The Most Frightening Sandwich In The World

February 5, 2008 1:55 PM

Often described as Elvis's favorite sandwich, the Fool's Gold Loaf has to be seen to be believed. Not satisfied with mere still pictures? Try the video from this Spokesman-Review story. Even in its glory, though, the Fool's Gold Loaf is just one (three-pound) part of the Elvis gastronomen: if you want to eat like Elvis, the way is clear. And, of course, there are plenty of cookbooks.
posted by scrump (67 comments total)

I am less frightened than aroused. Although that may give rise to secondary fright because I should not be so deeply moved by a sandwich.
posted by GuyZero at 2:02 PM on February 5, 2008

I remember reading about this in Guralnick's book and thinking I *had* to have one.

Five years later, I still haven't the nerve.
posted by joseph_elmhurst at 2:03 PM on February 5, 2008

I could eat maybe a quarter of one of those, and it would have to be extra-chunky peanut butter.

Then I'd want to go lie down for a while.
posted by mrbill at 2:09 PM on February 5, 2008

i need a blood thinner just thinking about it.
posted by dubold at 2:09 PM on February 5, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Added to list of "deadly foods I would like to try one day," right next to "Oki Dog."
posted by not_on_display at 2:13 PM on February 5, 2008 [4 favorites has favorites]

My grandma raised me on strawberry preserves and bacon on toast, while harumphing over my weight. God Bless America.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 2:16 PM on February 5, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Why hasn't anyone deep fried the Fool's Gold loaf yet?
posted by Burhanistan at 2:17 PM on February 5, 2008

Serving Size: One Loaf

*shudder*

It's really hard for me to be pro-Elvis, but I sure do love me some stories about his insane notions of hospitality.
posted by absalom at 2:23 PM on February 5, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

SILF?
posted by bstreep at 2:24 PM on February 5, 2008 [3 favorites has favorites]

hurf, durf foolsgoldloafeater
posted by horsemuth at 2:29 PM on February 5, 2008

Okay, the "Oki Dog" looks amazing (and coronary-inducing). Closest I've come to that kind of protein/fat bliss is the All-American Burger at Stanich's - a cheeseburger with all the fixings, plus bacon, a fried egg and a fried slice of ham. I wasn't hungry for almost 48 hours after.

Elvis would've eaten two and run a mile.
posted by joseph_elmhurst at 2:31 PM on February 5, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

I could eat maybe a quarter of one of those, and it would have to be extra-chunky peanut butter.

Because smooth peanut butter would be the ingredient that really put you off?

Great post. I'm at once intrigued and queasy.
posted by Pantengliopoli at 2:32 PM on February 5, 2008

SILF!
posted by GuyZero at 2:40 PM on February 5, 2008

After watching the video, it doesn't look as bad as I had imagined. I could manage a slice. Although I'm kinda full up on pancakes already.
posted by afx237vi at 2:43 PM on February 5, 2008

Excellent use of the lard tag.
posted by Unicorn on the cob at 2:45 PM on February 5, 2008

Oh, man. Oki Dog. They're terrible. I love them. May I quote myself?

There are a number of Oki Dog restaurants, but the only one I've been to is on Fairfax. It's a squat, shoddy structure that looks like a beach restroom painted pink but otherwise left to the mercy of the elements. There's nothing to recommend it from the outside, but it houses one of the most singular eating experiences of my life.

Note here that "singular" is not a synonym for "good."

The dish in question is the eponymous Oki Dog. It is massive and terrible to behold. Start with two hot dogs, boiled into rubbery submission, a corpse of a corpse. Add perfect squares of shining American cheese, and bury them in predigested-looking canned chili. Then, the pastrami. A slab of gristly pink pastrami joins the grease mound, and everything is wrapped in a massive tortilla, a tortilla upon which the face of Jesus will never appear. The face of Elvis, perhaps, but not Jesus.

If someone could maneuver a punch down your throat and into your stomach, the experience would be something like eating an Oki Dog, provided your assailant's fist was sufficiently salted. The bundle of fat and low-grade protein simultaneously satisfies all appetite while insulting all aesthetics.

I couldn't possibly explain why I eat these, any more than I can explain why they exist. Oki Dog calls to me as I cruise the freeway into LA. I don't think I could eat one anyone else in the world.

