Fast Food Review: The Bonus Jack at Jack in the Box

The Big Carl must be doing pretty well (it’s certainly, consistently one of the top search terms that brings people to this site), because this officially makes it a trend — the Big Mac rip-off is the new mini-burger. Not literally; we’re talking trendwise. Tiny burgers were the hot new item on menus everywhere earlier in the year, but now, the double cheeseburger with a bun in the middle seems to be heating up, as Jack in the Box presents the awkwardly named “Bonus Jack.”

(See, to me that name makes me think of when you have a porno that’s so good you can go, uh, two straight rounds with it, the jack and the bonus jack. And now you, dear reader, have lost your appetite. I can tell. That might be a good thing, because I looked at the nutritional information on JITB’s website, and damn, it’s as bad as you think for most items.)

(Also, the abbreviation for Bonus Jack is BJ. But you were ahead of me on that one, right?)

The Bonus Jack combo is reasonably priced at $4, though you always gotta upsize at Jack’s, either to curly fries or stuffed jalapenos, a.k.a. LYT’s favorite fast food item ever that will probably induce a coronary one day. And the buns are cut-rate, in that they do not come bearing sesame seeds. But if you happen to hate sesame seeds and love this kind of burger, then oh snap, Jack has just won you away from Mickey D’s.

The Bonus Jack has one up on the Big Carl in the lettuce department. Shredded lettuce is far less unwieldy in a burger than the big chunk of iceberg Carl’s puts on theirs. There is, in the end, less lettuce on the Bonus Jack overall, but if you really love lettuce, you shouldn’t be eating fast food in the first place. Now, I know that picture above shows a big leaf, but I’m telling you, I got mine shredded. That picture above also shows pickles, which tells me that compared to what I had, the picture LIES! But even if the lettuce does come in a big green leaf, like on some other JITB sandwiches, it’s still better than the Big Carl’s Big Crunchy Chunk O’Leaves. I have no comment on the pickles.

The true bonus on this sandwich is more cheese. Though it all melts together, I’m fairly sure this has four slices rather than two. It feels like four, anyway.

The meat? It can stand shoulder to shoulder with Jack’s bigger burgers. Ever since they inadvertently poisoned customers with e. coli back in the early ’90s, Jack has enforced more stringent meat quality standards than most other burger joints, and it has paid off. This may be a bargain-item burger, but the meat tastes good.

The only area in which the burger disappoints is the sauce. Look at that picture above. The sauce is orange. Based on previous Jack offerings, you’d expect that orange = chipotle, because that’s usually how the chain rolls, as seen on their pita snacks and chicken ciabatta. Southwest chains represent, y’all. But no. This orange sauce tastes like a blend of ketchup and mustard, which makes me think they maybe should have just put ketchup and mustard on it in the first place, both of which they already have at hand, rather than inventing a new merged sauce that has to ship separately. Or just gone with chipotle.

However, most Jack in the Boxes are very generous with side sauces, vis-a-vis not charging you extra for any kind you want. So you can drown out the flavor of sauce you don’t care about for sauce you do with relative ease. You saucy lad, you.

Too bad the Bonus Jack is only available for a limited time. It’s probably less hard on my arteries than the Ultimate Cheeseburger.