Hardee's Grilled Cheese Breakfast Sandwich

I know, I've said it a Brazilian times, I'm going to stop being disappointed by fast food.
Well, sometimes when you get up early on a Saturday morning and have a hollow tummy and a gummy taste in your mouth, a pre-made breakfast sandwich sounds pretty good.
Angel had just gotten up herself, so I caught her before her usual breakfast, share-a-yogurt-with-Rudy.
"I'm going to Hardee's, would you like something?"
Silly question. She has the yogurt to make her feel better about herself. She wants a breakfast sandwich as badly as I do.
At first she defaulted to the breakfast burrito. Then she changed her mind when she remembered the sign we pass by several tines a week.
"Grilled cheese!"
"Exactly!" I replied.
Hardee's is currently the closest eatery to our house, about five miles away, anchoring Hillsboro's business district. It dominates that part of town, a popular landmark, coffee house, meeting place and an outstanding neutral spot for weekend kid swapping, for separated families. Angel's even done dog swaps there. It's impossible to miss, very much unlike our secluded homestead in the woods.
They've been advertising a grilled cheese breakfast sandwich for a few weeks now. Impossible to completely ignore.
I headed directly to the drive through as I was not exactly fit to make a public appearance. Loose, faded tee shirt, baggy jeans, my favorite crocs and the old and dog hair laden hoody jacket. It's what I wear to be comfy around the house. Also, I hadn't showered yet.
I don't usually like drive-throughs. The speaker system is awful, one must always repeat everything a half dozen times, and very often they get your order wrong. But like I said, I wasn't exactly ready for a grand entrance.
"Would you like to start with one of our grilled cheese sandwiches?" The distorted, squeaky, invisible mind reader shouted through the bullhorn quality sound system.

"Why yes, yes I would!" I screamed.
Silence
"Are you still there?" The box inquired.
"Yes."
"May I take your order?"
"Oh, you need more information don't you."
Silence.
"Okay, I'd like two grilled cheese sandwiches, two tots and a medium coffee. please."
She misread the order back, I re-shouted it.
"Bacon, ham or sausage?" Came the rebuttal.
"Hmmm. sausage I think."
"Did you say sausage?"
"Why yes, that's exactly what I said."
"Your order comes to nine beluga whales and prescient sensibilities." That's what it sounded like anyhow.
I drove up to the window which, as it is 95% of the time in Hillsboro, occupied by a pickup truck.
The wait wasn't long.
A wispy young lady slid open the window and handed me my coffee. Our hands overlapped for a second, a fleeting moment of human to human connection. I was very worried that she, as have many others in the past, might fall instantly in love with me. The moment passed though, I think it was when she looked inside the car, which as on any Saturday, looked like an overturned dumpster. During the week I spend more than entire working day's worth of hours in my little VW, it gets  kind of cluttered and trashy by the weekend.
I swiped what I hoped was the right card through the exterior card eater. ($9.56) It blinked and dinged. She seemed to be satisfied and handed me a warm, aromatic bag. I didn't do the smart thing, which would have been to open it to see how badly they mangled the complex order.
I drove all the way home without succumbing to the temptation to nibble on tots. it was hard, but I'm a real man, able to hold my desires and drives in check.
At home I heard Angel in the shower but I did not wait for her. Poor planning on her part might render her meal cold, not mine. I was confounded and confused when I opened the bag and saw they'd filled the order perfectly.
The bread did look grilled and the cheese was definitely melty. One of the first things many, many dudes learn to cook is grilled cheese. Especially if there are kids in the house.
Though the bread did look grilled, it did so just barely, kind of like half-done toast. A good grilled cheese sammich is best cooked just up to the second it is ready to burst into flames.
The sausage patty extended to the edges for the most part. The bread was square-ish, the patty round. This left dry spots of bread and I do mean dry.
Not that the middle, meaty part was that much better. Very cheesy, but the sausage brought hardly any flavor to the offering. I like a good sage-y sausage. This was more like salty ground pork. the cheese, advertised to be American/Swiss, was more 'Velveetan' in taste. Not that there's anything wrong with Velveeta, but it is a pretty strong flavor. Overall, I was overwhelmed with the blandness of the under-buttered bread and the flatness of the sausage.
Angel, who was a little late to the party, disagreed. She said the sausage brought a nice note of spiciness to the almost overwhelming cheesiness. She agreed though that the bread was way under-cooked, no crunch.
The tots were, well they were tots. Too greasy, too salty, just like we expect and weirdly crave on
rare occasion. Rudy loved the tots Angel shared with him. He seemed to like it as much as the usual yogurt.
In conclusion, I can't say I was disappointed. My expectations were very, very low to begin with. They lived up to those expectations precisely.
Nice try, excellent idea, but fire your chef. You're doing it wrong. Not worth a recommendation.

