After more than a few false starts, The Flash has finally been released, and I think I can confess now that I was lucky enough to see the film quite early, probably about a month ago. Still, for the last thirty days I’ve had something on my mind, Barry Allen’s breakfast sandwich.
Made from peanut butter, cheese, banana, raisins, and honey, served on white bread, the sandwich sounds both incredibly alluring and absolutely hideous at the same time. Still, as a dedicated DCU fan, I had to know how the food that fueled the Scarlet Speedster tasted. So with The Flash release date upon us, I decided to make the sandwich and then go on a run.
Did it allow me to tap into speeds only seen in DC movies, or was I crippled by indigestion not even a gallon of Peto Bismol could cure? Well, I’m Tom Percival, the 5,201,644,963th fastest man alive, and this is my story.
Constructing The Flash sandwich
The Flash’s favorite sandwich was actually surprisingly fun to make, and I can see why Barry’s barista was so keen to get it right. There’s something quite cathartic about slicing the banana and delicately drizzling the honey.
I even bothered to slice the cheese (If you’re curious, I chose a mature cheddar. I couldn’t bring myself to eat the plastic Americans call cheese), so it perfectly framed the bread. However, I refrained from positioning the raisins with tweezers.
Now, there’s an argument to be made that I took so long preparing the food because I was trying to delay eating it. If you said that, I’d call you a liar. I would never put off eating something so delectable by taking multiple photos of the food or extending a paragraph well beyond the point where it should have ended just to avoid trying a foodstuff that looks about as appetizing as the underside of The Flash’s foot.
How did The Flash sandwich taste?
The first thing that hit me when I bit into the sandwich was the sweetness of the honey, bananas, and raisins, which was a pleasant surprise because I was terrified that it would all be lost in a cheesy peanut butter swamp. Unfortunately, I realized I’d made a colossal mistake once I started chewing.
The peanut butter and cheese congealed to form a gooey, cement-like paste that glued my teeth together and made eating the sandwich a workout for my jaw (No wonder Flash designed a suit to show off his jawline if he’s eating this every day). Even worse, on the next bite, I’d adjusted to the sweetness of the honey and bananas, so I didn’t get the nice sugar rush I enjoyed the first time.
Instead, all I could taste was the cheese and the peanut butter, and let me tell you, there’s a reason Reese’s chose chocolate instead of cheddar for their pieces. Things only got worse from there. The moisture in the bananas worked like a corrosive acid eating through the bread.
As such, after just two bites, my sandwich had lost all structural integrity and become a sticky ball of yellow mush. Regrettably, my instinct was to eat faster, but because of the aforementioned cheesy-peanut butter cement, my mouth was pretty much glued shut.
Still, I managed to eat it all after wrenching my mouth open with a spoon, and although I had to immediately brush my teeth to remove several raisins that had fused to my back molars, I’ve definitely eaten worse things. To quote Anatoly Dyatlov in Chernobyl, it’s not great, not terrible.
Did eating The Flash’s sandwich make me faster on my run?
Now, it may have been psychosomatic, but almost immediately after eating the sandwich, I started to feel more energetic. I was keen to see how dining on this super snack would affect my run times, so I went on my usual lunchtime run. How did it go?
Well, almost immediately, I could tell there was something different. I was moving faster. There was lightning. Time slowed to a standstill. Oh, wait, no, it didn’t. I got a cramp after going about 50 yards. Thankfully I’m incredibly brave (and a bit bold), so I persevered, and despite a few cheese and peanut butter cement-flavored burps, I actually managed to make good time.
I ended up putting in a personal best for the month. Now, I’m not saying that Barry’s breakfast order allowed me to tap into the Speed Force, but clearly, the combination of sugars, calcium, carbs, and a little bit of potassium made all the difference.
It’s actually a few hours after the run as I write this, and I’ll be honest, I feel great. No hunger pangs at all, no aches. I feel like I could do another 5k right now. I won’t, though. I’m too afraid I’ll lose some teeth if I make The Flash’s favorite snack part of my running routine.
If you love the Scarlet Speedster enough to try his favorite food, you’ll probably want to check out some of our amazing Flash content. We’ve got a Flash review as well as a breakdown of The Flash cast. Not only that, we’ve answered, ‘How fast is The Flash?‘ Spoilers, he’s pretty fast.
We’ve got guides to some of the best movies heading to screens in the new DCU, including the Superman Legacy release date and the Supergirl Woman of Tomorrow release date. If that’s not enough, we’ve also got a list of five things we want to see from Janes Gunn’s DCU.