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Fancy Fast Food?


These photographs show extreme makeovers of actual fast food items purchased at popular fast food restaurants. No additional ingredients have been added except for an occasional simple garnish.



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Notable Press/Media:
PC Magazine (Favorite Blogs 2009)WiredInStyle's Best Of The Web 2009 • The Daily BeastABC News, Today/MSNBC (via The Associated Press) • The New York Times' FreakonomicsTimeCNBCComedy Central's Tosh.0G4TV's Attack of the Show/Blog!The New York Times' Week In Review (Frank Bruni)FHM's Website Of The WeekNBC LA (2)ZagatBuzzSerious EatsIFC's Food Party Top 5 Cool Food Sites (via urlesque)GizmodoSmithsonianThe Guardian (UK)Utne ReaderCBC News (Canada)The Epoch Times (UK)The National Post (Canada)Very Short ListboingboingThe StimulistBrokelynFrance 24 News' The ObserversAmerican Public MediaBreakfast with Eoin Cameron (ABC Perth, Western Australia) (w/ audio) • Radio New Zealand's This Way Up (audio) • The Rude Awakening Show (Ocean 98.1 FM Ocean City, MD) (audio) • Spin 103.8 FM (Dublin, Ireland) (audio)
Up for the challenge?
Submit your Fancy Fast Food culinary masterpiece recipes* to fancyfastfood[at]gmail.com. Remember the rules: no additional ingredients are allowed other than a simple garnish (which won't necessarily be eaten anyway, i.e. parsley), and no Photoshopping other than minor adjustments in sharpness or color correction. Please submit a "before shot" and photos of the makeover process as well.

Also, remember to wash your hands before you start preparing your dish! The signs in the fast food restaurant bathrooms might read, "Employees must wash hands before returning to work," but really, everyone should.
Hungry for more sites to surf while waiting for the next dish? Check out FFF creator Erik R. Trinidad's other websites:
DoesNYLoveUBack.com
TheGlobalTrip.com

Honey Apple Glazed Christmas Holiday Ham(-burger)(Fancy BK Quad Stackers & Croissan’wiches) by Erik of Fancy Fast Food, with assistance from Jarrod Spillers
‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring… except for the Fancy Fast Food Chef stirring apple filling and honey mustard in a saucepan for a traditional Christmas dish!We are talking about the traditional holiday ham, the centerpiece at many a Christmas dinner, which is unfortunately an item that fast food restaurants don’t sell (the whole ham anyway), so we’ll have to get creative as usual.  First let’s make a list and check it twice, and find out which ingredients are naughty or nice:
Ingredients (from Burger King):

8 BK Quad Stackers
3 Double Croissan’wiches (each with double ham and no cheese)
1 BK Kids Meal (with Burger Shots and a FurReal Friends toy)

3 Dutch Apple Pies
3 juiceboxes of apple juice
1 Garden Salad (with honey mustard dressing)

(They’re all naughty.)First, marvel at the fact that you just purchased eight BK Quad Stackers.  Do the math: 8 x 4 = 32 patties of greasy goodness.  Stack them high — it’s like Jenga, but with meat!The stack is obviously too big and tall to put in a food processor all at once, so cut it all down into smaller pieces. Then put some chunks of all the beef, bacon and cheese in a food processor, and push the magic button.  Repeat this process until all the meat is ground up, and collect it all in a big mixing bowl.You now have a wad of meat and filler that you can mold into whatever you want — a meatloaf, a snowman, a life-sized figure of Baby Jesus if you want — but we will remain focused and mold it into a ham.  Once you have the ham shape, score the back in a diagonal grid as cooks often do with real hams.  To continue the façade of an actual baked ham, sear the outside with a kitchen torch.What you have now almost looks like a ham, so start slicing it like one.  It should be no surprise that once the knife carves out the first slice, there is no ham inside.  This is where breakfast comes in.Take all the ham out of your Croissan’wiches and fit slices over the side of your wad of meat. Use toothpicks to keep them from falling, then pinch the edges so the meat wad and ham slice look seamless.  Place the additional slices of ham in front of your creation and pretend that it was all carved from the same place.  If you can believe in Santa Claus, you can believe this.The final touch is the glaze.  Bring all the apple juice to a boil in a non-stick skillet and start to reduce it down. Add in the apple filling from the pies, and then the packet of honey mustard from the salad.  Stir it on the night before Christmas, or whenever it’s convenient for you.  Once it’s all blended together, brush the glaze over your mock ham.Finally, the plating: place your ham-like creation on top of a bed of lettuce on a fancy white platter.  Garnish the sides with tomatoes, carrots, and more honey apple glaze.  Look at it with awe; it’s a Christmas miracle!To go a step even further, take your BK Kids Meal FurReal Friends toy and make it into an ornament.  Roll a straw wrapper into string and loop it around the doll.  Looks great on a tree!Now have a Merry Christmas and a Fancy New Year!

