Stupid? Yes.
Pandering? Hell yes.
But honestly, is anyone surprised? We've all grown accustomed to puritanical bastards trying to regulate what consenting adults can and cannot do. They preach personal responsibility and then try to divest us of personal choice.
If they really want to make a difference in the world, they should be picketing Claim Jumper, a restaurant chain I visited in Phoenix.
They are proud, slutty-assed purveyors of XXX hardcore food porn. It is not for the faint of heart.
NOTE: I'm royally pissed I did not have a photographic device to truly capture the gluttony and guilt. I have found some photos online of these menu items, but I would have used much better staging to fully demonstrate the scale of this stuff.
I sat down with a couple guys with whom I'm traveling. The menu contained all manner of appetizers, sandwiches, salads, entrees, and desserts. The food looked reasonably interesting, as far as chain fare goes.
The server took our order. One guy ordered a pot pie, and the other ordered a beef stew. I ordered a Jamaican Jerk Chicken Sweetpotato, described thusly:
Jamaican Jerk Chicken Sweetpotato
Slow-roasted and shredded chicken with green onions, red peppers, cilantro, papaya relish, fresh lemon and drizzled with honey
Sounds pretty good, huh? Also, I was craving greens so I ordered:
Organic Spinach Salad
Tossed with crunchy noodles, diced red onions, tomatoes, applewood smoked bacon, feta cheese, glazed pecans, sesame seeds and our signature citrus dressing
Please note that the above is listed as a STARTER SALAD in the menu.
The order is in.
I casually noticed that the party next to us - 2 adults and 2 little kids - had a stack of FIVE full-sized styrofoam to-go containers on their table.
It hadn't registered yet.
I thumbed through the "saloon menu" to see what their goofy specialty cocktails are.
In the back is something I regret ever laying eyes upon...I feel dirty even talking about it.
It was the nutrition information.
Disclaimer: I am a HUGE fan of full nutritional information disclosure. HUGE. I think more info is always a good thing.
I just wish I had seen it before I ordered.
My salad? 1,075 calories, 18 grams of fat.
WHA? For a STARTER SALAD?
Nope, it's worse: the fat content listed was SATURATED FAT ONLY. Not total fat grams; SATURATED ONLY.
For a salad that is this size, but without any actual meat:
That's a 10-inch plate, folks.
Then, my dish came out. Read the description again. Now feast thine eyes:
If you can't tell, that's a whole G.D. jumbo sweet potato (about 1-1/2 lbs. if I had to guess) topped with, well, reasonably healthy stuff, if you don't count the STICK OF BUTTER they added to it.
Mine was 1,424 calories.
My buddy's fresh chicken pot pie? 2,188 calories and 65 grams of SATURATED fat.
But nothing will make your palate rub one out like the full rack of beef ribs: 4,301 calories, 156 grams (that's 5.5 ounces) of SATURATED fat.
Almost as a joke, one of the guys suggested ordering dessert. The other guy seconded it, which left me forced to have a little something. I figured, at worst I'll eat a quarter of a dessert...which was 2,315 calories and 81 grams of saturated fat.
Not even close. Description:
I Declair
Baked fresh daily. Sweet pastry filled with a buttery Bavarian custard and atop vanilla bean ice cream with hot fudge & homemade whipped cream
Someone else's photo:
I shit you not: that thing is the size of an NCAA football. Seriously.
I feel like a filthy whore after eating there. I don't know if I can even face my fiancee when I get home; I'll feel like I've done something I really shouldn't have.
I will clarify--I ate roughly half of my salad and entree, and about 1/8 of the dessert. And, to be honest, the food tasted okay.
But on the other hand, eff you Claim Jumper. Eff you.
3 comments:
I had the same complaint at the Original pancake house in California,I ordered an apple pancake, the price should've clued me in. I didn't mind that it was huge but the waiter should've had decency to say -sir,I can see you are not skinny, but there is no freaking way you can eat that, split it with your child. no one said that and I could only eat about a third.
http://twitpic.com/1312lh
btw, I never read those nutritional values,why ruin the mood.
you should try their brunch.
My grandmother always picked Claim Jumper for her weekend lunches with me and my Twin when we were kids. We joked about going to the home of a potato that was the size of our heads every time.
I honestly cannot remember anything else we ate there except for the potato, and every now and then the Mudslide Pie, or something similar to that. It was 'bout the size of our heads, too, and we always took a bunch home with us. I don't know how that place makes money, even with the prices they charge. But that's their "thing". The huge, huge portions. It's craziness.
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