DRIVE-BY DINING
Breakfast battle
By Dog Davis
10/27/05

For 10 years, Jack In The Box has run commercials featuring Jack, a dapper clown who’s surprisingly talkative in spite of having a fiberglass head. More recently Burger King has started running ads featuring a weird, grinning monarch known simply as The King. He, too, has a fiberglass head, but has yet learned to speak.

Currently these two stiff-heads are racing for the title of Best New Oversized Breakfast Food. Jack holds the Ciabatta Breakfast Sandwich - ham, bacon, egg, cheese, and hollandaise sauce, squeezed inside his popular ciabatta roll for $2.99. But The King has the even bigger Meat’Normous Omelet Sandwich – ham, bacon, egg, cheese, and sausage stuffed inside a long sesame seed bun for $3.49.

Who wins this “head-to-head” competition?

Jack’s Ciabatta Breakfast Sandwich vs. The King’s Meat’Normous Omelet Sandwich

TASTE

Ciabatta***

The crusty roll and creamy hollandaise make this sandwich both distinctive and tasty. Advantage Jack.

Meat’Normous**

It’s not bad, but its main selling-point seems to be its enormity. Size isn’t everything, is it?

PORTABILITY

Ciabatta**

The sturdy bun is easy to hold, but the sauce makes this thing a little gooey.

Meat’Normous**

Meat, meat, more meat can make for a greasy in-the-car dining experience. A draw.

DIET WATCH

Ciabatta**

Not for the dainty, the Ciabatta has a gut-busting 740 calories and 38 grams fat, making it only slightly lighter than…

Meat’Normous**

…which weighs in at 770 calories, and 47 grams fat. (However, both are skinny compared to the 830-calorie breakfast burger from Carl’s Jr.)

HYPE-O-METER

Ciabatta**

Jack’s breakfast ad, where he rolls a sleeping man through a drive-thru, is not one of his best, but after a decade on TV, you expect some clunkers.

Meat’Normous***

The King won’t have the longevity of Jack, he’s simply too creepy, but he wins this category because his ad, where he log-rolls with a lumberjack, is just so dang strange.

It’s a photo finish, but the winner - fueled by his better tasting, less fatty Ciabatta Breakfast Sandwich - Jack edges out The King by the tip of his cone-shaped nose.