Hardee's Balogna and Velveeta Special!

In our weekly local paper, we found a coupon. Angel giggled with glee showing it to us. It described a new breakfast menu item, one that harked me back to my innocent and threadbare, hardscrabble youth.
Fried bologna, Velveeta 'cheese' on one of their signature biscuits.
Angel didn't actually want one, neither did Adam.
I had to know.
So early on Saturday (9:30 A.M.), I ventured out, I needed to go to the post office anyhow.
Background:
We had bologna quite often. We didn't call it that so it feels weird spelling it with a 'g' and ending it with an 'a'. So I am going to revert at this point to the colloquial, more familiar 'baloney'.
We had baloney quite often. My great uncle, O.C. Dyer* ran a store across from my grandmother's house. We lived with her for most of my first twelve or thirteen years.
Whenever we needed something Mom would send one of us to the store for it. Uncle O.C. had a huge ledger on the counter where he entered names and amounts, you could run a tab there. So all we had to to was to grab what we needed, or a pop, (soft drink) or occasionally a candy bar and take it up to the counter and he'd just write the amount down in the big book. I suppose he billed the folks later.
It was an old style store, two gas pumps out front, a big cooler for pop, a few isles of produce ad canned goods. There was even a hardware section, nails, screws, nuts and bolts, etc. There was a revolving toy rack and a candy section. The latter two is where I spent much of my time and meager allowance.
Off to the left was a full deli counter. A huge, shiny meat slicer and a widowed cooler that held all kinds of meats in cheeses in bulk form.
When we got baloney, it wasn't in a package, it was sliced to our desired thickness.
And lo, it was good.
Dad would fry some occasionally, cutting four long slits so it wouldn't concave so much as it cooked, then just plop it on a plate, usually with a fried egg alongside. I don't recall ever making a sandwich with fried baloney.
As for cheese, I don't have distinct memories. I believe we had American singles, but I don't recall a brand.
We had cold baloney sandwiches fairly often. Baloney sandwiches were cheap and easy to prepare, my mom's favored form of meal.
In the store itself, on any given workday, local laborers from the nearby sawmill would go to O.C.'s store for lunch. Baloney on a saltine was quite common, with a drizzle of hot sauce.
So yeah, I'm quite familiar with baloney. Even today, with all my wealth and class, having long escaped the thin times of my youth, I still enjoy a simple baloney sandwich. White bread, Miracle Whip, a sliced tomato a couple of slices (because it is so thinly sliced these days) of baloney and a slice of American cheese.
That's lunch on any day.
As for Velveeta, I certainly knew about it when I was young, I even liked it. But we could rarely afford such extravagances. Back then, name brands like Oscar Mayer and Velveeta were pretty much as unattainable as Rolex and Ferrari, and Oreo.
The Place:
In Hillsboro,  Hardee's is the anchor for all other eateries. It's been there longer than most and sits on a prime location, visible  from all directions, right beside one of the county seat's few traffic lights.
It's a popular place in the mornings, a favorite of many elderly groups. They congregate and read a paper or just talk and laugh among themselves over a cup of senior discount coffee.
I used to go there quite often on Saturday mornings myself. My book, some coffee and a sausage and egg biscuit with a side of tots.
Then I started this whole 'eat better' regimen a year or more back and my tastes and tolerances changed. The stuff there started to leave me queasy and irritable. It no longer tasted good like it once did. Now when I go out and have breakfast it is at a place that uses real eggs, real bacon, real hash browns. I can stomach that. Something fast food places use or do always leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth and a distinct and unpleasant series of noises from my tummy.
But, I knew I had to give this new offering a try, for the sake of educating you, my loyal fans.
The Food:
I had the coupon, I offered it up to the young lady with the headset. She punched eleventy-three buttons,

