"It's Like Throwing Up In Reverse"
Recently, we read a review of the new KFC Famous Bowl in the L.A. Times, and we've been quoting the review every time we drive past a KFC. In case you don't know what a Famous Bowl is, let's hit the KFC press release:
"KFC's new Famous Bowls, a departure from the restaurant's popular family style bucket, provides lunch-starved Americans with the perfect all-in-one, 'made for one' remedy to their usual rushed and unsatisfying lunchtime routine. The new KFC Famous Bowls™ offer a hearty meal 'just like mom used to make,' with layers of mashed potatoes, sweet corn and bite sized crispy chicken, drizzled with signature home style gravy and topped off with a three-cheese blend - in one convenient bowl."
Yes, you read that right. Potatoes, corn, chicken, gravy, and three kinds of cheese, all mixed together in one bowl. YUM.
Here is what our new favorite reviewer, the Pulitzer-Prize-winning Dan Neil, has to say:
"It's one thing to say Americans eat like pigs, it's another to give it the force of literalism."
"It... brazenly exposes its own purpose: to economically pack the gullets of the poor. Gone is even the pretense that someone might eat this for its taste. This is gerbil food for the disenfranchised."
"Why not go all the way and top the Famous Bowls with an apple pie and pour Coca-Cola over them? To save customers the struggle to pocket their change at the drive-thru, why not throw it on top as well?"
"KFC's new Famous Bowls, a departure from the restaurant's popular family style bucket, provides lunch-starved Americans with the perfect all-in-one, 'made for one' remedy to their usual rushed and unsatisfying lunchtime routine. The new KFC Famous Bowls™ offer a hearty meal 'just like mom used to make,' with layers of mashed potatoes, sweet corn and bite sized crispy chicken, drizzled with signature home style gravy and topped off with a three-cheese blend - in one convenient bowl."
Yes, you read that right. Potatoes, corn, chicken, gravy, and three kinds of cheese, all mixed together in one bowl. YUM.
Here is what our new favorite reviewer, the Pulitzer-Prize-winning Dan Neil, has to say:
"It's one thing to say Americans eat like pigs, it's another to give it the force of literalism."
"It... brazenly exposes its own purpose: to economically pack the gullets of the poor. Gone is even the pretense that someone might eat this for its taste. This is gerbil food for the disenfranchised."
"Why not go all the way and top the Famous Bowls with an apple pie and pour Coca-Cola over them? To save customers the struggle to pocket their change at the drive-thru, why not throw it on top as well?"
posted by mo pie at 11:06 AM
16 Comments:
I think part of the grossness is in fact the KFC factor. Your leftover mush does sound kind of gross too, though.
The people at KFC who came up with this disgusting concoction must have been stoned out of their minds. Who else would this appeal to other than someone who's been smoking massive amounts of weed? Bleh!
That product review is the funniest thing I've read in a long time. Thanks for pointing it out!
Actually, it's not that much of a stoner idea - they pretty much made a fast-food Sheppard's Pie, KFC style.
Unfortunately, I had to go out and try it. I couldn't help myself. And it was pretty nasty. I got mine without the cheese, because there is only so far I am willing to go. It was small and expensive, and made me feel hollow inside when I was done with it. It’s pretty gross.
On the same token, have you seen the new Burger King Stackers commercials? Now you can be an American like never before, with a burger with nothing but meat and cheese, no lettuce or any of that yucky produce stuff. Just a stack of cheeseburgers, with bacon on top, in a double, a triple, or the lovely “Quad.” That’s right, nothing but four beef patties, with cheese, and bacon on top on a bun. Saddest thing is I got coupons for it in the mail just yesterday for buy one get one free – that’s eight patties in two sandwiches…sounds like dinner, right? I think I had a heart attack just looking at the picture. And, according to their website, it’s here to stay – it’s not even a special promotion!!! Oy.
I don't eat much fast food, so I'll have to take your (collective) word for it that this KFC bowl is gross.
That said, I think the author of this piece might have pushed a little far in saying that the KFC bowl is like slop for pigs. I mean, if it tastes bad, it tastes bad. Fine. But the assertion that KFC brazenly exposes its purpose to provide a cheap lunch? That's kind of the point of fast food. Cheap and fast. That is not the point of Supersize Me, a movie which started with a specific agenda to show that McDonalds serves up unhealthy food and manipulates its customers into eating too much of that unhealthy food.
The bowl idea is not inherently against good taste. I used to eat at a chain in San Francisco called World Wraps or Fresh Wraps or something (it's been a while) that sells a bowl with rice, steamed veggies and tofu, and sauce. Healthy, tasty, and fast. Not too expensive. Probably a lot better than KFC, but that's according to my taste.
I guess I'm rambling. The main point is this: if this product tastes bad, people don't have to eat it. If there are people who enjoy this product, who is the author to call their food of choice pig slop?
The author also reminded me of Monk. Does anyone watch the show? Monk is an adult who doesn't like his foods to touch, an aversion that is portrayed as part of a disorder. I don't have a problem with my foods touching. I don't remember having an issue about foods touching even when I was a kid, though I was a picky eater. Since Jen made me think of Thanksgiving, I'll say that at Thanksgiving, I like to take bites of mashed potato, stuffing, peas, and cranberry. I think the flavors compliment each other.
