I never thought that the saying “If you want something done right, do it yourself” would apply to fast food. After all, it’s fast food. It’s the one thing that a chain restaurant backed by a giant multinational corporation should be able to pull off better than me and my hot plate.

 

But what choice do I have? It turns out that it’s harder to get a crappy sandwich in my town than I had anticipated.

 

If you have a television or an Internet connection, you have heard of the KFC Double Down Sandwich. Introduced last August, the KFC Double Down is not really a sandwich at all. It’s more like a stack of heart attack: two fried chicken breasts wrapped around slices of bacon and melted processed cheese. Into that pile o’ junk KFC has managed to inject 540 calories, 32 grams of fat and 1380 grams of sodium, which is just enough salt to dehydrate an unwary moose.

 

I don’t think that the Double Down was even intended as a legitimate product. It’s there to grab people’s attention with the sheer salty chutzpah of its breadlessness. It is meant to provoke, to anger, to inspire debate, to spike the blogosphere’s coffee. The Double Down Sandwich is the insult comedy of fast food.

So I decided to call the nearest outlet and have one delivered. I felt like I was ordering a cement mixer to pull up to my window and upend a liquid ton of gravy into my mouth. But when I looked up the delivery number online, I realized that KFC was advertising everything but the Double Down. The Big Fresh Sandwich, sure. The Wrapstar (A Taste Explosion!). The Boneless Original Recipe. But no Double Down.

Lousy no-good Canada, I thought; first no DDT, then no Hulu. Now no Double Down. It was clear that KFC Canada had a whole different sales strategy. Fresh? Wraps? But I thought I’d call anyway.

The woman on the other end of the line had a hesitant tone in her voice, like she wasn’t that familiar with telephone technology.

THE KFC LADY: “Hello, K, um, FC, can I, help? You?”

AIDAN: “Hi, do you carry the Double Down Sandwich?”

THE KFC LADY: “The Double wuh?”

Two things: One, she actually said “wuh”. Two, in 2006, 87 per cent of Canadian households subscribed to cable or satellite television. With the market saturation of flat-screen TVs and the preponderance of digital cable services, that percentage has probably increased to something like 92-95 per cent

 

Everyone watches cable, is what I’m saying. And basic Canadian cable is American television. That’s an oversimplification, but if you watch cable in Canada, you watch American television.

 

So by that logic, everyone has seen approximately five billion ads for the KFC Double Down.

This person, who worked at a KFC, who operated with KFC imprinted on the screen of her perceptions, who had a 95 per cent chance of having seen an ad for this wackadoo sandwich, had somehow failed to pick up on it.
 

“The Double Down Sandwich? It’s got two chicken breasts instead of a bun?” I was now explaining a KFC product to one of their employees, and acutely aware of how ridiculous I was sounding. “It’s available in the States.”

“Oh, we can’t sell you things from the States.” And then she started laughing. She was laughing at me because she thought I was asking her to ship a sandwich up from North Dakota.

One of the worst things about dealing with phenomenally stupid people is that they are always one step ahead of you in the stupid domain. You can’t out-stupid a stupid person. You can’t think around their brainlessness. They’re too smart for that. But the only thing they’re smart at is being really fucking stupid.

 

Faced with the fiendish cleverness of her stupidity, I should have said Thank You and Goodbye. Instead I pressed on.

“Yes, I know,” I said, hoping there was some move I could make that wouldn’t pull my entire night into the tiger trap of stupid I’d stepped on. “I was just saying it’s available in the United States. That’s how I know about it.”

“But we can’t get things from the States, sir.” She started giggling again. I hung up and fell into a deep depression.

You can’t get a Double Down north of the border. But it’s not hard to make one. The easiest way is to use KFC’s menu against itself, as in the classic Judo tactic of using your opponent’s strength to your own advantage. As a result, this meal can cost you up to $15 but you will savour the salty taste of victory.

 

AIDAN’S HOMEMADE DOUBLE DOWN

Inspect the boneless chicken breasts for bones. Slide out the bone that they assured you would not be there from the dorsal side of each breast. Set the breasts on a baking sheet. Reserve the sharp bones as a weapon for later. Meanwhile, heat a frying pan on medium and cook the bacon. I used pancetta bacon from the Italian Star Deli, because that’s how a gourmet rolls.

 

Once the bacon is done to your liking, drape it artfully over the chicken breasts and cover with the Monterey Jack and plain old processed cheese slices. Turn your oven to broil and place the chicken breasts in the oven until the cheese begins to look sad and droopy, like someone took its puppy away. Remove the tray and slather the cheesy breasts with a big dollop of peppercorn mayo. Slam the breasts together, wrap it in the paper, and you’re holding a sandwich remarkably close to the Double Down.

 

Enjoy your victory sandwich.

 

But for God’s sake, don’t eat it. You have so much to live for.