scanned the coupon and handed it back
"For here, coffee, and you better throw a sausage and egg biscuit on there as well." I shouted quietly.
The extra biscuit was in case the baloney and cheese proved to be awful.
I waited, holding my book. September is 'Translated Japanese Crime Novel' month for me.
I went ahead and sat down after a while at a table beside a window and positioned my plastic number, 56, pointed toward the counter. Hardee's delivers to your table if you make them.
It arrived pretty soon, the thin young lady seemed pleased with her gift to me. "Can I get you anything else?" She pleasantly offered.
I declined further services, plucked a napkin out of the dispenser and started unwrapping things.
Sure enough the baloney was thin, wafer thin and there was only one slice. Well okay. The Velveeta looked like it had been put on the biscuit with a backhoe. It was piled high, gloppy, dripping out the sides.
I studied it, analyzed it, and bit in. Yep, baloney and Velveeta. Nothing wrong with that.
Then it hit me. That metallic, greasy taste in my mouth.
"Eureka! It's the biscuit!" I shouted in my mind.
I had two more bites to make sure I could recall it later. I then shoved it aside and unwrapped the spare biscuit. It was better, but still I could taste it, a sickly bitter taste. Two bites, maybe three, then I pushed it aside as well.
At least I had the tots and coffee.
The coffee was as old and bitter as my sister.
At least I had tots.
So I tossed them back one at a time as I read. Most of them. A strange noise emanated from my belly.
"Eureka! It's the tots!" I shouted in my mind.
I couldn't sit there any more, I was no longer enjoying this quiet round of Dennis time. I closed my book, gathered my trash, dumped it and left.
Summary:
Awful, simply awful. By the time I got home I was full-on nauseous. I just can't eat this fast food crap anymore.
But at least it was good to reminisce.

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*I only ever knew him as O.C. that's what everybody called him. It stood for 'Ovit Crawley'.

Hardee's

Hillsboro, Mo.
http://www.hardees.com/

What's this, a cop-out? No pictures? You didn't even go there?
Well, sort of a cop-out, but not really.
I was puny. While out doing my obligatory, responsible adult chores earlier in the day,  I stopped into the Desoto branch of Hardee's and sat and enjoyed a cup of coffee and a breakfast biscuit. I wanted to go to Huddle House, but their parking lot was completely full. I understand why, HH is really, really good.
But Hardee's makes a pretty good biscuit (from scratch) and fresh, dark coffee.  I dragged along my George Pelecanos novel, to just chill for a while. Chill I didn't.
I started feeling suddenly awful. After a few minutes I felt just well enough to get into the car and drive home. I dived into bed and passed out for a couple of hours.
When I got up I was still weak and woozy. By dinnertime, I was a little hungry, but didn't want to go out into public until I either healed or died, lest I poison the entire county with whatever the heck I had. Dysentery, malaria, rickets, scurvy, lupus (it's never lupus) I couldn't tell. Angel said it might be the flu, but I try not to succumb to such pedestrian diseases.
Angel offered to run somewhere and drag something home. Sure, whatever. Probably my last meal anyhow, go for  it.
The Place:
I don't need to describe it, it's a Hardee's. A plasticized, generic, ubiquitous fast food joint. There are nearly two thousand locations and Hardee's is a sister franchise to Carl's Junior. The company is headquartered right up the road in mighty St. Louis. Together, Hardee's and CJ's form the fifth largest fast food chain in the U.S. Of that top five, Subway, McDonald's Burger King and Wendy's, Hardees makes, without a doubt, the best tasting burger of the lot. Okay, Subway doesn't even make a burger, but still. Your argument to the contrary is invalid.
I've been to the Hillsboro location quite often, it is on one of the most prominent corners of the small town. On weekends, locals, farmers or whatever, congregate there like an old country store. Fractured families use it as a neutral zone to swap out the kids, we've transferred dogs there since it is such a visible and convenient place for outsiders to find. I even saved a dog's life there once as is chronicled in my essay "We all Shine On" in the anthology "Not Your Mother's Book On Dogs"   (Gratuitous self promotion, one of the perks of having your own blog)
During the week, it is not unusual to see suited lawyers and their nervous clients lingering over a table with laptops and piles of papers. Hillsboro is small, around two thousand people, but it is the county seat, home to the courthouse and jail for the sixth most populous county in the state. (County pop. 218,000 in 2010).
There are other places to get coffee and breakfast in the town, but the store's prime, highly visible location makes it easily the most popular. A better cup of coffee and sandwich can be had at Cool Beans, just a block away, but it's a little harder to find. (though well worth it) Cool Beans serves a maple sausage sandwich on pretzel bread that is simply to die for.
The Food:
I left the choice to Angel. She knows what I like, mostly. Plus I was puny and grouchy and not in the mood for deciding much of anything.
She nailed it.
A Bacon Thickburger with curly fries and a tall tea.The same thing she got for herself. The boy, or Adam, as we like to call him, picked out the 6$ Philly cheese-steak burger. That looked pretty good too.
The burgers are pretty big, 1/3 pound (pre-cooked). He had a Coke and his mom, a Diet Coke.
We'd actually had Hardee's on the short list for a while. Even though we're no strangers to the place, we'd heard that they were now serving their burgers on fresh baked buns. This is what we were focusing on.
Hardee's indeed makes the buns, in-store, fresh daily. Sure the dough is delivered to them frozen, but even that's arms and legs better than the other burger-joints can claim.
I looked over our buns. Angel's, Adam's and mine looked the same; round, firm, dense and not as flabby as others. Then I looked at the bread on my sandwich. (Pause for raucous laughter.)
It was indeed noticeably different. It was big enough to contain the entire sandwich. It was not disintegrating, nor did it throughout the meal. The taste was a bit denser and sweeter than a traditional bun, like fresh baked bread, quite good.
Add to that the burger patty itself, better than the other places by a noticeable measure. We've recently been to the other places, I still think Hardee's burgers, even without the clearly superior bun, is the best tasting among them.
The lettuce and tomato were fresh and ample, the bacon was decent and crisp, not soggy.
The curly fries, lightly seasoned, were pretty good as well, I prefer the fries from here, even above McD's.
Summary:
Even while on my death bed, I ate the whole damn thing. I should not have, at least not while in my recliner. I developed a pretty hefty case of heartburn a couple of hours earlier. Of course I did. The burger itself is nearly a thousand calories, Add fries to that  and you've got 1360 calories, over seven hundred of those from fat, it's also loaded down with sodium, carbs and cholesterol. Yeah, this ain't anybody's diet food.
But boy howdy, it's tasty.
Twenty five bucks. Slightly higher than you might spend at Micky D's, but you're getting a much, much tastier burger. If you're going off the counting calories wagon anyhow, you might as well get some better tasting coffin nails.
In my mind, and my experienced, professional opinion, McD's obviously and unashamedly, goes for the lowest possible costs, Wendy's and BK are trying, but missing the mark completely, like J.C. Penny's and Sears. Subway doesn't really cook anything so I can't to compare them in this review.
Though I'm lauding Hardee's here, keep in mind that there are plenty of places, mostly local or regional, that make a better burger. Browse through past reviews and you'll find them, Gordon's Stoplight comes to mind immediately.
But if you have to have a chain burger, drive right past those other places and pull into Hardee's. You'll thank yourself later.
Oh yeah, the tea? Forgettable. Dead even with Pizza Junction.