If you are viewing this recipe in an aggregator (like tumblr’s Dashboard), or as a reblogged post, please check out the real website at FancyFastFood.com.
Recipe for the week of December 22, 2009:

Honey Apple Glazed Christmas Holiday Ham(-burger)
(Fancy BK Quad Stackers & Croissan’wiches)

by Erik of Fancy Fast Food, with assistance from Jarrod Spillers

‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring… except for the Fancy Fast Food Chef stirring apple filling and honey mustard in a saucepan for a traditional Christmas dish!

We are talking about the traditional holiday ham, the centerpiece at many a Christmas dinner, which is unfortunately an item that fast food restaurants don’t sell (the whole ham anyway), so we’ll have to get creative as usual. First let’s make a list and check it twice, and find out which ingredients are naughty or nice:

Ingredients (from Burger King):

  • 8 BK Quad Stackers
  • 3 Double Croissan’wiches (each with double ham and no cheese)
  • 1 BK Kids Meal (with Burger Shots and a FurReal Friends toy)
  • 3 Dutch Apple Pies
  • 3 juiceboxes of apple juice
  • 1 Garden Salad (with honey mustard dressing)
(They’re all naughty.)

First, marvel at the fact that you just purchased eight BK Quad Stackers. Do the math: 8 x 4 = 32 patties of greasy goodness. Stack them high — it’s like Jenga, but with meat!

The stack is obviously too big and tall to put in a food processor all at once, so cut it all down into smaller pieces. Then put some chunks of all the beef, bacon and cheese in a food processor, and push the magic button. Repeat this process until all the meat is ground up, and collect it all in a big mixing bowl.

You now have a wad of meat and filler that you can mold into whatever you want — a meatloaf, a snowman, a life-sized figure of Baby Jesus if you want — but we will remain focused and mold it into a ham. Once you have the ham shape, score the back in a diagonal grid as cooks often do with real hams. To continue the façade of an actual baked ham, sear the outside with a kitchen torch.

What you have now almost looks like a ham, so start slicing it like one. It should be no surprise that once the knife carves out the first slice, there is no ham inside. This is where breakfast comes in.

Take all the ham out of your Croissan’wiches and fit slices over the side of your wad of meat. Use toothpicks to keep them from falling, then pinch the edges so the meat wad and ham slice look seamless. Place the additional slices of ham in front of your creation and pretend that it was all carved from the same place. If you can believe in Santa Claus, you can believe this.

The final touch is the glaze. Bring all the apple juice to a boil in a non-stick skillet and start to reduce it down. Add in the apple filling from the pies, and then the packet of honey mustard from the salad. Stir it on the night before Christmas, or whenever it’s convenient for you. Once it’s all blended together, brush the glaze over your mock ham.

Finally, the plating: place your ham-like creation on top of a bed of lettuce on a fancy white platter. Garnish the sides with tomatoes, carrots, and more honey apple glaze. Look at it with awe; it’s a Christmas miracle!

To go a step even further, take your BK Kids Meal FurReal Friends toy and make it into an ornament. Roll a straw wrapper into string and loop it around the doll. Looks great on a tree!

Now have a Merry Christmas and a Fancy New Year!







If you are viewing this recipe in an aggregator (like tumblr’s Dashboard), or as a reblogged post, please check out the real website at FancyFastFood.com.

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Bubbe Wendy’s Hanukkah Latkes (Fancy Wendy’s Hash Browns) by Erik of Fancy Fast Food, with assistance from Lilit Marcus of Jewcy and Save The Assistants
Hey everybody, it’s Hanukkah! It’s Chanuka! No matter how you spell it, it’s time for the Jewish festival of lights — eight crazy nights of dreidels gone wild, a time when latkes are as abundant as old yentas around a mahjongg table.  But you don’t need to be Jewish to partake in Hanukkah traditions, particularly the gastronomic treat of latkes (or lattkes). No matter how you spell it, “latkes” is Yiddish for fried pancakes, typically of the potato variety — making it oddly similar to McDonald’s hash browns. However, Bubbe Wendy has guilted us into using her Fancy Fast Food recipe (“If you just want to use McDonald’s hash browns, then I guess that’s fine by me…”), so here goes. Oy…
Ingredients (from Wendy’s):

