Takeaway Truth: Hungry Jack’s Bacon Chicken Crunch Burger

Takeaway Truth is a regular Lifehacker feature where we compare marketing images against what you actually get served. Today: Hungry Jack’s Bacon Chicken Crunch. (Plus taste test!)

Ever since we started Takeway Truth, fast food burgers have been the worst performers by a considerable margin with Hungry Jack’s leading a very messy charge. The Ultimate Double Whopper and Deluxe Country Burger both walked away with an ignoble Truth Rating of 2/10 and successive burgers haven’t fared much better. This is partially due to those too-good-to-be-true marketing images, but Hungry Jack’s is also guilty of appallingly slipshod assembly.

The Bacon Chicken Crunch is the latest addition to Hungry Jack’s burger menu: it comes with a chicken patty coated in crunchy corn flakes, bacon, cheese, lettuce and spicy sauce. Compared to most Hungry Jack’s burgers, this is a fairly small number of fillings which should work in its favour, at least as far as presentation is concerned. After all, it’s easier to assemble a burger properly when you’re only working with five ingredients.

Below is a side-by-side comparison of the Bacon Chicken Crunch burger as it appears on Hungry Jack’s Facebook page and the version we were served in a Circular Quay outlet:

Well, we’ve certainly seen worse burgers. As mentioned, the scant ingredients makes this pretty difficult to stuff up. A lot more can go wrong with a Whopper Bacon Deluxe, for example. Nevertheless, there are still a few differences between the two images. Instead of the frilly stuff in the poster, they appear to have used a cheaper type of lettuce; a crime we’ve called fast food companies out on before. The real thing also looks a bit squashed and droopy.

All in all though, we think the marketing image is a reasonable representation of what you actually get served. Compared to some of the other franchise burgers we’ve tested, it’s practically a work of art.

So should you all go out and grab one for lunch? Yes and no. The actual chicken patty is surprisingly delicious: for once, the “crunch” moniker isn’t meaningless marketing — the corn flake coating is exceptionally crunchy and adds a pleasurable sensory element that’s usually missing from fast food. On the downside, I wasn’t a fan at all of the sauce: there’s far too much of it and it had a weird mustardy aftertaste.

My advice is to request BBQ sauce instead: then you have a seriously yummy meal on your hands.

Truth rating: 7/10

Which fast food franchise or menu item would you like us to tackle next? Let us know in the comments section below.