Hardee's El Diablo Thickburger

A friend of mine already did a Let's Eat™ on this, but I had one today and wanted to register my thoughts.

It's listed as having sliced jalapeños, jalapeño poppers, and an "habanero sauce" as its main spicy ingredients.  I place the habanero sauce in quotes because I didn't really notice it too much, and fast food places are too chicken to use anything spicier than a jalapeño pepper without diluting it down to jalapeño levels of spiciness anyway.

The sliced jalapeños were what I honestly expected, rather than what I had hoped for.  I always hope that restaurants will use fresh peppers, but they're packed.  The packing process sucks away some of the texture as well as a fair amount of the spice, and turns them that ugly greenish-yellow color.  Compare packed jalapeños to a fresh jalapeño pepper next time you're in a grocery store, and tell me which one looks more appealing.

The jalapeño poppers were as I expected them.  In fact, they tasted like someone just ran across the shopping center to Food Lion and grabbed a whole bunch of them from the freezer section.  The cheddar cheese in those just has this weird taste and texture to it that normal cheddar cheese doesn't have.  Thankfully, as I just implied in the previous sentence, the jalapeño poppers were stuffed with cheddar cheese and not cream cheese.  Cream cheese is kind of like ranch dressing: it works in some cases, but not in the vast majority of cases where people actually use it.

Overall, the burger was really tasty, with a fair amount of spice, and if I went to Hardee's with any regularity I'd get another.

Side note: Hardee's, you really need to step up your french fry game.  It's seriously lacking.  You don't have to reach Five Guys' level of awesome, but at least get on par with McDonald's and Burger King, okay?  Hell, even Cook Out has better fries than you.  Also, where's the damn ketchup?  Don't pull a McDonald's and keep it under lock and key...