8 orders of hash browns (for the eight nights of Hannukah)
2 baked potatoes (with packets of sour cream and “Buttery-Best Spread”)
2 orders of mandarin oranges

1 small soft drink
1 bottle of water
packets of Sweet & Sour Sauce
packets of sugar
packets of salt and pepper
a pinch of Jewish guilt (may be substituted with Catholic guilt)
organic chives (for garnish and a touch of irony)

Latkes are traditionally served with apple sauce or sour cream. We already have the latter, so we’re going to have to make the apple sauce. Unfortunately, Wendy’s sells no apple products whatsoever, so we’ll have to get creative.What are apples? They are a kind of fruit that are sometimes sweet, sometimes sour, and so naturally we will start with Sweet & Sour Sauce. To add a fruity pulp to it, we’ll add the mandarin oranges — but that’s fine; Bubbe Wendy moved down to Boca.Put the manadrin oranges in a food processor and purée them, then strain out the extraneous juice. Mix this pulp in a bowl with the Sweet & Sour Sauce. The color is a bit intense to look like real apple sauce, so scoop out some baked potato (minus any chives) and mix it in — the French call potatoes “pommes de terre” (apples of earth) so we’ll go with it.  Mush and whisk it all until it sort of looks like apple sauce; add sugar until it’s as sweet.Next, the latkes themselves.  Take all the mini hash brown nuggets and mush them with your hands.  Touching them, you’ll realize they are all too greasy for things to stick together, so we’ll need to make a batter to work as a binding agent.Put one baked potato, minus the skin, into a food processor and add about a quarter cup of water. Hit purée and voilà: batter!  Add this potato batter to your pile of hash browns and mix thoroughly in a bowl. Add salt and pepper as desired.In a large non-stick skillet, melt a few packets of Wendy’s “Buttery-Best Spread;” there’s enough oil in it for a fry-up.  Slice the top of your beverage’s paper cup and use it as a guide when forming the batter into pancakes in the skillet.  Fry each evenly on both sides until it becomes crispy and golden brown. Argue with Bubbe Wendy that they do in fact, resemble McDonald’s hash browns now — but let her win the argument; she’ll try and make you feel guilty for never calling her anyway.You are ready to serve the Hannukah latkes, but wait! You can use your fancy kitchen tools in continued preparation for the holiday: use a fondue fork to clean out the old waxy build-up in your menorah; use a kitchen torch to light the new candles.Garnish the latkes with organic chives (for that extra touch of irony), and then have a Happy Hannukah, courtesy of Bubbe Wendy and Fancy Fast Food! Now spin those dreidels until we figure out what we’re going to do for Christmas…
Can there be “Peace On Earth” if a mock recipe for a Jewish holiday is paired with a video involving Muslim halal meat?  Hell if I know, but we’re going to do it anyway.  Here’s the latest video of fast food fancification on the latest episode of Vendr TV:








READ MORE: FFF Creator Erik R. Trinidad’s travel blog on Israel and the Middle East

If you are viewing this recipe in an aggregator (like tumblr’s Dashboard), or as a reblogged post, please check out the real website at FancyFastFood.com.
Recipe for the week of December 10, 2009:

Bubbe Wendy’s Hanukkah Latkes (Fancy Wendy’s Hash Browns)
by Erik of Fancy Fast Food, with assistance from Lilit Marcus of Jewcy and Save The Assistants

Hey everybody, it’s Hanukkah! It’s Chanuka! No matter how you spell it, it’s time for the Jewish festival of lights — eight crazy nights of dreidels gone wild, a time when latkes are as abundant as old yentas around a mahjongg table. But you don’t need to be Jewish to partake in Hanukkah traditions, particularly the gastronomic treat of latkes (or lattkes). No matter how you spell it, “latkes” is Yiddish for fried pancakes, typically of the potato variety — making it oddly similar to McDonald’s hash browns. However, Bubbe Wendy has guilted us into using her Fancy Fast Food recipe (“If you just want to use McDonald’s hash browns, then I guess that’s fine by me…”), so here goes. Oy…

Ingredients (from Wendy’s):

  • 8 orders of hash browns (for the eight nights of Hannukah)
  • 2 baked potatoes (with packets of sour cream and “Buttery-Best Spread”)
  • 2 orders of mandarin oranges
  • 1 small soft drink
  • 1 bottle of water
  • packets of Sweet & Sour Sauce
  • packets of sugar
  • packets of salt and pepper
  • a pinch of Jewish guilt (may be substituted with Catholic guilt)
  • organic chives (for garnish and a touch of irony)

Latkes are traditionally served with apple sauce or sour cream. We already have the latter, so we’re going to have to make the apple sauce. Unfortunately, Wendy’s sells no apple products whatsoever, so we’ll have to get creative.

