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© St. Petersburg Times, published April 3, 2002
Oh joy.
All the vegetarians who clamored for the chance to eat fast food have gotten their wish. If you want brand name standardization and drive-through convenience just like junk-food carnivores, Burger King has come to the rescue.
Last month, BK became the first big chain to offer a veggie burger for the growing niche of vegetarians, especially the younger crowd. It came with a slew of new meaty additions to the menu too, but the vegetarian burger still stands out.
BK really dragged Wimpy through the garden on this one. While many vegetarian patties taste more of brown rice, beans, sprouts, soy or other healthful but bland substances, you can taste and often see the carrot, green peppers and celery in the patties. (They are made by Kellogg's Morningstar Farms.)
The veggie burgers have a perfect mechanical shape, but BK was smart to broil them so the char and flame are obvious. The ultimate secret to any veggie burger is adding trimmings to disguise it and make it seem like a bad old meat burger.
The play-pretend factor here uses sesame seed bun, lettuce, tomato and low-fat mayo (the rest of us can get it on Whoppers).
The egg in that mayo, however, brings us to the fine print, and Burger King's Kimberly Miller says straightforwardly that the veggie burger is not for the purest of vegan diets. The sandwich does involve animal products.
"The product was designed for burger lovers," she said, but can be customized.
While the patty is meatless, vegetarians should consider the mayo, the fact that the burgers are cooked on the same grill as beef burgers and that the bun has a small amount of butter flavor. Hold the mayo, ask for the burger to be done in the microwave instead of the broiler, and you're still holding a bun with a bit of dairy product. That will disqualify it for some vegetarians, but it's closer than many others have come.
What mine lacked most was a slice of dill pickle. I'd have made it mandatory. In this setting, a pickle would have starred.
Actually you can add a pickle, mustard or ketchup in "Have It Your Way" tradition. I'd add them all, although I wouldn't go as far one customer Miller saw in Miami who ordered his veggie with bacon and cheese on top.
Ultimately the veggie burger ($1.99), like BK's no-beef-tallow fries or Taco Bell's bean burritos, means some vegetarians can be citizens of our fast food nation too.
Lucky them.
There's a place for premade sandwiches, the kind you get from a lunch wagon or the cooler of the gas station. They're a necessity at some jobs and schools and emergency fuel at other times. May sound sad, but sometimes a chicken salad on white bread or sausage biscuits and plastic-wrapped cheeseburgers fresh from the microwave are a godsend.
Not so with Cubans. They're better left to the pros.
I found a line of Cubans at RaceTrac that looked somewhat appropriate, although they came from Dandee of Jacksonville. They were rather flat and wrapped in white sandwich paper. It took me a while to find a "roast pork Cuban," the only one that included the all-important pork. The bread was the chief failing. Cuban bread is already somewhat soft and needs crisping up in a sandwich press to be at its best. Nuking in the convenience store microwave doesn't do it.
It was hefty enough. I wouldn't have objected if it were called a sub, a hero or a Dagwood, and I'll leave it to the good people of New Orleans to challenge faux-boys, but Cubans are a special item.
And we've got plenty of places that make 'em fast and easy. So you've got to stand in line a couple of minutes and wait for it to be pressed. It's worth it.
- Food critic Chris Sherman writes about dining and restaurant news in the Nibbler. He can be reached at (727) 893-8585 or by e-mail at sherman@sptimes.com.