As arguably one of SA’s most influential and widely-read bloggers, I was invited to the first Burger King store to open in South Africa so I could taste a Whopper before the official launch on Wednesday.
That’s right. While you poor basterds were eating some mediocre left-overs for lunch at your desks, I was being treated to a grand tour of SA’s first Burger King by the CEO himself, Jaye Sinclair.
After the tour we were invited to place our orders for anything we wanted off the menu, so naturally everyone went for Whopper combo meals. Everyone except your Tiger pal. He upped the ante and went for a DOUBLE-Whopper combo and wow. He left a changed man.
First, a word about the restaurant itself. The new branch has opened up at 33 Heerengracht, it’s two stories of burger-nomming goodness; here’s the vibe downstairs:
Upstairs it’s a full-on restaurant that has this really cool mural on the one wall that looks like this:
The new branch also includes a whole lot of awesome entertainment for kids like PS3s for example:
A flippin BASKETBALL COURT!
And the best feature of all, behind the kiddies indoor jungle gym / play area there is a room where interactive games are projected onto the floor.
The games change randomly and there are apparently 1 000 different ones loaded into the system. The games are played by stomping different things projected onto the floor like sheep:
Or sums:
The room can also be hired out for kid’s birthdays and custom games can be made for these special occasions, so that’s a pretty cool added benefit.
During the tour, the whole issue of not having bacon on the burgers was raised, but Jaye was very straightforward in his reply – by including bacon products on their menu, Muslim and Jewish customers are immediately being excluded from Burger King.
His aim is not to discriminate against any of his customers and obviously including bacon on the menu contradicts that imperative. They’re looking into including macon on the menu as a bacon substitute, which I think is totally legit.
Anyone who’s tasted macon will tell you in a second that it’s very difficult to distinguish it from the real thing. Look at Butler’s Pizza – not a scrap of bacon on any of their pizzas, they use macon instead and it tastes pretty damn amazing (heads-up to Sean Stack for pointing that one out to me – holla!).
Once the formalities were over, we proceeded swiftly to the counters and ordered our burgers.
Here’s what that looked like:
Finally the big moment was upon us. With trembling hands, I opened my DOUBLE-Whopper box and carefully extracted my burger from the paper sleeves they are served in (purely so we could get a good photo. The idea is to eat the burger IN the sleeve to minimise messiness and the chance of your fingers smelling like burger for the rest of the day).
I opened my mouth as wide as I could and, like a shark chomping down on a small fishing boat, my eyes rolled back into my head as I sunk my teeth through layer upon layer of burgery goodness.
The flavours of the burger started mingling and meshing with each other, flooding my senses in a wash of grilled patty, creamy mayo, crunchy lettuce and tangy gherkin flavour notes that sang like a choir of angels in my mouth.
I swallowed. Things got emotional. A single tear ran streaming down my cheek. I was in burger heaven.
I greedily washed the burger down with the medium Pepsi that came with the meal and then turned my attention to the “medium†fries that came with the meal, the only disappointment in an otherwise perfect combo experience.
I made the rookie error of thinking that I wouldn’t need a large combo as I was already having a DOUBLE-Whopper and as a result was given a tiny portion of fries which was sad because they were perfectly deep-fried – crunchy and salty on the outside and immaculately soft and fluffy on the inside (just like your Tiger pal).
All-in-all though, I’d rate burger King better than McDonalds and definitely on a par with good Steers (it varies from branch to branch) in terms of quality but here’s the kicker, price-wise it’s WAY better than the competition (a Whopper meal will cost you a paltry R39.90, proof follows below).
So all that’s left to do is get your ass over there when they officially open tomorrow and get ready to experience a whole other level of burger-nomming goodness.
Tiger out.
-ST
So by saying:
“by including bacon products on their menu, Muslim and Jewish customers are immediately being excluded from Burger King.
His aim is not to discriminate against any of his customers and obviously including bacon on the menu contradicts that imperative.”
1. He means it’s ok to discriminate against Muslim and Jewish customers in the UK and US as you get bacon there.
2. It’s ok to discriminate against non-Muslim and Jewish customers by giving us an inferior meal to what the 1st world countries get?
