Insider Exclusive - Stu claims to be a vegetarian… However we checked our archives and found this Insider exclusive article from September of 2002… Ask yourself, would a real vegetarian review a 900+ calorie hamburger? While Stu might argue that he wasn’t a vegetarian then, there is no doubting his willingness to pay $6 for a hamburger ($34.25 in 2008 money).
Note: Hardee's 6 Dollar Burger can also to be found at Carl’s Jr. on the west coast.
Hardee's are the fattest of the fast food restaurants. Hardee’s laughs at Burger King and McDonalds. When McDonalds said they were going to cut the trans fatty acids in their French fries, Hardee's said—“well then bring the extra over here”. Hardee's is a junk food paradise. Have you ever had a Frisco Burger there? Tremendous. A huge burger, loaded with cheese, mayonnaise, and some other stuff, on a sourdough bun, which has had butter sprayed on it—maybe by a power washer. This place is a greasy dream.
While sitting at the Hardee's on Dale Mabry in Tampa, I noticed 2 signs above my head. One said “Cheddar it up 39 cents!!” Yeah baby, for 39 cents you can get a vat of cheddar cheese sauce to dump on your burger, your fries, or hell—maybe even in your soda—to cheddar it up a bit. The other sign said “Smoking Section”. Imagine a place conducive to an individual who both wants to dump a tank of cheddar cheese sauce on something that’s already been deep-fried, while smoking. Heart surgeons must stake this place out like FBI agents do the Sopranos. I peered outside, expecting ambulances to be lined up outside the window, like cabs do outside the airport.
You get the idea. Hardee's knows how to do junk food. Which makes the proposition of buying a “sit down” restaurant type burger at Hardee's both interesting and scary. Let us first understand the difference between a regular fast food burger and a sit down burger.
Sit down burgers are bigger.
Sit down burgers have generally fresher vegetables on them.
Sit down burgers have meat that tastes like meat.
Yes, there are other differences, but these are the main ones. Surprisingly, the Hardee's $6 Burger actually does pretty well in these areas.
It is bigger. Much bigger. Makes the Frisco Burger look small. This also creates a problem however in portability. Unless you are a man far fatter than I, you would need a college course to figure out how to eat this thing on the road. If some states are outlawing cell phone use when driving, the $6 Burger should definitely follow. So much toppings and you’d need to have Steven Tyler’s mouth to fit around it.
The veggies tasted fresher. This could be complete coincidence. Maybe I got lucky, maybe there was some new shipment, maybe there’s some sort of new chemical preservative that I don’t know about yet, but they did taste better. (Like you care about the vegetables anyway).
If you have ever done the Atkins diet, you have no doubt sat outside a fast food restaurant, pulling beef patties out from in between a bun and devouring them. When you do this you realize that a) there’s a reason they put all those toppings on burgers and b) that it doesn’t taste like the hamburgers you make at home. It’s made of a kind of a strange meat substance that will bend, but not break. This was the biggest challenge, as I saw it, to the $6 burger. Would they be able to come up with beef that will actually taste like beef? The answer? Pretty much, yeah. It’s not as good as the beef from a good sit down restaurant, but it’s much higher quality than a Quarter Pounder or Whopper. If you are an Atkins dieter, you want a Hardee's or Carl’s Jr. near you. And if you are an enormous person, you want one near you too, although you probably moved next door already anyway.
The $6 burger has a quirky advertising hook, being that it’s the first product that I can remember, that includes a price in its title that is higher than the actual price. The $6 burger only costs $3.95. It’s like saying the $100 a month Glenn Beck insider for only $6.95. The theory is you get the same burger that you would spend $6 for at a sit down restaurant, for only $3.95. However, when you go to, say a Chili’s and buy a cheeseburger for $6, what else comes on your plate?? Fries. So if you ad a large fries to the Hardee's burger, you are at about $6 anyway. Oh well, it will fool the West Palm Beach customers anyway.
The summary of this burger effort lies in the numbers. According to Hardees.com the $6 Burger has 911 calories. Which is the exact number that you will need on your cell phone speed dial, should you consume one.
How fat are you gonna be info?
(per real human serving)
Calories: 911
Fat: 61
Carbs: 50
Sodium: 1584
OVERALL GRADE-- B
Morningstar via Investopedia