Elvis: Just As Gross As You Remember

jharv | November 27, 2007 11:10 am
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Forbes‘s sorta banal (but perversely appetizing) look at “Extreme Eats” isn’t so much extreme in the Travel Channel “eating a pulsating frog’s heart and washing it down with a cup of bat’s milk” sense of the word as “you will have an extremely painful death if you regularly consume these deep-fried abominations.” But greasy, over-the-top junk food constructions are surely the new sign of American ingenuity, as rock’n’roll once was, and Forbes does note the infamous gastronomic impact that popular singers have had on our present extra-extra-extra-cheese culture.

Some of America’s biggest culture icons have made their mark on the extreme foods scene. Elvis Presley made famous a meal known as the Fool’s Gold Loaf, reportedly his favorite: To construct one, mix one jar of peanut butter, one jar of grape jelly and a pound of bacon. Scoop the mixture inside a hollowed-out loaf of fresh-baked bread, smother the outside in butter and bake. Elvis would eat the whole thing in one sitting–and once flew from Memphis to Denver in the middle of the night to get one from a restaurant called the Colorado Mine Company.

Named after late R&B singer Luther Vandross, this sinful sandwich consists of a bacon cheeseburger served between two glazed Krispy Kreme donuts. The increasingly popular concoction has been served up at locations as diverse as minor league ballparks and Google’s employee cafeteria.

Wait, people are actually selling the once-apocryphal donut burger to their employees? It’s amazing these corporations aren’t pushing for socialized medicine only so they won’t have subsidize their own workers’ inevitable bypasses. But while Elvis and Luther’s taste in sandwiches, long widely known among/mocked by music fans, is indeed “extreme,” both are actually overshadowed in grossness/awesomeness by the contributions of enterprising folks like you and me.

Barbecue how-to Web site Peppers and Smoke invented this beauty, which consists of a patty made from ground 100% hickory-smoked bacon. Cook in a skillet, add two slices of pepper jack cheese, and serve with Habanero potato chips. In Philadelphia, hungry booze hounds looking for an alcohol-absorbing snack after the bars close have popularized the Philly Taco, one of the city’s famous cheesesteaks wrapped up inside of a big slice of cheese pizza.

Even as a Philadelphian who would deep fry a hoagie and cover it in nacho cheese, I’m kinda boggling at that one.

Extreme Eats [Forbes]