Grand Angus, or King Pin?

So, what’s this Big Burger Bang-Up about, anyhow?

Well, I decided I’d had enough of not getting any junk food in my life. So, I held a small competition. McDonalds and Burger King are both advertising new products in their range. Since when is that new? Since my wife and I decided we’d each like to try one. Only…to make it fair, we decided to try one of each—needless to say we well and truly went over our recommended daily intake yesterday. I got some money out of the bank (it’s an expensive process testing out fast food. You lose your money nearly as fast as they can steal it from you) and went to McDonalds first to try out their Grand Angus.

Aye, so what’s a Grand Angus?

Roughly speaking, it’s a burger made with Angus beef, salad greens, tomato, two slices of cheese, salad greens, mustard and mayonnaise (that I noticed), all presented on a oblong sour dough bun. Apparently the North American market has had that for years, but it’s only recently made an appearance here in New Zealand. It features New Zealand Angus beef too:

“…or occasionally Australian beef. But only if we can’t get any New Zealand beef…”

I like it, because it’s, well—beefy. Can’t say a lot about the salad greens that it came with, so I just shut up and ate them with the burger. They were fine. Really…just not on their own—I noticed they got a little bitter if I tried eating the greens on their own, and the situation wasn’t exactly resolved with the included mayonnaise. Anyhow, we had that, then we headed off to the Burger King (across the road) for the second part of our “Mighty Burger Bang—Up”.

And the King Pin? How come it “gets what it wants, when it wants it”?

Marketing. Frankly. It’s a longish bun (the same length as the sourdough bun) but a little narrower and a bit squashed-looking, onion rings (crumbed), the usual chicken pattie, cheese and some sauce. They even semi-divided it, though that ended up being a bit messy to separate, which spoiled the effect rather. To me, nothing too distinguished, nice but …. yeah. Personally I think the Grand Angus (even though it costs twenty cents more) has more … beef. That would kind of figure, seeing as it’s made of Angus beef. But never mind. The love of my life prefers the King Pin.

Opinion’s still divided?

Yup. I like one—she likes the other. Don’t get me wrong, she likes the Angus, but the King Pin was more of a hit with her. It’s got the chicken and bacon flavour as well as the onion rings, cheese and some sort of sauce. She found it nicer, with an overall better taste than the Angus. In her opinion, pretty darn nice and she’d do it again.

Will you ever be reconciled?

Don’t know, don’t care. I tend to have McDonalds once every two years if I’m lucky, and we have Burger King even less regularly. So, nice experiment (though an expensive one), but not one I feel like repeating more than once in a while.