Is the Krispy Kreme Sloppy Joe Really for Real?
Barely had the metaphorical ink dried on my post last week about the manufactured brouhaha surrounding Dunkin’ Donuts’ nationwide rollout of its doughnut breakfast sandwich when my editor emailed me this link with the subject line, “Have fun!”
Behold: the Krispy Kreme Sloppy Joe.
It’s not quite an April Fool’s gag, for a couple reasons. The most obvious, of course: It’s June. And the sandwich—a regular old sloppy joe stuffed between two halves of a Krispy Kreme doughnut—is real.
If you happen to be in Southern California at the San Diego County Fair (now through July 4), the Orange County Fair (July 12 – August 11) or the Los Angeles County Fair (August 30 – September 29), you can roll on up to Chicken Charlie’s and order yourself one, perhaps with a Totally Fried Bacon Wrapped Pickle on the side and some Totally Fried Kool Aid balls for dessert.
Now, county and state fairs have long been home to a gut-busting array of truth-is-stranger-than-fiction food (most of it deep, deep fried). And Chicken Charlie’s seems proud to continue in that tradition. You’ve got your deep-fried Oreos and Twinkies, that’s a given (though with the production of bona fide trademarked Twinkies not set to resume until sometime this summer, one wonders where Chicken Charlie is getting his).
“Every year we work hard to introduce a new item to the menu that people have never tried,” reads Chicken Charlie’s website, which proclaims as “New 2013”: those aforementioned bacon-wrapped pickles, Totally Fried Cookie Dough, the Waffle Dog (think pig in a waffle), and the headline grabber, the Krispy Kreme Sloppy Joe, in a photo that has the high-flash pallor of one of those end-of-the-night iPhone pics where everyone’s wasted and looks like they might throw up.
What makes the story really funny (or scary, depending on how you feel about America’s arguable slide from greatness to gluttonous), are the number of sites that have reported on the sandwich as if it were actually being launched by Krispy Kreme.
“Dunkin’ has been outdone by their rival Krispy Kreme,” reports “fair & balanced” (but not accurate) Fox News. One blogger at the Consumerist writes, “It’s unclear, however, whether or not the item will actually be added to any Krispy Kreme menus, or if it’s just a one-off for the fair.”
OK, people, the perpetually stoned guy in apartment 4C may like to mash up his favorite breakfast cereal and pour it over his burger, but that doesn’t mean McDonald’s is going to unveil its Lucky Charms Big Mac anytime soon.
Or maybe we should just give it a few years. A decade ago, a sandwich with a fried chicken bun or a bacon ice cream sundae would’ve probably seemed like a joke, too.
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