* I'm feeling better now, thanks for pretending to care.

Hardees

10610 Highway 21
(Main Street)
Hillsboro, Mo.
http://www.hardees.com/

This choice led to a heated discussion. While true that we had never reviewed Hardee's, any Hardee's, this was seen by some in the family as a cop-out. Not because we don't like the chain, but because we do.
Since we moved to Hillsboro we, or at least I, have been there lots of times. It is the closest fast food chain to our house, right at the corner of 21 and BB. It's terribly convenient. PLUS they have a great breakfast selection and serve some pretty decent coffee.
It's not unusual for me to stop in once or twice per month on my way to a meeting or other errands  and ask for a 'number three with coffee', a sausage biscuit with tater rounds.
If I have time I'll take my book in with me, find a spot away from the overhead TV's and enjoy a few minutes of gastronomic and literary joy.
I assured Angel that it wasn't a cop-out at all, that even though we may already have a bias, that we were professionals and could be expected to remain completely objective.
The Place:
Like I said, very, very convenient less than ten minutes from my driveway. It's a busy intersection sitting right above the various county government offices and courthouse. It looks like every other Hardee's in the country. The St. Louis based CKE corporation (it also owns Carl's Jr.) boasts a couple of thousand of Hardee's locations in 42 states, with it's niche being locations in areas and towns too small to support other chains. It's kind of fast-food plastic-y inside, but no more so than the others.
The Food:
Getting the family to decide what to order was a painful process. Due to a fast-moving and rather significant thunderstorm we were without internet service for a few minutes, so we had to rely on memory as to what they had. We would be eating at home, I was for the second week in a row going to be the fetcher. I knew what I wanted, I'd been salivating about it for a few days.
Angel didn't want a burger and fries, Adam couldn't recall what different burgers they had. "Something with bacon." Is about all I had to go on for the boy.
From Angel: "Chicken tenders, but as I recall they don't put many in an order, so two orders if they seem small."
I did get them to agree unanimously on curly fries, if such a thing did exist.

