Dw. Dunphy On… The 7-Eleven Breakfast Burrito

I’m all for fusion cuisine, folks, but this is ridiculous.

First off, there cannot be a more awkward combination of terms than “breakfast” and “burrito.” One indicates a hearty repast that fortifies a person for the coming day. The other indicates farts, and lots of them. Secondly, while you’d expect something like this from the esteemed 7-Eleven convenience store chain, you certainly wouldn’t expect there to be anyone dumb enough to try one.

Hi, my name’s Dw. Dunphy, and I approve that insinuation.

Look, it’s not totally my fault. I usually go for the bagel and cream cheese, even though the 7-Eleven Method of Smear is entirely inappropriate: stuff the bagel hole with a cream cheese wad and leave the rest bone dry. On this day, the line to the understaffed counter was abnormally long, the bagels and rolls bin was unusually spent and there was no way in hell I was giving up my place. The hotbox by the register had only one breakfast item left inside, and that was the aforementioned burrito. I swallowed my judgment and then swallowed the item.

But before I report my reaction, let me try to form a picture in your collective mind, dear reader. Imagine a once fresh tortilla shell, now slightly stale, yet nauseatingly supple due to the steamy drippings of its innards. And oh, what innards! If you like your soft scrambled eggs, you’ve come to the wrong place, Herman. These are the eggs you made for Dad on Father’s Day. Remember those? The ones he took a bite of, said were delicious and the bestest ever and then gargled down a mug of hot coffee (also badly made) to banish the fugly nuggets of bird protein from his palate? I don’t mean these eggs are like those. I mean they are those. 7-Eleven spared no expense in retrieving them seventeen years ago and, by God, they will be consumed.

Also packed inside, like a bowel obstruction, are sausage chunks. The sausage part is speculative, but the chunks part is spot-on. There is an ample amount of seasoning to give it that “breakfast meat” air, but make no mistake, that’s not beef, pork or chicken in there. I’m almost certain of that. Should Brangelina start losing adopted orphans mysteriously, I think the first place to investigate is the mystery sausage. Just sayin’.

There needs to be something in the mix to clump up all that flotsam and jetsam in there and, as luck would have it, there is. Some call it cheese. At one time it may have been cheese. Then grease, steam sweat and a heat lamp conspired to make it something else, south of gooey, even south of runny. And yet, surprisingly, the dairy snot is lukewarm. Go figure.

I’m not a proud man. I’m not inordinately bright either. When I buy a food item, I’m going to eat it and I’m going to finish it. I didn’t spend my hard earned cash to simply offer it up to the Landfill Gods (Thor and Hercules, respectively.) Yet I knew from that first bite that this was going to be a bad purchase, just as my teeth attempted to slice into that Roll-Up-O’-Doom and the tortilla wrapper refused to give. Like a well-intentioned character from a Dickens novel, it seemed to say, “Good sir, there are rare but palpable qualities in fasting. Are you certain you want to take this path?” I made it through on the next chew, teaching tortillas everywhere who speak like street urchins who’s boss.

The first sensation was that sleazy, cheesy ooze and the tongue could easily discern the separating solids from the liquids. The eggs were the next to try to make the great escape and they tumbled out like schoolyard jacks, dry, hard and insidious. They lodged in far away places in my mouth, in cavities and crevasses. I’d be tasting them all day, I was sure of it. Then came the disputed meat product and the rubbery, pliable consistency sent all sorts of data into my senses, none of it pleasurable. The final indignity was at the back of the “food-stuff”, something that may or may not have been a half-cooked slab of fatback.

Need I even say it? Nine out of ten very hungry homeless people would likely refuse the 7-Eleven breakfast burrito and the tenth is probably slightly retarded. Hell, I ate the whole thing. If that doesn’t say it, you deserve whatever culinary misfortune befalls you.

On a scale of one to five bottles of ipecac, this shores up a solid five. Bottoms up!