A final note: the health department here assigns each restaurant a letter grade, which they are required by law to display prominently. Nearly every restaurant has a big reassuring "A" in the window. At Oki Dog? A slightly crumpled "B." I'm hoping they lost a grade simply by selling a food item so fatty the fumes could kill a gazelle at six paces.

posted by L. Fitzgerald Sjoberg at 2:45 PM on February 5, 2008 [10 favorites has favorites]

Sadly, this is a double. Either way, ya gotta love the King.
posted by digiFramph at 2:50 PM on February 5, 2008

I dunno -- I'm still partial to the fried peanut butter and banana sandwich. (I can't stand jelly.) Especially if it's spiked with chocolate sauce, as the King demonstrates here.
posted by kebnabi at 2:52 PM on February 5, 2008

I thought this was a double. For some time I've been plotting a way to make this sandwich in a way that wouldn't be totally disgusting. I'm thinking a crusty French bread, strawberry preserves, just a few strips of center-cut bacon and only a scrim of peanut butter. No real butter.
posted by Bookhouse at 2:53 PM on February 5, 2008

As does anything with bacon, this sounds delicious. But I just wonder how I could live with myself after eating one. Seems to me that it would make all subsequent sandwiches pale in comparison. At only 27, I'm not sure that I could do that to myself. But someday, someday...
posted by friendlyjuan at 2:53 PM on February 5, 2008

Well, damn. I thought I'd done my due diligence on this one. Sorry!
posted by scrump at 2:56 PM on February 5, 2008

No need to be sorry, scrump. This is a much better post than the earlier one.
posted by digiFramph at 3:07 PM on February 5, 2008

Even setting the calories aside, it sounds disgusting to me. Peanut butter and jelly are supposed to be eaten in thin layers. Just the thought of biting into something and getting a big mouthful of them makes my stomach churn. It's like eating a jar of mayonnaise.
posted by obvious at 3:12 PM on February 5, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Remind me, where and how did Elvis die....
posted by A189Nut at 3:16 PM on February 5, 2008

What about the Luther Burger? I find that pretty frightening.
posted by Admiral Haddock at 3:27 PM on February 5, 2008

It's like eating a jar of mayonnaise.

You say that like it's a bad thing.
posted by scrump at 3:29 PM on February 5, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

that sandwich looks amazing. i have to have one now. i think i'll go make it.
posted by mr_book at 3:31 PM on February 5, 2008

I discovered a slightly less terrifying version of this last weekend.

I had made myself breakfast. Nothing crazy--a couple rashers of bacon and some scrambled eggs. But about 20 minutes later, I realized I was still hungry. Specifically, I was hungry for a toasted peanut butter snadwich.

And then I noticed the pan, still sitting on the stove, with rendered bacon fat sitting in it. (It was Sunday, it had only been 20 minutes since breakfast, I'd been enjoying my coffee, and oh yeah, I'm lazy about dishes).

A thought occurred.

I obediently listened to the voices in my head, and tossed two pieces of bread into the now-reheated pan for a quick grill.

Then I spread the grilled sides with peanut butter (leaving the un-grilled sides on the outside of the sandwich--less grease on the hands).

I think I inhaled it. I was forced to make another one, just so I could taste it properly.

It was glorious. Creamy peanut butter, slight bit of grease, salty bacon flavour, all without what is for me a certain aversion to mixing peanut butter with actual bacon. You can bet your bippy I'll be doing that again.
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 3:50 PM on February 5, 2008 [3 favorites has favorites]

I've always loved that Elvis Cuisine book and the idea flying to Denver to eat a loaf-sized sandwich.

On a tangent: Just the other day, I made myself a grilled peanut butter w/banana and honey sandwich (not as decadent as DNAB's Sunday sandwich) and wondered why people get their nutritional panties in a bunch about it. Although it does have fat, it is mostly from the peanut butter (I use just a tiny bit of butter for the pan). Combined with the banana and whole wheat bread, it seems pretty nutritionally correct to me.
posted by Fennel B. at 4:00 PM on February 5, 2008

Remind me, where and how did Elvis die....

Where: Memphis. How: Bulimia. But he wasn't very good at it.
posted by hal9k at 4:30 PM on February 5, 2008

Peanut butter and jelly are supposed to be eaten in thin layers

Heretic!
posted by pupdog at 4:35 PM on February 5, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Sounds fantastic. My grandfather always ate bacon-and-jelly sandwiches, and as a kid I eagerly picked up the habit. I dunno about the peanut butter, though, could be a mismatch.
posted by zardoz at 4:39 PM on February 5, 2008

dirtynumbangelboy - you need to try making French Toast (1 medium egg/slice of normal sized & thickness bread) in bacon grease. Serve with maple syrup.

Optionally, top with Nutella (instead? of syrup).
posted by porpoise at 4:43 PM on February 5, 2008

You can bet your bippy I'll be doing that again.

My bippy is the one thing I never gamble with. I lost it once in a poker game and getting it back was a nightmare.

Also, I'm making this peanut-butter-fried-in-bacon-fat sandwich this weekend. And I'm going to eat it with a bottle of beer, while watching The Simpsons and laughing with my mouth full, and my girlfriend can roll her eyes all she wants, because this is what men do.
posted by hifiparasol at 4:43 PM on February 5, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Would this ever be good food nutritionally? Could there possibly be a time when this calorific overdose would be useful? How does it compare to whale blubber?

