Woah. Since Coconuts Bangkok’s last Seventh Heaven, we received so many letters from readers confessing their love for 7-Eleven convenience snacks that we hardly knew what to do with them all! So we burned them. Then we wondered what 7-Eleven products we should consider next. After an eight-hour purple drank binge, the answer hit us like a bolt gun to a cow’s cranium: meat products. (Yes, we know that analogy was in appalling taste, but this is a column about 7-Eleven food.)
A new burger joint seems to open its doors in Bangkok once every three hours. Seriously, restaurateurs – why bother? Everyone’s favorite convenience store chain has a comprehensive range of burger-like products at prices you have no chance of competing with. And they’re doing creative things – crazy things – with the meat-product form. Donut-burger hybrids. Buns made from sticky rice. This. With a 7-Eleven on every corner, do you really expect anyone to plough their way through the Bangkok traffic only to pay through the nose for an artisanal Wagyu burger with gorgonzola, heirloom tomatoes and fried pancetta? Jokers. Here’s the meat you need to beat.
Bites
In 7-Eleven world, sausages are called “Bites”. Because that’s what you do to sausages. You bite them. The Bites are displayed at the counter in a sealed chamber with a transparent plastic lid. Under bright lighting, they revolve on an array of black cylinders. Inexorably they spin, like the planets. Their shiny surfaces glisten. Yes, even when it comes to mechanically reconstituted meat products, there is wonder. It almost seems wrong to have them plucked from this perfect little world, sliced, dropped into a bag and smothered in ketchup and mustard. But we do it, because at 4am our devolved selves have to. The occasional fragment of bone or cartilage, in perhaps one in five slices of a Bite, adds a frisson of excitement – will this mouthful be a smooth ride, or will it contain a crunchy surprise?
Cheese Bite
The launch of the Cheese Bite (THB13) a few years ago was when it became clear 7-Eleven meant business when it came to meat products. Here, a smokey wiener sausage is injected with veins of processed cheese, which liquefy when microwaved. After it’s sliced, the flesh-like sausage meat looks like it is bleeding pus – in a good way, obviously. As you pluck the sausage slices from the bag with the wooden stick provided (which, blunt as it is, slides effortlessly through the flesh), juice collects at the bottom. This hearty mélange of melted cheese, water, globules of fat and food coloring is prized by real 7-Eleven aficionados. Pour the concoction triumphantly down your throat, like a fat Thai-Chinese businessman guzzling the head yolk of a Mekong river prawn. Yum.
Spicy Vermicelli Bite
The Spicy Vermicelli Bite (THB17) sees 7-Eleven play crazed culinary magician, attempting to turn the classic Thai dish yam wun sen – glass noodle salad – into a sausage. Some might consider this ambitious, but not our favorite convenience store chain. Like the salad it’s riffing off, this sausage packs a spicy punch. You can really taste the chilis, small green and red flecks of which dot the sausage meat. Adding to the fun are wun sen – translucent mung bean noodles – which poke out the meat. Make sure you don’t notice their resemblance to a worm infestation. That could spoil your dinner.
Smoky Wrapped with Bacon Bite
No one ever ruined a piece of meat by wrapping it in bacon, a point our kindred spirits at Epic Mealtime have consistently emphasized. This eternal truth is not lost on 7-Eleven. The Smoky Wrapped with Bacon Bite (THB20) sees the soft, watery flesh of a smoked frankfurter find textural contrast with the fibrous, salty bacon that encases it. In Britain, “pigs in blankets”, as they’re often called, are served as part of Christmas dinner, where they never fail to upstage the turkey and expose it as the bland poor man’s chicken it really is. At 7-Eleven, the perennial availability of the Smoky Wrapped with Bacon Bite means it’s Christmas every day. Praise Jesus.
DoBurger
As noted in this column before, 7-Eleven scoffs in the face of food categories, gleefully throwing dishes together with the exuberance of a culinary Jackson Pollock. Hence the DoBurger, an ingenious melding of two foods beloved by fat people everywhere. Available in sausage-egg and ham-egg varieties, the DoBurger bun has a hole in it because… look, it just does, all right? Despite the presence of egg, meat and mayonnaise, by far the dominant flavor in the DoBurger is ketchup, followed by the sulfuric presence of the fried egg. What’s that? You prefer your yolk runny, not dried into a powdery yellow paste? Get out of here, diva.
Sticky Rice Burger
It’s so obvious, when you think about it. Sticky rice is holdable. Sticky rice is moldable. So why not mold it into a bun and put a meat patty in it? Three varieties of Sticky Rice Burger pay respectful homage to three famous Thai street snacks: Hat Yai Fried Chicken (kai thort haat yai), Grilled Pork (khor muu yaang) and Spicy Minced Pork (laap muu). The latter, in particular, really does taste like laap muu, the spicy Northeastern meat salad, right down to the distinct flavor of toasted rice powder. Oh, and one last thing. The heat retention properties of sticky rice are a revelation. Never, ever touch one of these until it’s been out of the microwave for at least ten minutes – unless you want first-degree burns.
Chicken Steak Burger
The big daddy, the jewel in the crown, the big swinging dick of the 7-Eleven burger range. If you’re one of those hoity-toity types who think they’re too good for processed meat, this one’s for you. Those in the know refer to the Burger Satek Kai by its Thai initials, Bor Sor Kor. It will set you back a whopping THB37 – a king’s ransom in 7-Eleven terms. But what you get here is a hefty slab of heavily marinaded, peppery dark meat enclosed in a slightly damp bread bun. Throw on some extremely subtly flavored tomato, onion and lettuce and a squeeze each of ketchup and mustard and you are good to go. On occasion, the chicken isn’t cooked through, bringing an intriguing hot-cold contrast to the proceedings. And, perhaps, the opportunity for an extremely lucrative lawsuit.
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Seventh Heaven: An occasional column in which Dan Waites explores the culinary delights of Thailand’s favorite convenience store franchise.
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