Note that the
Whopper is made with
Miracle Whip, not
mayo. If one is attempting to achieve Whopperness at home, one must
take this into consideration.
A freshly made, properly prepared Whopper is the finest burger in all of fast food. Having worked at a Burger King, I can state that a freshly made, properly prepared Whopper with cheese and lots of free bacon is indeed a culinary orgasm.
Having said that, I rarely eat a Whopper these days. I've seen what happens inside Burger King restaurants. They're understaffed with respect to McDonald's and other fast food restaurants, and that leads to a lot of autonomy on the part of the food preparer. I personally subjected unruly patrons at the late-night drivethru to injectaburgers. We often shut off the broiler hours before closing (so we could clean it early), and deep fried all of the burgers served to customers. We tasted them before trying this, and we discovered that it gave them a nice cheesesteak taste that we actually liked.
The biggest crime committed by Burger King is the introduction of the steam table. Burgers will sit in steam after broiling. This is a good method of keeping the burger relatively fresh for 10 minutes or so. Unfortunately, burgers will sit in it for hours upon hours. This gives them the taste of cardboard and the texture of a sponge. Ick.
If you're going to go to a Burger King to get a Whopper, you can maximize the chances that you get a good burger by following some simple advice. First, only go during the tail end of the dinner rush. Never go at the beginning, because the food preparation engineers are told to stock up for the rush, and if you go early, you'll get a burger that's been sitting in a steam table for an hour or so. Ick. Second, always order something special to be removed from the burger. No ketchup is always a good choice, since you can instantly tell whether they've followed your direction, you can claim an allergy to tomatoes in complaining to the incompetent food production engineers if they screw it up, and you can simply add it with packets once you get it. They never add enough ketchup anyway. Asking for something to be removed ensures that you'll get a newly prepared burger.. If you ask for something "heavy", they'll probably take a stock made burger and add more of it, or, they'll take a stock burger and add an "H" to it without adding anything else.