally crisp, prepared right there on site, without any of that oh so typical fast food chain “pre-fabricated packages of plant processed produce.” Also I happen to know for a fact that the dressings are made by “Marzetti’s,” and actually are created especially for Wendy’s, 100% preservative free and offering up connoisseur cuisine flavors such as “Creamy Red Jalapeno,” “Lemon Garlic Caesar,” and “Pomegranate Vinaigrette,” as well as the rest of Wendy’s usual salad dressing choices.

All this, at just 670 calories, only 47 grams of fat and bulked to the brim with stomach satisfying, hunger killing “all natural” and totally delicious fiber / roughage that keeps us healthy, regular, trim and feeling full a LOT sooner than when eating the average “fast food salad served elsewhere.

Yep, all that for just under $6.00.

For those of you on a serious diet and wanting to take in even less calories and fat than that, the Wonderful Wizards of Wendy’s are ready, willing and able to substitute out the creamy Avocado Ranch dressing and replace it with Light Classic Ranch dressing. Or if you choose to go even lighter, they offer up a Fat Free French dressing … and we all know what all the latest tabloids and diet books are saying these days about the French … that they don’t get fat. so there you go, enjoy a truly great gourmet feat out on the road while sticking to your diet.

It’s the very best of BOTH worlds. Thank You Wendy’s!

After looking up the stats on this burger I could only find the info on the Baconator Triple, which is  HALF the size of the 6 patty (duh!), so I’ve doubled everything I found to get a better idea of what is in this 6 burger death wish:

• 2660 calories
• 172 grams of fat
• 690 mg of cholesterol
• 180 grams of protein (okay, that’s not bad… just triple what any human being needs)
• 94 grams of carbs
• The Baconator Triple has 9 strips of bacon… does the 6 patty have 18??  (Swoon?)

Sweet Hamhocks.  I can feel my stroke forming in my left lobe.  And check out this guy, he actually ATE the whole thing and didn’t die (immediately):

www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoIF-bnzaU0

This guy either is A) a new breed of human being or B) a complete and utter idiot.

I really thought around 2:04 that he was going to throw up.  Or quit.  Or fall over dead.  But either way, kudos for Wendy’s for going that extra mile and keeping us meat lovers flush in bacon!  (Although, we may send you our medical bill.  Just saying…)

Nutritional Guide Referenced:
http://www.wendys.com/food/Nutrition.jsp

photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/io_burn/1331271360/

One of the nice things about writing for the world’s best bacon news site is that people occasionally send us free stuff.

Our most recent form of free stuff was a set of coupons to go try out the new Applewood Smoked Bacon Deluxe burger at Wendy’s. No complaints here; I really like Wendy’s to begin with. They have variety – you can get a burger, chili, a potato or all three. Plus, they still have the best dessert deal in all of FastFoodia – the junior Frosty. Where else can you get the perfect amount of post-meal suckable ice cream for $0.53?

But, let me assure you that bacon remains king, and even though I like Wendy’s (and they had sent me free coupns), I went in with the mindset that if it sucked, I would tell the world about it. Frankly, I had very low expectations – I have rarely (if ever) had fast food bacon that really passes the test. Sometimes it is acceptable, sometimes it is limp and soggy, but never has fast food bacon been amazing.

Until now.

I’m not kidding.

WOW!

Here’s the thing – the Bacon Deluxe starts off like any other bacon burger. It has meat, cheese, lettuce, ketchup, tomatoes, onions, mayo, pickles and buns.

And then they add bacon. Applewood smoked bacon. CRISPY, thick, straight-from-the-breakfast-table Applewood Smoked Bacon.

At a fast food establishment, I have never met its equal. The truth is that rapid, high-volume production and bacon are not a match made in heaven. Fast food bacon is usually limp and soggy as a result. In order for bacon to be truly delicious it must be given some time, love and attention in the kitchen.

With this burger’s bacon, Wendy’s seems to have bridged the great fast food bacon divide. I don’t know how they did it, but it seems like they stole it from somebody’s kitchen table.

This is my friend Jonathan inspecting the quality of his burger before tasting. His only complaint was that the lettuce was kind of pale green in comparison to the thick, rich, Al Gore green that was depicted on the Bacon Deluxe standee that was on the floor a few feet away from us.

1 

And then it was time for the taste test. We were both blown away! I think it’s worth mentioning again that Wendy’s sent us free coupons for the burgers, but the burgers were ALSO delicious. No kidding. I loved this thing. The burger itself was up to snuff with all the other standard burgers on the Wendy’s menu, but the bacon blew this thing off the charts. The Bacon Deluxe unequivocally has the best fast food bacon I have ever tasted.

This is one of me testing out the bacon by itself. Mmmm…

It’s good, fellow Baconites. It’s really good.

Jonathan’s Smaste™ Rating: 38.000

My Smaste™ Rating: 44.971

– Mike

All in all though it was good to see such a thorough use of bacon in a forum like MySpace.

If you haven’t become our “friend” on MySpace, be sure to visit the Bacon Today MySpace profile and add us to your list!

Here are a couple screen shots of the bacon ads:

Read the original Baconator review.