I'm actually with Jen and Anonymous on this one. First, I have a really hard time working up any kind of horror at the thought of food being made available cheaply to poor people. Oooo, the horror! Something the poor can afford!! There oughtta be a law against that kind of thing!!! Um, or maybe not. Second, on the mushed-up Thanksgiving leftovers? That can be very tasty, and very comforting. My eating-disordered little sister, who can't finish a piece of pizza, looks forward every year to mixing up bits of leftover stuffing, and mashed potato, and turkey, and gravy, which she affectionately calls "Thanksgiving swamp stew." If you put it into a covered Corelle dish instead of a paper bucket, we'd be calling it a "casserole," instead of "slop." And it would sell for a whole lot more at toney, trendy, retro diners that specialize in “Mom-style” cooking. Removing, for the moment, the KFC-ness of the ingredients, to which, exactly, does the writer object? The chicken? The corn? The potatoes? The gravy? The extravagance of three cheeses? To which, if any, does he consider the poor entitled? I don’t remember any shrieks of outrage over a Taco Bell Bowl a couple of years ago which operated on the same principle and which was, in fact, pretty good. In point of fact, the corn/rice/chicken version sounds like a southern version of that (American) Chinese favorite, chicken-fried rice. Boy, that’s some dangerous food there! And it snuck in under the radar, so it must be part of a Commie plot, along with its allies, pork-fried rice and beef-fried rice. I don’t hear any alternatives from this elitist snob on cheap, filling food for the poor; all I hear is his outraged objection to its very existence.
That review is hilarious! This also cracks me up because I used to live in Louisville, home of KFC/Yum! headquarters. About twice a year the quiz bowl team at my high school would do KFC taste testing for the team because they got paid a little bit of money to try new foods. I'm sitting here imagining poor little academic nerds at my old high school having to taste test that shit and laughing. If the final product was that horrible, can you imagine how gross some of the beta versions must have been?
I wouldn't call it food for the poor - here the bowl is $4, and it's not that filling compared to what I can get in fast food with $4 at a place with a dollar menu. I thought the bowl was overpriced, as a lot of the stuff at KFC is.
I love the "no chick food" bits at the end. I have been saying for a while! Men have higher rates of heart disease for a reason! I blame the patriarchy!
Two of the health-foodie restaurants in my town sell similar things - sweet potatoes, black beans, and cornbread in a vat with a layer of cheese and a layer of lettuce, for instance. It probably rounds out at about 700 calories. It does, however, contain actual food.
I tell skinny people from families that run marathons together and have never passed below the Golden Arches that we live in a toxic food environment and they don't believe me.
Wow.
He just took the class issues and the "gendered food" issues and the bad cholesterol and mashed them all up and threw them all in there, didn't he?
Kinda like the bowl itself.
I'm with the commenter who said (I'm paraphrasing) "way to rant about the problems without offering any alternative solutions."
The Fatty McBlog girls also have a Bowl deconstruction here.
Hey Richard!
Yes, I get what you're saying. I guess I was trying to say that there are individual choices and then there are wider societal trends: it is difficult when they run counter to each other. Of course I don't believe we're helpless pawns of the Big Gravy-Marketing Conspiracy, but I do believe that marketing has historically affected our palates and eating habits and will continue to do so, and that the aggressive marketing of really wierd-bad food has society-wide impact. I'm sure not an epidemiologist, but I do believe there's a distinction between the KFC bowl as individual choice (possibly tasty! or easily replaced with a salad!) and the KFC bowl as distressing wider phenomenon.
While most of us - those of us who are sitting at home or in our offices reading this on the web - probably do have much healthier choices, not everybody does. Someone who doesn't have a car and lives in an inner-city neighborhood where the closest thing to a grocery store is a convenience store, for instance, is unfortunately going to rely on fast food. Restaurants like KFC have lots of locations in lower-income neighborhoods, and they market the "just like Momma made it" really heavily.
I like it, too. I've actually had it twice over a period of months, and I think that's the key. No one should be eating any fast food more often than that. It's a treat (if you like it), not a regular dinner. Really, 690 calories is not as horrific as an awful lot of other fast food meals, if you think about it. And I found this bowl extremely filling. You can be grossed out just because it's KFC. God knows I can't bring myself to let anything from McDonald's into my body, and that started waaaay before Supersize Me was made. And I'm not a health food nazi. But for the people crucifying KFC for combining different foods into one container...please, cut the drama. I liked the Monk comparison one writer made. Either you're being reactionary for the point of being self-righteous about this, or you're a little OCD. I agree that there is a major problem in this country with healthy food availability, of course. But at least acknowledge that people have different tastes and to someone looking for a once in a while junk food treat, this is not the devil incarnate in a bowl.
This menu option hasn't made it to Jamaica yet, and I must admit it has a slight resemblance of hogwash. That put aside, I am sure no one objects to eating mashed potatoes, corn, chicken and gravy (save the cheese please) from the same plate. The imagination need not be stretched too far to conceive to eating them all together. Jamaicans have a little aversion to people pointing at, making snide remarks or uncouth comments about the food they're eating. I'm sure it is a very human trait shared by most of us all here. If its unsuitable or unpalatable then it is very likely that it will not sell, we'll see the results of that test in a little while. In the meantime I suggest we all calm down, its a bowl of food, not World War III. Get some grips! Eloquently spoken, Anon!
The mashed potato bowl is the only thing i eat at KFC and i think it is amazing!! Before they made this little concoction i used to mix my mashed potatos corn and chicken all the time when i had it together and topped with cheese is even better!! I mean dont get me wrong i dont eat it everyday, it 740 calories, 35 grams of fat and 7 grams of fiber so thats like 16-17 points on weight watcher not too bad i just use my flex point for it!! So i guess i must smoke massive amouts of weed for mixing something delicious together (never smoked anything a day in my life) so for people who are like eww thats gross ....well do u like spinach or broccoli or sardines ..i dont sooo eww thats gross, obviously everyone likes different things and for the people who haven't tried it dont knock it till you have tried it silly!
I LOVE Famous Bowls. lol.
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