Interesting.
Influental blogger (Noun): An unemployed person pretending to matter in the online realm. Usually inhabits Cape Town.
Troll (Noun): A person with low self esteem and a crippling inability to detect sarcasm. Usually inhabits his parent’s house.
Inhabiting parent’s house. Obviously we have something in common.
Go back to AndUnion. You’re drunk.
Influential, who the fuck are you?
The guy who just influenced you to write that comment 😉
I’m sure it was written with a sense of irony/sarcasm. SlickTiger might not be as widely-read as the most popular blogger in South Africa, but he is definitely influential and I’m sure the former will play catch up over the next few years.
In other words, get a sense of humour you idiot.
“As arguably one of SA’s most influential and widely-read bloggers”
Seriously? No offence but I’ve never seen or heard of you or your blog. Had I not seen the link to your blog in some arb topic on a forum, I would not have known this site existed. Do you have any stats to validate your opening statement? Hopefully it isn’t another Ballz Radio situation where you think you have 5 million readers but actually only have 50.
I wish it were that simple Mike, really I do. See, I started posting as SlickTiger in September 2009 and have posted faithfully ever since, averaging about four or five posts a week.
During that time, I’ve achieved some incredible things on the site. One of my early posts “The SlickTiger Guide to KLAPPING Gym, Boet” catapulted the site to Internet “fame” so much so that it ended up being published in FHM and the term “KLAP GYM” adopted into gym circles all over the country. Last time I checked that post had over 120 000 views.
Since I started the site, I’ve written over 800 posts. I’ve had months where my unique user figures are 4000+ and months where I barely pip 1000, I’ve had people write to me to say they love me and this site, that its a constant source of entertainment for them and that I must never stop writing and I’ve had people tell me I’m a gigantic wanker, an ignorant prick and a “dusgusting” human being.
But through it all, the good times and the bad, nearly four fucking years of it, I’ve kept writing, kept posting and kept fighting.
Sadly though, just posting religiously on a blog doesn’t mean anyone’s gonna read it. Content is, and always be King and the truth is it takes me a good three hours to write a post that gets the hits and with a full-time day job and my first child on the way in August, I just don’t have the time and it kills me to watch the site stats slowly diminish as a result.
I write this site alone. I do it on a budget of exactly R0. I sweat blood to keep it going because I fucking love doing it and really, at the end of the day, isn’t that all that matters?
Am I one of SA’s most influential and widely-read bloggers?
Of course I’m not Mike. But check in in another three years and I’ll still be here, piloting this junkyard spaceship through the ether of the Internet, nothing for company but my own rambling thoughts, private jokes and a rusted old radio playing “Sweet Nothing'”.
See ya then Mike.
-ST
You might be a bit of an attention seeker, but I will grant you that the ‘Klapping Gym’ thing was legend. It’s practically a meme
“Anyone who’s tasted macon will tell you in a second that it’s very difficult to distinguish it from the real thing.”
Yeah Right Clown…
your gym-klap post was awesome but this review just reeks of sucking up to burger king.
I’d rather get that bacon burger at Steers for R33,90 than this whopper shit that only has salad, onions and tomato on it.
Over here in the upside down coutry they are called Hungry Jack’s. You have to petition BK ZA to get these (if they don’t already have them hidden away on their menu): http://www.hungryjacks.com.au/menu#menu/beef-range/rodeo-minis
You will understand why when you have tasted one of those bad boys.
I am not pointing any fingers (trolls have feelings too) but some commentors shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking because they haven’t read this blog before that nobody else has either. And they shouldn’t come back until they have grown a sense humour.
So it looks like I have been here before, I loved the “Guide to Klapping Gym boet”, it was fantastic…
It’s not all gloom and doom though, just saying no one likes and arrogant arse, it’s off putting to read phrases like “biggest blog on the Internet”, “most famous blog in SA”, “most views ever” etc…(not saying you said all those, just seen them elsewhere) when it’s clearly not the case. I think I would have laughed if you dropped the tag after that line. I would rather smile/laugh reading an article than sit here with a question mark on my face.
Never the less good luck for the future and keep it up 🙂
Internet arsehole out,
Mike