Chili's Just Made A Beefier Quarter Pounder With Cheese Than McDonald's

Nowadays, everyone is looking for a deal on their lunch break. With popular drive-thrus like McDonald's and Taco Bell seeing rapid and ballooning inflation of menu prices, outpacing even the national average, consumers who want a quick meal are continually finding themselves strapped for bargains. Enter an unexpected comer. Chili's, the casual sit-down chain, is boasting a burger special that will make you look askance at even the value menu of your closest fast food eatery.

Chili's may have discontinued our beloved original Chicken Crispers, but it is making up for that with the roll-out of the Big QP. The "QP" stands for "quarter pounder," but this is no wimpy sando like perhaps the Golden Arches burger of the same name, which briefly returned to McDonald's menus sans onions after a nationwide E. coli scare. According to Foodie's friends at Chili's, who sent us a press release on the Big QP's debut, the hefty new burger has a whopping 85% more beef than a McD's Quarter Pounder With Cheese. Chili's is unveiling the behemoth burger in New York City at its Fast Food Financing event. Held tomorrow and Thursday, the pop-up shindig is "designed to help guests offset the rising cost of fast food while getting a first taste of Chili's newest burger joining the 3 For Me menu," as per the press release.

For the uninitiated, Chili's "3 For Me" meal deal is a bargain designed to go head-to-head with fast food and make you rethink where you go for a cheap lunch or dinner. For $10.99, you get your choice of burger, fries, bottomless chips and salsa, as well as unlimited refills on your favorite fountain drink. Even with a respectable tip for your server, that's a hearty meal that will leave you with change from a 20-spot, which is more than can be said about anything from most fast casual chains these days. There may not be as many ingredients in McDonald's fries as you thought, but you can't compare those limp shoestring specimens with the thick, crispy taters you might get at Chili's. And who doesn't want a burger that's packing almost double the heft of a QPC?

Best of all, the Big QP comes loaded with all your favorite burger accoutrements: two slices of American cheese, diced onions, ketchup, mustard, and pickles. In terms of cheap handhelds, you probably are going to have a hard time finding a better specimen on a price-for-quality basis. Indeed, you may find yourself sitting down for lunch at Chili's instead of picking fries from a paper bag in your car.