Chicken Tenders

"And a sweet tea, no ice." Angel added. I started writing it all down at this point.
It was still raining a little as I left, though the clouds were breaking up and the sun was peeking through brightly, low in the west. By the time I got to the Dollar General for my first stop, the wipers were no longer required. I picked up a 2-liter Pepsi and a few other small items and within minutes was looping back to Hardee's. I went in and found it all but empty. The place is pretty busy on Saturday mornings, but I wasn't sure how well it fared during the early evening, this might be normal, but I also thought maybe most other people were making plans for St. Patrick's day, a Holiday that we traditionally don't give any notice to. Not that we have issues with the Irish in particular, it's more a practical thing. We barely celebrate the big holidays, so in our home St. Pat's is relegated to the same yawn-status as  Guy Fawkes Day (Nov 5), Maritime day (May 5), Paul Bunyan Day (Jun 28), and even Amelia Earhart Day (Jan 11).
Sorry if this offends, but we just don't have enough 'celebrate' in us to cover them all sufficiently.
I stepped up to the counter and was immediately asked for my order from a headphone-clad young lady. I asked about curly fries and was told that they indeed served them. I read off the rest of the order, all ala-carte, no combos. Two medium drinks, three curly fries, a Frisco thick burger (mine) a 1/3 lb. cheeseburger (no tomatoes or onions) for Adam. The chicken tenders were available in sets of three or five. I had to ponder this for a minute, was three too few or was five too few? I asked for two three's only eventually realizing that one five was just one less tender than the total I was getting, but whatever, I was in no mood for complex math. Then the girl/lady/chick asked me about dipping sauces, I didn't have a clue and apparently it registered on my facial expression. "I'll drop in one of each." She said. A real pro, I respect that.
She handed me a card with a number on it as well as two medium cups. I filled them at the drink line, one with  sweet tea and the other with unsweetened tea, no ice. Why pay for ice if you're dining at home?

1/3 lb Cheeseburger

A couple of other people came in and ordered while I was waiting. The drive up window was also creating some activity. I could have gone through thee drive up, but out of force of habit it didn't occur to me that that was actually an option. My old car had defective windows, a feature of 2000 Olds Aleros, puny, fragile window motors. So for a couple of years I was unable to avail myself to drive-through windows of any kind. I've only been through a drive through a couple of times since I replaced the car, it just rarely occurs to me that I can.
As I waited I decided to look around the dining area. A few weeks ago I'd noticed that at Jack-in-the Box, the table and floors where littered with crumbs and wrappers. Not here though, the tables had been cleaned and the floor swept and mopped. Kudos.
This Hardee's is not the fastest of fast-food joints. They don't keep a pile of pre-made burgers and fries under a heat lamp. I don't see that as a negative. Hillsboro is not a town where 'hurry' is such a high priority anyhow. Being the county seat things tend move at a slower pace then they do in more cosmopolitan/metropolitan areas such as DeSoto and Festus.
I went ahead and took the two teas out to the car so I wouldn't have to carry them and the bags of food all at the same time. I did wish I had my book on me.

Frisco Thickburger

It was probably only five to ten minutes, which at any other restaurant would not seem like a long time, so all things being relative, the wait was expected, normal and not so bad.
Finally they called me over and handed me the big bag.
Once home, I set it all out, primarily to see if I'd received everything I ordered. This is an issue at all fast food places, in fact this Hardee's a few years ago was a known sinner. It's been a long time  since I recall being short-sheeted there though. They got it all right this time.
I did my photo-session thing again as Adam stood impatiently behind me.
As is our custom, I sat down at the dining room table and cracked open my book, Angel and Adam stretched out in the living room watching cartoons or something. Don't judge us, it's just how we roll. During the week they eat earlier than me to fit in with the dog/school schedule and I eat when I get home, alone, using the time to relax a little. We run a business out of the house, Angel is very busy most days, especially in the spring. She has to fit things around a pretty strict schedule that the living breathing, panting clients require. She stays busy until last pee (theirs, not hers), around nine P.M. That's when we get together and catch each other up on the day.
Summary:
I've said this before, Hardee's has toppled Burger King* as my favorite of the top five fast-food burger franchises. The Frisco burger is always good, the sourdough bread makes it just that much better. The fries, this time curly, were done pretty well. We all finished up, Angel only left a nugget or two which she would surely get to later.
There was simply nothing bad to say. Unlike Burger King which had several shoulder shrugs and screwed up faces, this food, for fast food, was pretty darn tasty. The tea, not so much.
The tab came to a reasonable twenty five dollars and change, about typical for fast food.
Bottom line, this was about as good as fast food burgers get. My number one of the big five.

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In related news, Wendy's has toppled Burger King for the number two spot in sales behind McDonalds for fast food hamburgers. I told you things were declining at the King!