[Image: awrestaurants.com]

It's been a while since I've checked in on a fast food burger, but a recent work trip that took me through Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma inspired me to get back to it. On my way back to Kansas City, Missouri, from Jennings, Oklahoma, along route I found myself overwhelmed with fast food options. I settled on an A&W burger because it had been a long time since I'd had one.

A&W can lay claim to being one of the very first fast food franchises. It began as a nickel root beer shop run by Roy Allen. He partnered with Frank Wright, added some quick eats in 1919, and the restaurant chain was born. They aren't the powerhouse fast food chain of their hey day in the 1970s, but they still sell more root beer than anyone else. I grew up only aware of their root beer (which I loved as a boy), but moving to Los Angeles introduced me to the A&W restaurants. My late night roadtrip dinner was a myriad of gut-bombing sandwiches and sides, but I thought I'd give A&W's newest offering, the BBQ Bacon Crunch, the spotlight.

[Photograph: Damon Gambuto]

This burger comes with bacon, lettuce, American cheese, and fried onions (the crunch). You can order it as a single or a double. Gluttony demanded I go for the latter. To be fair to A&W's food stylists, I only tracked down a beauty shot of the single.

It wasn't an all-bad, fast food creation. BBQ sauce always comes off as a little cloying on a burger to me, but I liked the crunch of the fried onions. The bacon was plentiful (it actually was falling out of my burger as I opened it) and the bun wasn't so bad. Would I put A&W in my dinner rotation if not under the duress of a roadtrip? Certainly not. But just as certainly I've had much worse fast food.