Sunday, March 7, 2010

the value menu experiment


The Contestants

Cody and I have always talked about starting a seperate blog on our cuisine experiments. We both extremely enjoy food, but mostly when we get to experience it together. We love finding new and interesting restaurants but also finding places we can call ours. Our dream career would be to be food critics, I mean, paid to eat, does it get any better?... (I submit that it cannot).
We've scoped out Rexburg and know the good places, but still have some to test out. We have our chinese (fong's), mexican (taco bus), thai (original thai) and sandwich (quiznos) places. Well last night I was really craving a hamburger. But Cody and Jessica don't just go to the closest place to get a hamburger. No, no, no we make an experience out of it, we call it the value menu experiment.
Task: Go to each burger place in town, order their dollar hamburger and dollar fry and see which one is best. (best being price, amount of food, quality of each).

Establishments: Wendy's, Jack in the Box, Sonic, McDonald's, and Burger King. (Dairy Queen didn't have a value menu and we didn't want to get sick from Arctic Circle)

(Click to Enlarge)

Results:
Hamburger (Ranked on Scale of 1-5; 1 =best 5= worst):
Cody: 5- BK; 4-Jack; 3- Wendy; 2- Sonic; 1- Mc
-Cody was a little partial, his reason his #1 was mcdonald's was because it tasted like childhood
Jessica: 5- Mc; 4- Sonic; 3- Wendy's; 2- BK; 1- Jack
-BK would've won, but this trip the buns tasted burnt. Sonic would've ranked higher on my list but I didn't care for the ton of onion bits). Jack's ingredients were by FAR the freshest

French Fries (Same scale as hamburger): (the fact that these fries were not fresh when we ate them was taken into consideration, they might rank differently fresh and eaten at the restaurant)
Cody: 5- Wendy's; 4- Sonic; 3- Mc; 2- BK; 1- Jack
Jessica: 5- Sonic; 4- Wendy's; 3- Mc; 2- Jack; 1- BK
-Sonic and Jack's fries had a very natural taste to them. Tasted like potatoes not fried grease. Sonic's fries came with a packet of salt, and you needed it. We didn't know if that was on purpose, like season to taste or not.

Cheapest: Wendy's... $2.06 (The rest were $2.12)
Best Deal: Sonic, you get way more food for the money
Hamburger Details (What comes on it):
Wendys: Ketchup, Mustard, Pickles
Jack: Lettuce, tomatoes, mayo (little or no ketchup, needed to be dunked, I like ketchup with my red meat)
BK: Lettuce, Tomatoes, mayo, no ketchup, bun way too overcooked (not normally burnt, usually my favorite but that darn bun)
Sonic: Large patty to bun ratio (stuck outside of bun, compared to most with ton of bread with itty bitty patty), tomato, lettuce, pickles, onions, mayo
Mc: Got cheeseburger, due to no hamburger on their value menu, results may change with hamburger, pickles, ketchup and mustard, cheese

-Sonic made us wait the longest, but had the fullest bag + mint!
-Mcdonald's folded their bag to hand to us (more efficient)
-BK- no napkins in bag, SMALLEST fries, like barely any, but best tasting...
-Jack- Most pleasant night shift worker
-Sidenote, nobody gave or offered us any ketchup with our food... odd...

..... Guess which is from where...

Cody's Winner: Jack
Jessica's Winner: Wendy's
-This was odd that Jack ranked so well because normally I never even consider eating at Jack in the Box, but they did very very well in our opinion. Well done Jack, but I'll still go somewhere else. haha.


All Gone.

7 comments:

mhartley said...

you two are so funny.
ps. I decided to make that turkey chili and it was really good!

Mitch said...

Who said all the answers can be found in the scriptures...
You guys are front runners in the gene pool of genius

Megan said...

as a pregnant lady who can eat large amounts of food in one sitting, i think i could have been very valuable in this study.

rusty and i might have to do a nw version of this which includes bv, and carl's jr.

i can't believe jack won! shocking but the hamburgers don't lie.

Michelle said...

This is so funny!!! I love it. Too bad In-N-Out wasn't in the running. It FOR SURE would've won.

Grandma Taylor said...

You two always amaze me with what you choose to do. Don't know where to find the source, but there are food checking jobs out there that do pay you to eat and pay your tip as well. I know because your G'pa Bob and I did it for about a year. Got Fat!!

Aaron said...

Ah, to be in my twenties again where I could eat 5 burgers at once and not have to worry about it.

Sounds like it was a fun experiment.

Jenna said...

this cracked me up. you are so clever!