Cheeseburgers.... the ultimate snacking food. There's very little room for freshness here, its all thick sludgy gooey goodness with no crispiness or juiciness to get in the way of the plastic cheese and those frozen grade F meat circles. And this is why we love them, you can easily devour a few of these in one sitting and still have room for fries and a shake, but which one do you want to devour? Which of the cheeseburgers being offered by the big boys is the one that should get your hard earned dollar? Like you my friends, this question has long bothered me, particularly here in Dubai where there are so many of the big fast food chains, so I decided to settle this once and for all.

Here we have it, the cheeseburger offering from Burger King, Hardee's, Wendy's and of course McDonald's. Again this really is only possible here in Dubai where I was able to get them all delivered within 15 minutes of each other. First let's spend a few moments discussing the ordering order and the arrival order. As I have never ordered Wendy's before I suspected they would be the slowest, Hardee's is the next less well established chain, then Burger King and then McDonalds, so I ordered in that order, it was a hectic few minutes on the phone. The food arrival was somewhat different, despite being ordered from last the trusty McDonald's bikes power their way through the Dubai traffic and get here first, pretty impressive, next to arrive much to my surprise is Wendy's! Followed shortly after by Hardee's and then Burger King. Now the clowns at Burger King stuffed up the order (which is pretty much par for the course), sending me a Whopper Junior instead, and just to rub salt into the wound it didn't even have cheese on it. In a rather irate fashion I called them back and explained the situation. I must say they must have guys patrolling around with cheeseburgers on them because the replacements arrived extremely fast. And here we go, in no particular order...

After the initial iritation of the order muck up wore off, I was able to give this cheeseburger a fair go. This cheeseburger is the only burger amongst the four here that has 'fresh' onion (looked like I only got one ring) and a seasme seed bun. The smoky flavour of that flame grill comes right through in this burger from the first bite, there's a great hit of American mustard and the tangy but slightly sweet ketchup come together well to support the main business of the meat and that wonderful fast food yellowy orange cheese. A great little cheeseburger to kick off the proceedings.

Next up we have Hardee's, I had high expectations for these guys, they do pretty nice fast food burgers and they seem especially proud of their thick juicy patties. What I got looked more like it had been sitting in a morgue for a few days, this pale, shrivelled up sorry piece of filth that was covered in the usual fast food cheese and one solitary pickle with no onion. The patty didn't come anywhere near covering the whole bun and as far as taste goes, very forgetable, just dry dry dry, could not taste any mustard at all, and the bun, well it's wasn't my favourite let's put it that way. Pretty disappointing.

I've had Wendy's a few times, never home delivered though, and I've been left suitably satisfied, their trademark square burger means nothing to me, its just another shape for this disgusting fast food meat to be delivered to my mouth in, and has no bearing whatsoever on the 'flavour'. It is however, by far, the most impressive looking of the cheeseburgers, apart from a slightly grumpy look, this burger towers above it's stable mates, with the thickest patty, the tallest bread and two slices of cheese. The story kinda changes when we look under the hood, no mustard, no pickles, no onions, what kinda filthy cheeseburger is this going to be? After the first bite it's pretty clear exactly what kinda cheeseburger this is, a truly excruciatingly disgusting one. The flavour of the beef really comes through, and believe me, from a fast food place, this is NOT a good thing, it almost made me dry heave. The lack of condiments and the boring flavourless bun does nothing to stop the onslaught of that grade F meat ripping into your tastebuds. This was binned after two bites.

Lastly we have arguably the best known cheeseburger ever, and in true McDonald's fashion it's the filthiest looking too. Kinda looks like a nerdy kid wearing this huge helmet. Out of all cheeseburgers anywhere, this is the one I have eaten the most of, probably much like you. And after eating it, I can tell you why, somehow these crazy McDonald's scientists make this cheeseburger work, the mix of that ketchup, the dash of mustard, the horrible rehydrated de-hydrated onions and that one sick little pickle meld so well into that factory triple processed orange cheese that is then fused to this almost irrelvant dried up filthbox of a meat patty and is held together by that masterful McDonald's bun, which strikes that perfect balance between sweet and not so sweet. I have a very strong suspicion that if you eliminate the patty from a McDonald's cheeseburger it would taste very much the same, and that is what I believe the trick is. There's no flavour in this meat, and they know it, it's purposely this tiny little thing, the addictiveness come from the condiments and the bun. So basically, I got what I expected.

Let's cut to the chase. Wendy's and Hardee's have no chance here. McDonald's come through with their tried and tested cheeseburger that is hard to fault for what it is, however Burger King takes the crown (with a nice pun too). Their cheeseburger was simply tastier, everything tasted stronger and that flame grilled beef was the clincher because it actually does add flavour, the condiments simply support the beef and cheese, like they are meant to. I'll probably still eat more McDonalds cheeseburgers, mainly because I don't order just a cheeseburger, for me that's a supporting burger to something bigger, very little of which interests me at Burger King. There is one thing you can do to your McDonald's cheeseburgers to make them beat any cheeseburger any day...

The Winner - Burger King