I suppose the crispyness of the bacon might compensate for the smooth peanut butter. Now I am in two minds about whether cruncy peanut butter would be better. Hm.
posted by asok at 4:50 PM on February 5, 2008

Baby-steps, folks. Start off with another of the King's favorites: the fried peanut-butter-and-banana sandwich. My memory on this is hazy, but I think the way I made it was to make a regular peanut-butter and banana sandwich, them butter the outside of it and do it in the frying pan like a grilled cheese.

Bless'a mah soul! Burnin' love, indeed.
posted by jquinby at 4:53 PM on February 5, 2008

The version I heard about is close to what kebnobi and Fennel B. described; peanut butter, honey, bananas, and here's the key ingredient that they didn't mention: bacon, of course. I think if I smoke three fatties by myself I'd actually enjoy a few bites of said sandwich.
posted by Devils Slide at 4:54 PM on February 5, 2008

I have to post this here, if just for the sake that I know this audience will appreciate it:

My friends discovery of the joys of Bacon flavored Salt

And yes, it is fantastic.
posted by mrzarquon at 4:56 PM on February 5, 2008

I had the peanut butter/banana/bacon on toast version a few times. It was good.
posted by jonmc at 5:28 PM on February 5, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

I love me a peanut butter, jelly, and banana sammich. I don't fry it. I don't add bacon. I use thin layers of PB & J cuz I wanna taste it I don't wanna drown in it. A PBJ & banana sammich is what I call a comfort food. It's rooted well into my childhood. It's like eating a security blanket. Don't git me wrong. I'm a big guy. I've bellied up to the all you can eat buffets of my life on multiple occasions.

A whole loaf of PBJ & bacon??? Oh that's just so wrong on so many levels. I now have cause to despise the ghost of Elvis: how dare he do that to poor defenseless peanut butters?
posted by ZachsMind at 5:58 PM on February 5, 2008

dirtynumbangelboy - you need to try making French Toast (1 medium egg/slice of normal sized & thickness bread) in bacon grease. Serve with maple syrup.

Beat you by several years.. I do that for regular french toast. But I usually prefer to make mine stuffed with brie & fruit; bacon would be a bit much for it.
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 6:04 PM on February 5, 2008

I’d like to see E with the Memphis mafia in a Diner

Col Tom: You gonna eat that?
E: Yeah, man. I ordered it. Awright. ...Why, you want some?
Col Tom: Naw son. Just...you’re not eatin’ it.
E: If you want the sammich man, I’ll give ya sum. Just gotta say it.
etc.
posted by Smedleyman at 6:05 PM on February 5, 2008

I just wonder how I could live with myself after eating one

Chase it with a few of these and you'll be fine.

Avoid these if you are allergic to shellfish, however.
posted by Jay Reimenschneider at 6:34 PM on February 5, 2008

I ate an entire jar of Laura Scudders Natural Peanut Butter ("Peanuts and salt. Nothing else.") every day at lunch 5 days a week from 1987 to 1990.
It was my grad school staple.
Cheap! Filling! Protein-y goodness!

Good times!
posted by Dizzy at 6:38 PM on February 5, 2008

Wow. I love Laura Scudders. You make me feel much less guilty for going for a spoonful late at night now and then. You must be quite the shitter adept.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 7:03 PM on February 5, 2008

MMM...bacon...MMM
posted by zap rowsdower at 8:06 PM on February 5, 2008

PB&J's are delicious.

Bacon sandwiches are delicious.

The two together? Not so much, in my head. In fact, ewwwww.

Also, the fried peanut butter, honey, and banana sandwich is perfectly tasty. A BBQ joint in a nearby town has them on the menu.
posted by Ynoxas at 9:02 PM on February 5, 2008

Remind me, where and how did Elvis die....

On the terlit, just too fuckin' awesome to live.
posted by Divine_Wino at 9:09 PM on February 5, 2008

On the terlit*



Only certain parts of Jersey City, South Brooklyn, South Philly, Delaware, Baltimore and the Algiers and Irish Channel sections of New Orleans need to actually recognize this phonetic pronunciation.
posted by Divine_Wino at 9:21 PM on February 5, 2008

Divine_Wino, are those the same states that warsh their hands and dishes?
posted by scrump at 9:25 PM on February 5, 2008

Betcher ass.
posted by Divine_Wino at 9:31 PM on February 5, 2008

I wonder if the Fool's Gold Load ever showed up on that blog about death row inmates' last meal requests.
posted by danb at 9:34 PM on February 5, 2008

How do you stuff French toast - two layers?

bacon would be a bit much for it.
Blasphemy,
posted by porpoise at 10:01 PM on February 5, 2008

It's like eating a jar of mayonnaise.

