by Steven Doyle
How does a multi-national fast food conglomerate market a vastly unhealthy item without spending an equally unhealthy amount of cash to get the word out to the masses? Create a secret menu item with eight types of meat and a few slices of cheese to boot.
The Meat Mountain is made of 2 chicken tenders, 1.5 ounces of roast turkey, 1.5 ounces of ham, 1.5 ounces of corned beef, 1.5 ounces brisket, 1.5 ounces of Angus steak, 1.5 ounces of roast beef, 3 half-strips of bacon, pus a slice of cheddar and Swiss. All this for a totally underground ten bucks. This is a pretty good deal if you are sincerely that hungry. Priced separately these items add up to around $30 in various degrees of Arby sandwichdom.
This sounds a lot like what we would make when I was 13 working at a cafe in the now defunct North Town Mall (I was tall and told them I was 16). During slow times we would take various menu items and Frankenstein them into off menu items available only to employees and close friends. Everything was plated with a side of soft serve vanilla and chocolate twist. When things got really boring we would shop at the A&P across the street for even more absurd items to pile on our creations. None ever made it to the real menu, but we all knew. Oh yes.
Arby’s has this truly bad idea of a sandwich, possibly created by a bored under-aged employee and sent up the ranks by an over-eager manager, or so we imagine. Take on the 888 caloried, 15 pound sandwich, but be wary that there are nearly 4,000 grams of sodium awaiting your purchase, and not a defibrillator to be found.
If you go into an Arby’s and order that, the average employee will look at you and think “Really? Jackass!” The amount of work it will take to build just one of these would probably be the same as making at least five regular sandwiches, so you know the kitchen staff will be THRILLED every time they have to make one! As you said, Bad Idea all around!
This sandwich seems noteworthy to me for containing actual meat … an ingredient I didn’t know Arby’s used.
You still do not know it is real meat.
Well, put it this way … it has the appearance of real meat 😉