More of these…
I like the advertising for Jack-in-the-Box. I like the locations and the general feel of their stores and the convenience. They were the chain that invented the concept of driving through the drive-thru and ordering via a two-way intercom. There's something very friendly about their outlets and boy, do I wish I could find something — anything! — on their menu I wanted to eat. I can tolerate the bottled water and maybe the fries.
In the years I was sometimes dining at them, they kept going through makeovers and I don't know any other chain that seems to always have nineteen new menu items each time you went in. These generally replaced the nineteen items that were introduced around the time of your last visit. One time I was there, they'd added fish-and-chips to the menu, apparently that day. I ordered it and the order-taker-lady said, "I'm sorry…we just got it in and we haven't learned how to make it yet."
I made a point of stopping in a few weeks later. By then, they'd learned to make the worst fish-and-chips I ever had in my life. It was one of those restaurant items I call a Two-Biter. You take your first bite and it's awful. Then you take your second bite because you can't believe a commercial enterprise is serving something that terrible. But they are so you throw the rest away. I've encountered enough Two-Biters at Jack-in-the-Box that I gave up on them. My last time there a few years ago, I just went for the burger and it was about a Three-Biter.
I now patronize Jack-in-the-Box about as often as the places like Burger King and Carls Jr. which I never patronize. Still, I find myself unable to generate the same indifference to them. Their advertising's too clever and once upon a time, they were pretty good.
Every so often, Jon Stewart on The Daily Show takes a shot at Arby's and I don't know why. There's lots worse. In fact, I find the basic Arby's roast beef sandwich quite pleasant. (Keep in mind in this series, I am not comparing fast food places to genuine, sit-down restaurants with real chefs. I'm comparing them to other fast food places which offer the same speed and value.) Arby's actually has quite an array of different sandwiches but I don't recall trying any of them. I like their signature sandwich so much that when circumstances steer me into an Arby's meal, that's what I get.
I recall Arby's turning up in Southern California in the late sixties amidst a flurry of other new fast food chains offering up roast beef sandwiches as an alternative to hamburgers. They were not the best. The best — I still miss these places — were the Roy Rogers Roast Beef Sandwich places. The current Roy Rogers chain is, I guess, a descendant of those and even though they have a roast beef sandwich on their menu, it ain't the same. Compared to Roy's old establishments, Arby's sandwiches tasted processed and plastic.
But all the Roy Rogers eateries around here closed and that chain morphed into whatever it's become. Arby's stuck around and somewhere-sometime, they managed to improve their product a lot. They even edged into an area that few of their competitors have tried of making their food healthier. They got rid of a lot of common additives and eliminated trans-fats and so on and I'm fine with them. And that's absolutely everything I have to say about Arby's.
And I don't have a lot to say about Papa John's. It's thirty-minute-to-your-door pizza, about as good as Pizza Hut and Domino's and a few others. I don't order from them. The best pizza I've found in Los Angeles — and sadly, I'm a few blocks outside their delivery area — is Vito's over on La Cienega, a few blocks south of Santa Monica.
The best pizza, as we know, does not come from large chains. I think we have to think of pizza as three separate kinds of foods and not make the mistake of expecting one when we order another. There's Non-Chain Pizza, made in an establishment that is owned and controlled by one person or family. They may have opened a few other stores in the area but basically, you're getting pizza made by people who want to make pizza. Then you have Chain Pizza — your Pizza Hut, your Papa John's, your Domino's, your Sbarro, your Godfather's (I've never had Godfather's), etc. — and some of those are okay for what they are. This is pizza made by people who work there because nearby burger stands weren't hiring. I experience this kind of pizza only when I'm at a party or meeting and someone sends out.
And then you have Airport Pizza, which with the one brief exception I noted in our Pizza Hut entry, is always terrible. In fact, this applies to any pizza served in a food court of any kind. If Vito opened in a terminal at LAX, his pizza wouldn't be any good, either. It must be something about being within fifty yards of a Starbucks. Anyway, Papa John's is as good as any Chain Pizza you're going to get…and maybe these aren't the best names for the three types. Maybe we should call them in descending order, "Real Pizza," "Convenience Pizza" and "Pizza by a Technicality."
We shall continue…