You say that like it's a bad thing.

I'll admit I've never tried it.
posted by obvious at 10:08 PM on February 5, 2008

42,000 calories.

That's enough calories for 21 days.

Well, it might be good to remember in case you have to go without food for three weeks. And, you know, if you can eat a whole loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter and jelly, plus a pound of bacon in one sitting.
posted by krinklyfig at 10:40 PM on February 5, 2008

One of the best variations is peanut butter and dill pickle. I usually eat natural peanut butter now and haven't tried the sandwich since I was a kid, but as a kid it was always the typical sweetened peanut butter. It's pretty good.
posted by krinklyfig at 10:44 PM on February 5, 2008

***It's like eating a jar of mayonnaise.

**You say that like it's a bad thing.

*I'll admit I've never tried it.

If you've never had Japanese Kewpie mayonnaise, you're truly missing out. People I've known who detest mayonnaise absolutely love Kewpie.
posted by zardoz at 3:36 AM on February 6, 2008

Divine_Wino, are those the same states that warsh their hands and dishes?

Yes, in the zinc, with wudder.
posted by 445supermag at 5:41 AM on February 6, 2008

It's like eating a jar of mayonnaise.

One jar?? Amateurs
posted by BozoBurgerBonanza at 6:46 AM on February 6, 2008

Three pounds of sugar comes to about 4800 calories.

Three pounds of pure lard comes to about 12,000 calories.

A Fool's Gold Loaf does not contain 42,000 calories.
posted by L. Fitzgerald Sjoberg at 9:51 AM on February 6, 2008

I've just gone out and purchased the ingredients for a Fool's Gold Loaf 'Lite'. I'm prepping up my stomach as we speak. I've got to make sure I eat the whole thing. No man gets left behind!
posted by RokkitNite at 2:11 PM on February 6, 2008

Define "lite".
posted by scrump at 3:01 PM on February 6, 2008

It's a bastardization of "light", scrump.
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 3:05 PM on February 6, 2008

Okay. I got a crusty foot-long panino (which I believe is the correct singular of 'panini'), slathered it in butter and stuck it in the oven, then I cooked a pack of bacon (half a dozen rashers), took the panino out the oven, slit it in half, covered one side with peanut butter (about a third of a jar) the other side with strawberry jam (again, about a third of a jar), laid the bacon out down its length, stuck the whole thing together and ate it.

In my head, I was busily composing a shortlist of hyperbolic synomyms for 'greasy', 'fatty' and 'repugnant' - so it was mildly disappointing to discover that the Fool's Gold Loaf Lite is eminently edible. Even more so than a bacon sandwich, in fact. I chewed my first mouthful, and tried to figure out what the combination of flavours tasted like.

The weird truth is, the combination of bread, butter, bacon, peanut butter and jam ends up tasting like nothing in particular. It's all, to coin a phrase, very much of a muchness. Somehow, the flavours conspire to cancel each other out - the saltiness of the bacon kills off the pecin-rich strawberry jam, the peanut butter swamps the bacon, reducing it to pure texture, the combined heat of the bacon and toasted bread liquify the peanut butter, which ends up being absorbed into the porous bread, and the bread is overwhelmed by its fatty contents. It's like the endgame of Mutually Assured Destruction in a single sandwich.

The scariest thing is, it's not hard to eat at all. I powered through mine, even though it was hanging off either side of the plate and I wasn't even hungry, having polished off some chocolate, a bottle of Dr Pepper and a bag of McCoys just half an hour earlier. It wasn't until the last few mouthfuls that I began to feel queasy, and not until some twenty minutes after I'd finished that the headache started. At the time of writing, my gut hurts, and I feel a restlessness in my colon which can only presage an evening of traumatic, sink-clenching bowel evacuations.

All in all, I'm afraid I can only award the Fool's Gold Loaf Lite two Elvises out of a possible five. I will not be constructing or eating one again, and I cannot recommend in good conscience that you attempt to either. Perhaps this is my penance for not going the whole nine yards and eating a proper, non-Lite one.
posted by RokkitNite at 6:51 PM on February 6, 2008 [10 favorites has favorites]

I think we all owe RokkitNite a debt of gratitude for, as it were, taking one for the team.

WELL PLAYED EATEN, SIR
posted by scrump at 6:50 AM on February 7, 2008

MetaFilter: two Elvises out of a possible five.

That is the awesomest gustatory thread followup ever.

Pardon me, EVAR.
posted by GuyZero at 11:47 AM on February 7, 2008

I wouldn't (couldn't) eat that sammich but bacon is always better with something a little sweet to offset it. I like my BLTs with a tiny bit of maple syrup drizzled over them.
posted by LeeJay at 3:00 PM on February 7, 2008