Is $200 Burger Decadent Or Despicable?

CBS News: It may be the most exotic, the most expensive and the most controversial burger ever flipped in a fast-food joint.

"This is not just ordinary beef, this is special?" CBS News correspondent Mark Phillips asked.

Burger King's Chef Mark Dowding said: "Absolutely; this is Wagyu." Premium, prohibitively priced, Japanese-style Wagyu, flame-grilled, garnished with Italian truffles, Spanish cured ham, aged balsamic vinegar, Champagne onions and popped onto a saffron- and truffle-dusted bun.

Isn't it all a little elaborate for a hamburger? "

Absolutely not," Dowding said. "Absolutely not."

Total cost of ingredients, the chain says, about $80 a throw. By the time it gets to the counter, it sells for just shy of $200. For a burger!

So is it worth it?

"Orgasmic," one customer says. Which is a lot to ask of a burger.

To some this is a burger - a high-end burger. It would have to be at $200 a pop. To others, though, it isn't a burger. It's grotesque on a bun.

"Outrageous," said Dave Tucker, with the anti-poverty group "War on Want."

To food crisis campaigners trying to draw attention to the millions of poor around the world, who are struggling to survive at a time of shortages and rising prices for basic commodities, this is the wrong burger, and the wrong message, at the wrong time.

"To come out with this kind of hugely expensive and over-the-top burger and to have 80 million people going to bed hungry every night is just to shoot yourself in the foot," Tucker said.

The chain, which is donating the proceeds from this promotion to charity, calls it "deliciously decadent."

Delicious is a matter of taste.

Nobody's arguing with decadent.

LSB: First, "orgasmic" and "Burger King" are mutually exclusive concepts that would never appear in the same thought, let alone the same sentence. Secondly, how many people that eat at Burger King have the kind of sophisticated pallet that would appreciate the gastronomic ingredients included in this burger? Finally, I could never eat a $200 burger and feel good about myself again. Count me in the War on Want group. But then again, I’m not the in the target audience for this product.