Since 2007, the Baconator has been a universal staple on Wendy’s menus around the world. More recently, in late 2023, the brilliant minds in the test kitchen saw fit to upgrade the Baconator with two big, beautiful, voluptuous soft pretzel buns. Between the juxtaposition of two symmetrical beef patties and six asymmetrical bacon strips, this may as well be the sandwich artist’s La Gioconda.
Or was it? I sought to find out, so I did something my chronic ennui seldom compels me to do: drive a few minutes to my local Wendy’s. Arterial thoroughfare roads might be the death knell of meaningful human connection and community. They might be a perverse defilement and bastardization of nature, but beyond these roads lies the apotheosis of Americana.
After what seemed like an eternity, I finally arrived and placed my order. A combo with large fries, a Junior Vanilla Frosty, and a Pretzel Baconator with mushrooms. I sat alone, at the corner table, front row view of the parking lot’s interminable solitude. Much to my dismay, my first bite into the pretzel bun gave way to a grand mirage. Nothing more than a mere parlor trick, an illusory facade. A simulacrum.
A transitory hint of soft pretzel, giving way to a doughy void of a flavor profile. As I bit deeper and deeper, none of the Baconator’s 1,050 calories were enough to fill the insatiable chasm in my heart. No sublimation momentarily brought forth would ever be enough. A faint, ephemeral, pathetically minuscule trace of the bliss that’s eluded you your entire life. The sort of bliss and equanimity you’ve always craved, but intuitively feel you don’t deserve. Did you ever deserve it?
Have any of us deserved it? Was I the consumer, or was the sandwiched pile of mutilated flesh on my tray a mirror, reflecting our inexorable consumption? Our capitulation and acquiescence towards an isolating oblivion? Our inevitable collective commodification into hollow artifice? Chewed up and digested down into putrid, rotting waste? Blemished by the spatters of blood that invariably stain us all? Before long, my lonesome silence and emptiness was filled.
If only for a moment. The LED lights flickered and dimmed to a harsh vignette. I called for the cashier, but no one was behind the register; the cry went unheard beneath the ever-growing crescendo of moos and squeals. A disembodied finger arose from an abandoned cup of chili behind me, gesticulating towards a table farther away. I turned around as soon as it tapped me on the shoulder. Beyond the table was a message in the window, written in tomato paste or another congealing red fluid, illustrating the indomitable truth in two words…
“NOTHING LASTS.”
Final Review Score: 2.5 Stars
