LYT's Fast Food Review: Big Dill Double SONIC Smasher Meal
Pickles, pickles, everywhere, including in your drink.
It's fascinating to watch how taste buds change in my lifetime. When I was a kid, candies with hot pepper in them were gag gifts that you gave to unsuspecting friends, only to laugh when they yelled in mouth-pain. This past Easter, as a sincere gift, my wife gave me a jar of habanero jellybeans – the spiciness and mouth pain is now an overt feature for those who would seek it out, as opposed to a secret prank factor. I've also noticed that over time, fast food chains have gone from “jalapeno” being the hottest flavor, to habanero, and then ghost pepper.
But it isn't just spice factor. The mixing of sweet and salt is something that would have been considered gross when I was a kid. Chocolate-covered pretzels or potato chips would have sounded disgusting; when my mother once had a dish called chocolate chicken, she had to work to convince me it actually tasted good. Now, of course, I live in a city where mole is everywhere.
Sonic has previously tried weird shake flavors like jalapeno chocolate, which I thought might be interesting until I had it – it was just a chocolate shake with pickled jalapeno slices added. No real mixing of the flavors in a way that might have suggested Mexican hot chocolate, or mole. And that brings us to the new Picklerita Slush, arguably the centerpiece of the Big Dill Sonic Smasher meal.
As the name suggests, the Picklerita Slush is half pickle flavor, half margarita flavor. As the name may not imply, it also includes pickle slices and sweet popping pearls. Predictably, it's a shock to the tastebud system. Dip the straw in the shallow end, and get a mouth full of pickle brine acidity. Dip it deeper, and taste sweet lime syrup. The pearls feel like the pulp of some horrible mutant fruit.
Mix it together, and it's a bizarre abomination. The mix of sweet and sour is akin to a margarita, somewhat, but the acidity of the brine is maybe not what you want from a cold drink on a hot day. Now, me, I love a good Pickleback – Rick and Morty publicity once sent me a shot of whiskey and a shot of pickle brine, and they worked together. The problem with the Picklerita is that it lacks alcohol. Throw in some vodka or whiskey to give it even more burn, and it might be a decent sipper. Boozers like a little bit of layered mouth torture in a way that soda chuggers don't. It also doesn't hurt that liquor dulls the tongue a bit.
My wife is a pickle fiend, but after drinking about half of it, she proclaimed that she needed a break from it. How long a break? Forever. If someone handed you this and you were desperate for a cooldown you might chug the thing, but the flavor is honestly like the sort of gag candy we might have tried to slip other kids even ten years ago. Like a Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Bean – to be honest, if we see an earwax soda in my lifetime, I won't be totally surprised.
The pickle seasoning for the Tater Tots, or fries if you prefer, is quite nice. Like the seasoning on any good pickle flavor potato chip – I enjoy Pringles and Kettle Chips on that score – it gives a nice, familiar tang to the potatoes. They could probably sell it separately in little jars in grocery stores if they wanted to.
So now on to the main event: The Big Dill Double SONIC Smasher. I like the regular Smasher, though it's expensive at $8-ish. This loaded one looked so intense that the wife and I figured we'd cut it in half. That's almost certainly a wise caloric and cholesterol decision, but the burger is less big than a Big Mac, so it doesn't quite leave one feeling full. That said, the regular version is quite tasty, so let's cover the additions:
First, we have “dill pickle seasoned crispy cucumbers,” or as most people call them, PICKLES. Like, seriously, what? Isn't a pickle, by definition, a cucumber in pickle seasoning? Or maybe it has to be specifically marinated to earn that name? These taste like regular fucking pickles, though they seemed a little crisper, with less of the In N Out “take one bite into the pickle, and the entire thing gets dragged out of the burger and into your mouth” effect. So if that's the distinction, let's see more people use “dill pickle seasoned crispy cucumbers.” Maybe they can be served with “French-style fry cooked potatoes,” and those will be better too. Or it's just marketing.
GRILLO'S PICKLES ® Chips are like tempura fried pickle slices, and they don't really taste of anything on the burger itself, but are more fun if you take them out and eat them individually. They could be their own side, but on the burger they arguably add a crunchy element if you eat it quickly enough. The “dill pickle seasoned crispy cucumbers” are crunchier, though. Then there's “Dilly Ranch” – smashburgers green, dilly dilly, smashburgers blue; when you eat me, dilly dilly, I WILL eat you, a penny for your thoughts MY dear...
Ahem. A silly Marillion. Anyway, “ranch” is kind of the base and “pickle” the dominant flavor – while this is still the familiar smash style cheeseburger, the added ingredients combine their forces, Captain Planet style, to make it taste like pickles without overwhelming your mouth with physical pickles (again, my one issue with In N Out Animal Style). So it's kind of a flavor exaggeration and probably bad for you, but yeah, it tastes darn good. And it feels slightly less unhealthy without actually being so. Is that a plus? Maybe for dumb people.
Pickle flavor seems to be everywhere now, with fried pickles replacing fried green beans as a popular appetizer, and now I see Del Taco even has a fried pickle “taco.” On the whole, this is a good trend and works as a savory flavor.
Fuck – and I cannot stress this enough – the Picklerita, though.
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