the kicker

Hell Spawn with Pepper Jack

September 16, 2009

The A.V. Club, to commemorate and otherwise record the various “disgusting and/or delicious new edibles” on offer in this brave new world of ours, has inaugurated a new series: “Taste Tests,” in which its writers sample “weird foods and candies” and explore the culinary revelations therein.

To that end, Nathan Rabin reviews the Double Down, Kentucky Fried Chicken’s latest volley in the fast food industry’s ongoing effort to make the rest of the world hate Americans even more than it already does. KFC’s experimental “sandwich” combines two fried chicken breasts, a glopping of processed pepper jack, another glopping of processed Swiss, strips of bacon, and, one has to assume, healthy heapings of consumer self-loathing…into one greasily bunless monstrosity. Rabin’s review is, like its subject, hyperbolically humorous–and fittingly nauseating.

Megan Garber is an assistant editor at the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University. She was formerly a CJR staff writer.