That's a Load of Rich Creamery Butter....

Hardee's now has this:

Philly Cheesesteak Thickburger

charbroiled 1/3-pound, 100 percent Angus beef patty, topped with thin-sliced steak, sauteed peppers and onions and Swiss and American cheeses on a seeded bun.

I just have to laugh. I mean, a Philly Cheesesteak is now a burger condiment? It's like they're getting their product ideas from the commercials on Homer Simpson's television:

We take eighteen ounces of sizzling ground beef, and soak it in rich, creamery butter, then we top it off with bacon, ham, and a fried egg. We call it the Good Morning Burger.

They don't have that yet, but I'd say they're on their way. Take, for example, their

Loaded Biscuit 'N' Gravy Breakfast Bowl

A Freshly Baked, Made-from-Scratch Biscuit topped with Folded Egg and a Sausage Patty Smothered in Sausage Gravy

It's practically a Good Morning Burger already, only served in a bowl with both buns at the bottom. And how about the [snicker]Low Carb Breakfast Bowl[/snicker]? Because you eat low-carb'ly for health reasons, right?:

Folded Egg Topped with a Sausage Patty, Crumbled Bacon, Diced Ham, Crumbled Sausage, Shredded Cheddar, American and Swiss Cheeses

Again served in a bowl. (I hope they give out little packets of Metamucil to sprinkle over the top, 'cause otherwise Americans are going to start giving that fabled goose a 'run' for its money.) I really would like to know what's up with the whole fast-food-in-a-bowl thing that seems to be developing. Clearly it has its origins in Asian cuisines — a bowl of rice topped with non-carb food and dressed with sauce; except that that dish usually contains lots of vegetables and only a little meat to, as they said in the 18th century, "give savor" to it. But then that tradition collided with American food habits in the Hawaiian Islands, and the result was a culinary and nutritional train wreck: the Loco Moco, the standard version of which comes with "two [ice-cream] scoop [sic]" rice, one egg any style, two slices of Spam, and brown gravy to saturate. (You can supersize to something like "six scoop" rice and proportional increases in the "toppings".)

But now everybody is getting in on the craze. The first one I noticed was Kentucky Fried Chicken (or, as they likes to be called, "KFC" — but, as Dennis Miller once said [back when he was still sane], "Guys — it's chicken." Hip-hop-ify it all you want, it's still Whitey's fried chicken and it won't ever be cool), when they came out with what their website is calling their "New KFC Famous Bowls". (Ahh, marketing: brand-new things are 'famous,' and then if they last for a couple of years, they become 'classic'.) Their flagship "Famous Bowl" is

Freshly prepared with layers of your KFC favorites - a generous serving of our creamy mashed potatoes, sweet kernel corn, bite size pieces of all-white meat crispy chicken, topped with our homestyle gravy and 3-cheese blend.

So the corn isn't an egg, but it is yellow, and the cheese (since when has cheese ever been a Kentucky Fried Chicken "favorite"?) adds the egg's worth of cholesterol and fat that the corn lacks. This is a dish that, they say, will let you "Feel good about lunch!" Clearly, they couldn't say "feel good after lunch," for obvious reasons. But what exactly do they mean by "Feel[ing] good about" it? Cleverly, this particular item is absent from their on-line nutritional chart. But I cobbled together something that's probably reasonably close by picking an "Mashed Potato Bowl with Gravy" (evidently, along with the "Rice Bowl with Gravy," the reason for the plural in "KFC Famous Bowls") – from the "Salads & More" submenu, no less! – adding in a kid's serving of Popcorn Chicken, and a small individual Corn on the Cob. (There was no Cheese to be found, but I figure that the extra corn kernels and butter on the cob are a fair substitute, nutrition-wise.) And the results were about what you'd expect. I mean, you're just not going to find much difference between the different combinations of what is basically a bowl of simple carbohydrates topped with protein and fat.

All of which suggests, to me, at least, that we're well on our way to seeing the Facestuffers franchise expand out of Springfield, NT. Right now it's all still layered, but it has got into the bowl. Two steps remain: mixing it all up (which I know is what goes on with the loco moco, and I expect is the case with these fast food bowls, once the customer gets them) and ignoring the spork. If you're smart, you'll start investing in the disposable-bib industry.