On our way to Quebec City for the New Year, my wife had a craving for A&W. I didn’t mind – I like their hamburgers and their onion rings are very good.
So we stopped at the Terrebone location (1 of 697 A&W in Canada) to grab lunch. The place was not really busy, which is always a good thing. Fast food can never come fast enough, can it?
Melissa went for a classic Teen burger. But I decided to go for their new product: Their Sirloin Baby Burger Twins, which is fairly cheap at $3.49. My Twins were only 174 g vs the Teen’s 239 g. Carbs? 32 g for the Twins, 41 g for the Teen. Protein? 24 for the Twins, 1 more for the Teen. Sodium? 900 mg for the Babies, 1220 mg for the Tweenie. Calories? 500, a tie. The healthier choice? The Garden Greens Salad. But who cares?
A&W launched the Twin Burgers in Canada in October as its response to the the popular culinary phenomenon sweeping restaurants across North America: the slider.
They are meant to be two identical mini-sized burgers with sirloin beef patties topped with Balderson cheddar cheese, mustard and the Chubby Mayo (Used since 2001 when A&W re-launched their Chubby Chicken.
You must have seen the advertising, and wondered as I did if any burger was actually too cute to be eaten. Now, as with all the other A&W burgers, the Sirloin baby burger twins came in an aluminum foil bag. Because that’s how they used to do it to keep burgers warm, they decided that it was how it was going to be done. So I unpacked them, looking forward to my cute burgers…
But the ones I got were certainly not too cute. Compare what I got with the advertised Twin burgers, below.
As you can see, the patties I got were not mini patties. They were regular patties cut up to fit a mini bun. What the Hell is that? They can’t do that, can they? Violating the integrity of a patty with a knife?
The place got busy, so I just ate my twin burgers anyway, instead of getting up to complain. I will take it up with the headquarters instead. As for taste, I thought they were a little bland. The beef seems overdone. The mixing of the mayo with their mustard works, but there was not enough of it. Red onions to zip it up? Barely noticeable. The cheese was thick, which is a nice step up from the usual process yellow slices used in most burger chains. However, it was certainly not melted or even melting. Mostly, it was sweating. Still, nice cheddar flavour.
At any rate, the Waffle will contact A&W and figure out if indeed the beef patties for their mini-burgers may, from time to time, be made of cut-up parts of the Uncle in the burger family. I know it didn’t happen to Cheap Appetite. I will investigate and report back shortly.
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UPDATE Jan 07 2010, 22:02: A&W answers the Waffle