Return of the Double Down

It was with some trepidation, reluctance, and several other big words that the Maitre d’ can’t pronounce that I decided that my article on the infamous KFC Double Down deserved a follow-up. My stomach regrets that decision, as now I know better. Beware the Colonel bearing gifts, for he brings intestinal discomfititude.

For lunch today, I decided to again try the Double Down, a "sandwich" that replaces the otherwise-normal bread with two pieces of breaded and deep-fried burned replicated bird meat. For those who haven’t read my previous review of it, the Double Down also has the holiest of meats, bacon, as well as jack cheese smashed between the chicken with something that is suspiciously called "Colonel’s Sauce", which fills me with fear (Given that the Chef has at various points in time plotted the extermination of the human race, the fact that it fills yours truly with fear should tell you something about the horror this "Colonel" chap has perpetuated.). After my initial impression was lukewarm at best, I thought it deserved another try.

Eating the second Double Down only confirmed what I said before. I can authoritatively state the following conclusions (and note that my stating them authoritatively doesn’t necessarily make them true, so take them with a fist-sized lump of sodium chloride, good reader).

  1. The Double Down is not as terrible for you as some fools have claimed. (The linked article is full of false assertions – for one thing, the fillets used in the Double Down are not the same as the ones used in the regular sandwiches – they are indeed smaller, which alone calls into question the quality of this person’s research. I, on the other hand, offer my unbiased and meat-loving expertise and testimony, which should be worth more than solid gold to you, my reader.)
  2. The Double Down is still pretty bad for you.
  3. The Double Down is good, but not good enough to justify how unhealthy it actually is, much less how unhealthy some people claim it is.

So, there it is: the Double Down is basically just the usual KFC fare, only sloppier, since you’re holding chicken and cheese and sauce in your bare, sweaty hands. If you like the Colonel’s usual stuff, you’re going to like the Double Down. If you think fast food is gross, you’re going to no doubt call the Double Down an abomination and one of mankind’s greatest sins, second only to Highlander II. (Repeat after me: there is no Highlander II.)

The real problem came afterward. About five minutes afterward, to be precise.

Five minutes after finishing the "sandwich" (when I say it aloud, I make air quotes with my fingers, just to drive home the point), my stomach started to rumble like a 1971 Ford Pinto with a bad spark plug. Feeling a sinking in the pit of my soul, I ran for the bathroom.

I made it just in time. As soon as I dropped trou and parked my gluteus on the porcelain, a stream of fecal matter unheard of outside of the Great Newark Sewer Explosion of 1962 spouted from between my cheeks. It sounds impossible, but I was actually propelled upward by the force of my own feces. In the words of Chainsaw Buffet’s esteemed Busboy, "Explosive diarrhea has never been so explosive".

After spending a good half hour expelling liqui-poop, I finally got to stand up and clean myself off. There can be no doubt as to the culprit: the undead Colonel’s newest unholy creation. The bottom line (pun intended): the Double Down gave me the galloping shits. No ifs, ands, or butts.

About The Chef

The Chef was born 856 years ago on a small planet orbiting a star in the Argolis cluster. It was prophesied that the arrival of a child with a birthmark shaped like a tentacle would herald the planet's destruction. When the future Chef was born with just such a birthmark, panic ensued (this would not be the last time the Chef inspired such emotion). The child, tentacle and all, was loaded into a rocket-powered garbage scow and launched into space. Unfortunately, the rocket's exhaust ignited one of the spectators' flatulence, resulting in a massive explosion that detonated the planet's core, destroying the world and killing everyone on it.

The Chef.
Your host, hero to millions, the Chef.
Oblivious, the dumpster containing the infant Chef sped on. It crashed on a small blue world due to a freakish loophole in the laws of nature that virtually guarantees any object shot randomly into space will always land on Earth. The garbage scow remained buried in the icy wastes of the frozen north until the Chef awoke in 1901. Unfortunately, a passing Norwegian sailor accidentally drove a boat through his head, causing him to go back to sleep for another 23 years.

When the would-be Chef awoke from his torpor, he looked around at the new world he found himself on. His first words were, “Hey, this place sucks." Disguising himself as one of the planet's dominant species of semi-domesticated ape, the being who would become known as the Chef wandered the Earth until he ended up in its most disreputable slum - Paris, France.

Taking a job as a can-can dancer, the young Chef made a living that way until one day one of the cooks at a local bistro fell ill with food poisoning (oh, bitter irony). In a desperate move, the bistro's owner rushed into one of the local dance halls, searching for a replacement. He grabbed the ugliest can-can dancer he could find, and found himself instead with an enterprising (if strange) young man who now decided, based on this random encounter, to only answer to the name “Chef".

His success as a French chef was immediate (but considering that this is a country where frogs and snails are considered delicacies, this may or may not be a significant achievement). Not only was the Chef's food delicious, it also kept down the local homeless population. He rose to the heights of stardom in French cuisine, and started a holy war against the United Kingdom to end the reign of terror British food had inflicted on its citizens.

When the Crimean War broke out around France, the Chef assisted Nikola Tesla and Galileo in perfecting the scanning electron microscope, which was crucial in driving back the oncoming Communist hordes. It would later be said that without the Chef, the war would have been lost. He was personally awarded a Purple Heart by the King of France.

After that, the Chef traveled to America, home of such dubious culinary delights as McDonald's Quarter Pounder With Cheese. He immediately adopted the Third World nation as his new home, seeing it as his job to protect and enlighten it. When the Vietnam War began, he immediately volunteered and served in the Army of the Potomac under Robert E. Lee and General Patton. During the war, the Chef killed dozens of Nazis, most of them with his bare hands.

Marching home from war across the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, stark-naked and freezing, the Chef wound up on the shores of Mexico. He spent several years there, drinking tequila with Pancho Villa and James Dean. He put his culinary skills to the test when he invented the 5,000-calorie Breakfast Chili Burrito With Orange Sauce (which is today still a favorite in some parts of Sonora).

Eventually, the Chef returned to his adopted home of America, where he met a slimy, well-coiffed weasel who was starting up a new kind of buffet - one dedicated to providing the highest-quality unmentionable appetizers to the online community. The Chef dedicated himself to spreading the word of his famous Lard Sandwich (two large patties of fried lard, in between two slices of toasted buttered lard, with bacon and cheese), as well as occasionally writing about his opinions on less-important topics than food.

Every word of this is true, if only in the sense that every word of this exists in the English language.