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tesg's guide to big chain road food consumption
CHAIN -- Mc
Donald's It's easy to completely overlook Mc Donald's today. There are so many alternatives. But in my childhood, going to Mc Donald's was a huge deal. I have so many memories of Mc Donald's...That classic original white-and red building design with the dual golden arches. My first Quarter Pounder...NOT with cheese. My father's seemingly personal bitterness against eating there. But most of all, I remember when my father moved us to Alaska, putting my life on hold for ten years. There was no Mc Donald's anywhere even remotely accessible, not to mention anything resembling it. For a 9-year-old kid in 1976, this was a problem. Mc Donald's was a hot commodity in that town. It was mandatory that you bring Mc Donald's food back with you if you were flying in from Seattle. It was like hauling legal contraband. When Juneau finally got one in about 1982 (opening day included three traffic accidents in the parking lot, or so I'm told), I remember a guy on our high school basketball team arriving at school after a flight the night before from a game...with a duffle bag full of day-old Big Mac's. He sold every one of them in fifteen minutes....for $10 apiece. I remember a winter's day in 1984, going to the nearest Mc Donald's to the Seattle-Tacoma airport I could find and ordering lunch for me...and two large bags of Big Mac's and Quarter Pounders for freezer storage back home. Some guy was flirting with the counter girl when I walked up and said something like "20 Big Mac's, 20 Quarter Pounders, 10 6-piece Mc Nuggets, a large fries and a Coke. And pack it up tight, it's going to Alaska." The girl stared back at me dumbfounded while the guy, not missing a beat, asked "Are you planning to share the fries?" We finally got a Mc Donald's in the mid-80's. It was the first Mc Donald's in history to have a drive-thru even though it was in an enclosed shopping mall (it was on a corner of the mall, allowing for the drive-thru.) They also took over the only other chain we had in town...a Kentucky Fried Chicken...which became a storage facility for Mc Donald's' supplies. (We did have a Dairy Queen for a short time, just for the record...) Sure I was an adult by now, but I still went to the mall when Ronald Mc Donald came to town and put on his magic show for the kids. Every adult there smiled as big as the kids. We'd waited a long time for that little slice of Americana. Ray Kroc, a salesman peddling a milkshake mixer that could mix five shakes at once, traveled to San Bernadino in 1954 to see how a single hamburger stand could possibly be putting eight of his units at work at once. Four years previous, the brothers McDonald...Maurice and Richard...had converted their moderately successful drive-in into a walk-up hamburger stand with a barebones fast food menu that capitalized on efficiency and standardization in production. It was a huge success. Convinced by what he saw, Kroc bought the rights to expand the brand beyond the units the McDonald brothers had already sold (about ten), went back to Illinois, and opened up shop in Des Plaines. Franchising followed...exploded, really. The casualness of the McDonald brothers and Kroc's way of doing things clashed a lot. Ultimately, Kroc bought the brothers out in 1961. Everybody knows the rest. There are so many different fast food places today doing so many different things. But I still go back to Mc Donald's from time-to-time, and I'm clearly not alone...It's still the only fast food chain I know of that you can go to almost any time of the day and find a line in the drive-thru lane. McDonald's has introduced hundreds of different items to the menu over the years to enhance the original hamburger. There's been premium burgers and chicken sandwiches (think Arch Deluxe, McDLT, Angus), wraps. specialty coffees, even McPizza. Very few became core menu items. The Big Mac, the quarter pounder, and the Filet-o-Fish with its half slice of cheese are the key menu items that have withstood the test of time to co-exist with the original hambuger and fries. And Hi-C Orange, which is still a key reason I go to McDonald's. Then there's breakfast. I still remember the first time I got to try a Sausage McMuffin with Egg. It's still my favorite breakfast sandwich. If I have a complaint, it's that the non-dollar menu stuff tends to be far more expensive than it should be. I don't understand why a Big Mac is north of $3 anymore. I'd eat more of them if it was more like $2. There really isn't a whole lot more to it than the $1 McDouble...certainly not enough to be triple the price. Another problem is the hamburger seasoning. If you stack, say, two McDoubles together to form a four-patty budget monster (yes, I have, I call it the "McQuad"...discard the bottom buns and fold the result together), you'll figure out that McDonald's burgers are VERY heavily seasoned. Nobody will ever claim McDonald's is the undisputed quality champion in anything except for one single offering...their straws. McDonald's has the finest straws in the industry. Wide and sturdy, I keep a stash of them in my car for milkshakes at other brands like Steak n Shake. They'll handle the hot fudge and caramel without crushing. Only Whataburger has a similar straw that I know of (and I'm pretty sure theirs is the exact same straw, save with orange stripes instead of red and yellow). There's a lot of players in the fast food burger segment today to choose from. But McDonald's is still king. There's something very Americana...even patriotic...to see McDonald's at seemingly every exit. 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