What are apples? They are a kind of fruit that are sometimes sweet, sometimes sour, and so naturally we will start with Sweet & Sour Sauce. To add a fruity pulp to it, we’ll add the mandarin oranges — but that’s fine; Bubbe Wendy moved down to Boca.

Put the manadrin oranges in a food processor and purée them, then strain out the extraneous juice. Mix this pulp in a bowl with the Sweet & Sour Sauce. The color is a bit intense to look like real apple sauce, so scoop out some baked potato (minus any chives) and mix it in — the French call potatoes “pommes de terre” (apples of earth) so we’ll go with it. Mush and whisk it all until it sort of looks like apple sauce; add sugar until it’s as sweet.

Next, the latkes themselves. Take all the mini hash brown nuggets and mush them with your hands. Touching them, you’ll realize they are all too greasy for things to stick together, so we’ll need to make a batter to work as a binding agent.

Put one baked potato, minus the skin, into a food processor and add about a quarter cup of water. Hit purée and voilà: batter! Add this potato batter to your pile of hash browns and mix thoroughly in a bowl. Add salt and pepper as desired.

In a large non-stick skillet, melt a few packets of Wendy’s “Buttery-Best Spread;” there’s enough oil in it for a fry-up. Slice the top of your beverage’s paper cup and use it as a guide when forming the batter into pancakes in the skillet. Fry each evenly on both sides until it becomes crispy and golden brown. Argue with Bubbe Wendy that they do in fact, resemble McDonald’s hash browns now — but let her win the argument; she’ll try and make you feel guilty for never calling her anyway.

You are ready to serve the Hannukah latkes, but wait! You can use your fancy kitchen tools in continued preparation for the holiday: use a fondue fork to clean out the old waxy build-up in your menorah; use a kitchen torch to light the new candles.

Garnish the latkes with organic chives (for that extra touch of irony), and then have a Happy Hannukah, courtesy of Bubbe Wendy and Fancy Fast Food! Now spin those dreidels until we figure out what we’re going to do for Christmas…


Can there be “Peace On Earth” if a mock recipe for a Jewish holiday is paired with a video involving Muslim halal meat? Hell if I know, but we’re going to do it anyway. Here’s the latest video of fast food fancification on the latest episode of Vendr TV:



READ MORE: FFF Creator Erik R. Trinidad’s travel blog on Israel and the Middle East




If you are viewing this recipe in an aggregator (like tumblr’s Dashboard), or as a reblogged post, please check out the real website at FancyFastFood.com.

Comments (View)



Seared Pollock Cake with Southwest Ramalan Sauce (Fancy Filet-O-Fish) by Devon Knight and Jason Isch of Cornerstore Restaurateur
Since BurgerBusiness and Eat Me Daily broke the news about McDonald’s Portugal having a similar “fancy” promo contest — as well as McDonald’s Australia (which FFF creator Erik Trinidad recently brought up in a segment on Australia’s Weekend Today morning show) — we here at Fancy Fast Food have continued to encourage our readers to submit their own recipes and photos of fast food fancifications.  Here’s the latest contribution from guest chefs Devon Knight and Jason Isch of Cornerstore Restaurateur, in their words:
Ingredients:

1 Filet-O-Fish sandwich
1 Premium Southwest Salad (with packet of Newman’s Own Southwest Restaurant Dressing)
1 medium soft drink

packets of salt and pepper

Carefully free that little “Alaskan Pollock and/or Hoki” (from Wikipedia) fish filet from its buns. Remove all tartar sauce from the fish and buns, and set it aside. Toast the top half of the bun and set that aside.Carefully cut the breading off of the fish — but don’t throw the breading out, since we’re going to  use it later. Take some time to absorb the fact that yes, McDonald’s does indeed use real fish for their Filet-O-Fish. After star-gazing a while at your quaint fish square, delicately flake the fish apart and place it in a bowl.Grab that salad and get to dissecting; we’re going to take out the tomatoes, scallions, and a small amount of corn and throw them in the bowl with the flaked fish. GO GREEN! Do yourself a favor and eat some of those greens left behind by your salad dissection.Take your warm, toned, toasted bun and grind it up in a food processor until it is the consistency of, well, bread crumbs (funny how that works out). Place the bread crumbs in the fish bowl along with a packet of salt and about a half a packet of pepper. Mix all the ingredients in the bowl until it is a sticky, fishy goop. Cut off the bottom of your (empty) soda cup to form a mold for the fish cake, and then put your goop in to mold it.Take your packet of Southwest salad dressing and strain it into a frying pan over low heat; we want to warm it, not cook it. Take the discarded fish breading and rub it on the bottom of a separate frying pan. The grease from the breading will give you just enough oily coating to sear the fish cake — yummy. Heat the pan until grease is gently smoking, then flip the cake mold over the hot pan and sear the fish cake on both sides.Finally, the plating: pour the warm salad dressing into a dish and daintily place your fish cake on top. Garnish your little fish puck with some of the contents of your salad.
For this week’s post, the Cornerstore Restaurateur guys made McDonald’s fancy with the above recipe. Meanwhile, Fancy Fast Food creator Erik Trinidad tried to class up the Golden Arches in a different way, with fancy McDonald’s pianist and music composer Andrew Shapiro, in this video shot by food videographer (and “historic gastromonist”) Sarah Lohman:





