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 McGriddle Me This ...
by Patrick Clapp
There is a fine line between a tasty breakfast and wishing you were dead. That said, weight watchers allows you to be extremely naughty one day every week.
Part of a balanced breakfast. Remember that tagline from your youth appended to the end of every commercial of the "chocolate frosted sugar bombs" variety?
An egg, fried, with a slice of cheese. A slab of sausage patty. And ...
At this point, the mythical "balanced breakfast", according to the still life imagery of faded yesterdays, includes two halves of a slice of wheat toast (cut diagonal) with a pat of butter, an eight ounce glass of milk, and a six ounce glass of pulp free orange juice.
At Denny's, where it is possible to order breakfast at one a.m. by pointing a slowly sobering finger indiscriminately at a full color laminated menu, some might include a short stack of pancakes with maple syrup to round out their fare.
An egg, fried, with a slice of cheese. A slab of sausage patty. And ...
The "bun" of the Mcgriddle is not toast, nor English muffin, nor pancake truly. It is some strange hybrid of that bread family, perhaps created in a laboratory on the Jersey shore by Dr. Weird, only to be released accidentally upon an unsuspecting population to wreak untold havoc.
Form of an English muffin, texture of a pancake, utility of a roll, and saturated with the essence of maple syrup.
I have made maple syrup with my grandfather; tapped trees for sap collected in beaten metal buckets; boiled gallons for hours in a long, ungainly metal vessel over a wood fire until that precious liquid gave itself form.
The essence of flavor that saturates the most insidious aspect of the sausage, egg, and cheese Mcgriddle is not a product of nature. It is pure evil, distilled by madmen, and injected by slaves with needles into the heart of each bun.
Sausage, egg, and cheese Mcgriddle; the bun is so evil its very presence is hidden from the item's name. It is not a sausage, egg, cheese, and bun that will bring about your death Mcgriddle. No. They have cleverly left that bit out. But it is there all the same.
An egg, fried, with a slice of cheese. A slab of sausage patty. And ... a bun so evil, you will walk the fine line between tasty breakfast and death.
When I first tried the Mcgriddle, I was repulsed. I had approached the affair with the same attitude as the bacon, egg, and cheese Mcmuffin. Ordering two, I prepared to choke down a dry, crumbling mess, discarding extra bread when the namesake portion of the sandwich was devoured. I was repulsed (as I said). The bacon was not done well and the bun over-powered the meal, saturating everything with its cloying, retching sweetness.
In a happy world, I would have stayed shy after being bitten by biting. I scoffed at those web cartoonists that swore by the Mcgriddle; I know different. My palette rejected the most dangerous food on the planet after pistachios, and rightly so.
And then, much to my misfortune, I found myself on a morning road trip with Sharky. Breakfast at the arches? Well ... I prefer lunch, I've lost my love of the Mcmuffin. Ah, says he, but the sausage Mcgriddle. Hmm, says I, I had a bad experience with the bacon version, but I like sausage. Try one, try one, the blond devil cries to me, and I succumb.
An egg (1), fried (1), with a slice of cheese (2). A slab of sausage patty (6). And ..."call it a bun (6)", the blond devil tells me with a smile matched in malice with the machination of the Mcgriddle itself (16). "Call it a bun ..." and I can hear his laughter yet.
And so I write this as a warning to those that may find my body some Tuesday hence, cold, plump fingers clutched forevermore to the crumpled wax paper remains of a bag writ large with the words of cogs caught in the same insidious downward spiral. Leave me as a testament to others, that the fine line between a tasty breakfast and death may be to fine to tread, and that one day of evil each week may well be one too many.
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