Social media’s latest fast food fascination has a simple formula: one sesame burger bun plus 20 slices of American cheese.
This invention from Burger King Thailand has no sauce, pickle or vegetable adornments. Nor does it have a patty. By many accounts, the cheese is often not even grilled or melted.
The so-called Real Cheeseburger prompts disbelief, but Burger King Thailand sought to put doubts to rest in a Facebook post announcing it on Sunday: “Not for fun, this is for real!”
The Real Cheeseburger was priced at 109 Thai Baht, about $3.15. The company initially described the sandwich as a “limited-time offer” and said that Thursday would be the last day it was available.
But as of Friday, the sandwich was still available for order on the company’s Thai website and at least one retail location, a Burger King on Ratchadaphisek Road in Bangkok, the capital. An employee there said by phone that it would remain on the menu until July 20.
While the Real Cheeseburger was never recognized as a culinary masterpiece, its distinctive cheese tower geometry and terrifying ingredient simplicity attracted outsize attention.
Social media posts showed customers sampling the sandwich, with mounds of American cheese seeming to fuse together with each bite. A few people posted videos of themselves eating grotesquely oversized versions that featured 40 or even 100 cheese slices.
Some customers found things to like.
Chayoot Wana, an economist, said the individual slices in the Real Cheeseburger worked out to about 5 baht, or 14 cents, per slice, making the sandwich cheaper than a cheese packet in a Thai grocery store.
“I might consider buying that burger and keeping the cheese slices,” said Mr. Chayoot, a professor at Chandrakasem Rajabhat University in Bangkok. “It would be a better value for the money, and I could make more dishes.”
Other reviews were less forgiving.
On the Thai news site Coconuts Bangkok, Nicky Tanskul said “it was the driest burger I’ve ever tasted” because it lacked sauce and a patty.
Eric Surbano of the media company Lifestyle Asia said the dry sandwich was “a shock to the digestive system.”
And Phuriphat Dejsuphong, 41, said he had abandoned the Real Cheeseburger three bites in, after the combination of cheesiness and dryness sapped his appetite.
“It’s literally 20 slices of American cheese in a bun,” Mr. Phuriphat, a startup entrepreuner who splits his time between Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur, said by phone on Friday. “The cheese is not even melted and the bun is not even warmed.”
Mr. Phuriphat said he had planned to order a second Real Cheeseburger for his wife, an anesthesiologist, to try as a culinary experiment. Instead, he added, “She gave me a five-minute lecture on why it’s bad.”
Fast food companies have long relied on shocking food formulas to draw in new customers.
In January, Burger King Thailand also sold a burger with a chocolate bun and French fries drizzled with chocolate sauce.
In the United States, KFC created a sandwich called the Double Down, which used two hunks of fried chicken in place of bread, selling it for short spans in 2010, 2014 and March of this year.
Dunkin’ Donuts debuted a breakfast sandwich in 2013 that put eggs and bacon between two halves of a glazed doughnut.
Pizza Hut in the United States sold a pizza in 2015 with a crust that was decorated with 28 tiny hot dogs resembling pigs-in-a-blanket.
It was called the Hot Dog Bites Pizza.
That pizza had been a success in Asia before it was introduced in the United States, but Burger King had bad news for those hoping a similar fate for the Real Cheeseburger.
The company said in an email that the sandwich “will not be featured in the United States nor elsewhere.”
Mike Ives and Pirada Anuwech contributed reporting.
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