(While this video has been reviewed and approved by the management of McDonald’s at 160 Broadway NYC, and McDonald’s Corporate PR Department, it does not necessarily reflect or express the views and opinions of the McDonald’s Corporation.)

If you are viewing this recipe in an aggregator (like tumblr’s Dashboard), or as a reblogged post, please check out the real website at FancyFastFood.com.
Recipe for the week of December 3, 2009:

Seared Pollock Cake with Southwest Ramalan Sauce (Fancy Filet-O-Fish)
by Devon Knight and Jason Isch of Cornerstore Restaurateur

Since BurgerBusiness and Eat Me Daily broke the news about McDonald’s Portugal having a similar “fancy” promo contest — as well as McDonald’s Australia (which FFF creator Erik Trinidad recently brought up in a segment on Australia’s Weekend Today morning show) — we here at Fancy Fast Food have continued to encourage our readers to submit their own recipes and photos of fast food fancifications. Here’s the latest contribution from guest chefs Devon Knight and Jason Isch of Cornerstore Restaurateur, in their words:

Ingredients:

  • 1 Filet-O-Fish sandwich
  • 1 Premium Southwest Salad (with packet of Newman’s Own Southwest Restaurant Dressing)
  • 1 medium soft drink
  • packets of salt and pepper

Carefully free that little “Alaskan Pollock and/or Hoki” (from Wikipedia) fish filet from its buns. Remove all tartar sauce from the fish and buns, and set it aside. Toast the top half of the bun and set that aside.

Carefully cut the breading off of the fish — but don’t throw the breading out, since we’re going to use it later. Take some time to absorb the fact that yes, McDonald’s does indeed use real fish for their Filet-O-Fish. After star-gazing a while at your quaint fish square, delicately flake the fish apart and place it in a bowl.

Grab that salad and get to dissecting; we’re going to take out the tomatoes, scallions, and a small amount of corn and throw them in the bowl with the flaked fish. GO GREEN! Do yourself a favor and eat some of those greens left behind by your salad dissection.

Take your warm, toned, toasted bun and grind it up in a food processor until it is the consistency of, well, bread crumbs (funny how that works out). Place the bread crumbs in the fish bowl along with a packet of salt and about a half a packet of pepper. Mix all the ingredients in the bowl until it is a sticky, fishy goop. Cut off the bottom of your (empty) soda cup to form a mold for the fish cake, and then put your goop in to mold it.

Take your packet of Southwest salad dressing and strain it into a frying pan over low heat; we want to warm it, not cook it. Take the discarded fish breading and rub it on the bottom of a separate frying pan. The grease from the breading will give you just enough oily coating to sear the fish cake — yummy. Heat the pan until grease is gently smoking, then flip the cake mold over the hot pan and sear the fish cake on both sides.

Finally, the plating: pour the warm salad dressing into a dish and daintily place your fish cake on top. Garnish your little fish puck with some of the contents of your salad.


For this week’s post, the Cornerstore Restaurateur guys made McDonald’s fancy with the above recipe. Meanwhile, Fancy Fast Food creator Erik Trinidad tried to class up the Golden Arches in a different way, with fancy McDonald’s pianist and music composer Andrew Shapiro, in this video shot by food videographer (and “historic gastromonist”) Sarah Lohman:


(While this video has been reviewed and approved by the management of McDonald’s at 160 Broadway NYC, and McDonald’s Corporate PR Department, it does not necessarily reflect or express the views and opinions of the McDonald’s Corporation.)




If you are viewing this recipe in an aggregator (like tumblr’s Dashboard), or as a reblogged post, please check out the real website at FancyFastFood.com.

Comments (View)