Reviews of New Food: Burger King’s Mac n Cheetos

Published September 19, 2016 on McSweeney's

Burger King’s Mac n Cheetos
Submitted by Stacey Greenberg

When Taco Bell came out with the Doritos Locos Tacos we were all ecstatic. Taco Bell and Doritos together? I mean, how could life get any better than that? As a child of the 70s and a mom, I was 100% impressed by their genius marketing team (which probably consisted of people in their 20s). I didn’t even care that the shell wasn’t actually a giant Dorito, just the same old shell with Doritos flavored powder on it.

Fast forward a few years and now we have Burger King’s retort, the Mac n Cheetos. What. The. Fuck. How do they get the macaroni to cooperate long enough to be encased in the Cheetos shell? What on earth must go into the Cheetos shell to make it strong enough to contain the macaroni? And is it fried? There are just so many questions I want to remain unanswered.

Oddly enough, the Mac n Cheetos hit my radar via a vegan friend on Facebook. She was lamenting the fact that she would never know the pleasure of the Mac n Cheetos. My first thought was, “Ew is there meat in them too?” Then I remembered that vegans don’t eat cheese. I could see the Mac n Cheetos turning just about anybody off of cheese eternally, assuming it actually contains real cheese, which surely it doesn’t. Ew, maybe there is meat in there too. Or ground up baby cow hoofs. Or that pesky gelatin that ruins so many things for vegans.

Because my now fourteen-year-old son only talks to me if it pertains to food (as in me buying him food, preparing him food, carrying food to him while he lays in bed watching YouTube), I asked, “Hey did you see the new Cheetos thing at Burger King?”

His eyes lit up, and he showed a level of excitement I hadn’t seen since agreeing to buy him four burritos at Chipotle a couple of weeks prior. “The Mac n Cheetos! Let’s go!” he said.

I’ll be honest. I wanted to go get them not just because I basically will do anything to keep my teenage son from getting hangry, but because I had to see one in person. Then I remembered we had just discussed the fact that he’d eaten a whole bag of pork rinds at his dad’s house the night before and had been suffering some pretty ill effects most of the morning. “Let’s wait until you can go several hours without using the restroom,” I suggested.

After having a few days to think about my offer of driving to Burger King, making the order for one Mac n Cheetos and paying with money I earned myself, I had second thoughts. Mostly of the fourteen year old becoming addicted to Mac n Cheetos and this being the first of many, many trips, especially since I had officially refused to ever go to Chik fil-A again.

We made a deal between the menu board and the pay window. He could have one order, and his little brother and I would each have one bite. The experience would be Snapchatted and then we’d all move on with our lives.

In the plus column, they didn’t take extra time to cook like the stoopid Buffalo Chicken Fries. The packaging is attractive. The actual product is quite a sight to behold—a tube with lots of little tubes inside. Totally tubular!

In the minus column, they just taste like super soft and cheesy fake cheese wrapped in mildly crunchy even faker cheese. They are truly disgusting and cause you to feel all the shame you knew you would. Unless you are fourteen. And then your eyes roll back into your head and you tell your mom that you’ve achieved nirvana.