We tried McDonald's, Wendy's, and Burger King's signature bacon cheeseburgers — and the winner is indisputable

Bacon: The one food trend that deserves the hype.

Since the late 1990s, bacon has exploded in popularity beyond its breakfast origins — and with good reason. It's crispy, smokey, greasy, and it compliments a juicy beef patty like nothing else. 

A bacon cheeseburger is a fact of fast-food life; a double bacon cheeseburger is a dream come true.

Of the fast-food Big Three, both Wendy's and Burger King have serve a bacon-focused burger. McDonald's curiously doesn't serve a bacon burger, but you can build your own.

I gathered these bacon buttressed burgers with one goal in mind: to decide which towering ode to meat is truly the best bacon burger out there. 

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SEE ALSO: We tried McDonald's, Wendy's, and Burger King's signature burgers — and the winner is unmistakable

Let's start with Burger King's bacon slathered "Bacon King," a whopping and wide sandwich.

Two quarter-pound patties with neon yellow American cheese melted on each are topped with a "hearty portion"— BK's words — of bacon, under a classic sesame seed bun. The sandwich is massive; it's practically wide enough to successfully land a 747. And it's beefy (pun intended). The Bacon King requires two hands at all times, lest one makes a big bacon mess.

Yet for such a regal and mighty name, one expects a tad more grandeur and clout than the simple bacon double cheeseburger it is. Ketchup and mayo are in the mix — nothing special there. It feels like a clone of the Wendy's Baconator that was widened with a rolling pin. There is nothing offered here that convinces me that this is the bacon burger of choice — it does not innovate, it merely mimics.