New Fresh Baked Buns for Six Dollar Thickness Burgers at Carl's Jr.

Name: Fresh Baked Buns for Six Dollar Burgers
Restaurant: Carl's Jr.
Type: Improvement
Cost: Varies by burger (but $5.09 for the burger alone - nearly Six Dollars)

Review:

Ultimately this review is going to depend a lot on the type of Six Dollar Burger you order. Is it clean or messy? Expensive or Cheap? That all depends on the burger you order. But the bun itself is easy to review.

Yes, Virginia, it is a great improvement. Its crispy and buttery and adds loads of flavor to the bun portion of the burger. There is absolutely no downside to ordering this bun with this burger.

And that will have to be my limited review of the bun. That is the gimmick anyway. Same burger. Slightly higher price. Different bun.

Would I rush out to buy the burger just to try the new bun? That's a loaded question. If you've ever ordered a Six Dollar Burger and feel like ordering one again, do so. The bun will only improve the burger. But if you didn't like the Six Dollar Burger in the first place, a new bun isn't likely to change your opinion. Its a good bun. Its not THAT good of a bun however.

My own opinion of the Six Dollar Burger, by the way, is that its a MAN'S sandwich. You have to really have an appetite for one. But if you do, the burger will never disappoint. It is definitely restaurant quality and maybe even better if you factor in the cost for what you get. But if you order one and you're not as hungry as you thought, you will throw away half the sandwich (or save it for later) and wonder why you didn't just get something cheaper.

That changes nothing of my opinion of the bun. A fantastic bun. I just wish it wasn't tied to such a massive burger.

Taste: 4 Bombs
Hunger Satisfaction: 5 Bombs
Cleanliness: Varies, depending on the Six Dollar Burger ordered.
Cost Value: 4 Bombs (Worth the small additional cost for the new bun.)
Overall: 4 Bombs (It would have been 5 had it been attached to a smaller burger).

Fajita Ranch Melt from Jack In The Box

Name: FAJITA RANCH MELT
Restaurant: JACK IN THE BOX
Type: LIMITED TIME SPECIAL
Cost: $3.99 (Northern CA price)

Review:
I love Jack in the Box's limited time specials. I don't always eat them because sometimes their food really does epitomize the name Gut Bomb, but I still love them. Jack in the Box, more so than any other fast food restaurant, is not afraid to try new things (and bring back old ones as well). But not all ideas succeed. Unfortunately, this one just barely failed.

Basically, the idea here was to combine the topping you get in a fajita (chicken bites, green peppers, grilled onions) with melty white cheese, ranch dressing and buffalo sauce (or it could have been highly concentrated taco sauce) and place it on buttery sourdough bread. If the idea of fajitas mixed with a patty melt sound good to you, this is right up your alley.

So, short answer, it just didn't work. The buttery sourdough bread - so good for most things - just doesn't work for this melt. It adds no matching flavor and the contrasting flavor of buttery bread and fajita don't work together. Further, this choice of bread guarantees that this sandwich is going to drip, slide, and squirt everywhere. It is a needlessly messy sandwich.

Its parts, individually, taste good. The bread is excellent for any other sandwich. The chicken fajitas are quite tasty. I even liked the cheese - though it melts a bit stringy. The buffalo/taco sauce either ended up on my shirt (surprise... there's red sauce in this sandwich!) or came out in clumps. It was like finding the one pepper in the entire batch that had some spice to it. The part were good, the sum of them all didn't work.

And now the ratings:

Taste: 3 Bombs
Hunger Satisfaction: 3 Bombs
Cleanliness: 2 Bombs
Cost Value: 4 Bombs
Overall: 3 Bombs