Since my surgery last May, I've generally been eating healthier…and I've found my tastes evolving in new, non-sugary directions. So I'm not sure how much of what I'm about to discuss here is to me changing and how much is because of the food. But three times since the operation, I've gone to fast food restaurants that I used to occasionally patronize…and all three times, what I got was so awful that I took two bites and chucked the meal into the trash.
The three visits were to an Arby's, where I ordered the basic roast beef sandwich and an order of their potato cakes…to a Jack-in-the-Box where I got a simple hamburger with a side of onion rings…and to a KFC for a small order of chicken strips. These are all things I'd eaten in the past, usually when I was in a desperate rush to get something to eat, and while they were never great, they were at least edible. Not now they aren't. I am not kidding when I say that I ate two bites of each and tossed my purchase. In all three cases, I went to the fast food place because I felt in need of some fast food…that is to say, I had to be somewhere in X minutes, felt I should eat something before I got there, and the Arby's (or whatever) seemed like the only viable option. In all three cases, I decided I'd just be better off not eating the item(s).
Is it me or have these places plunged in quality lately? I'm not suggesting they were ever places that could set a gourmet's taste buds a-tingle, and I never thought Jack-in-the Box was very good…although come to think of it, there was a time when Kentucky Fried Chicken was pretty darned tasty. It was never particularly healthy cuisine but before Colonel Sanders sold out his interest in the chain, the chicken was — as advertised — finger-lickin' good. In the last few years of his life, the Colonel used to bitch about how the new owners had changed his recipe and cooking methods, and say that he was ashamed of the contents of all those buckets his face adorned. He was right…but even then, the chicken wasn't as bad as it is now.
Back in the sixties, my friends and I loved the Corn 'n' Cluck special at Colonel Sanders'. The advertising slogan was "Corn 'n' Cluck for under a buck and what it meant was that for 99 cents, you got two pieces of chicken and a piece of corn. You could chart the rise of inflation by how the make-up of the KFC Corn 'n' Cluck special devolved. At first, you got a breast and a drumstick plus half a cob of corn. I'm guessing that as their costs went up, they decided to lower the content, rather than raise the price and lose that great rhyming slogan. So every time I bought one, it would contain less corn and less cluck. I think the last Corn 'n' Cluck I ever bought consisted of two small wings and a third of an ear of corn. After that, I gave up. I figured that the next one would include a beak and a couple of niblets.
Still, it was good chicken then, what there was of it. It isn't now; not judging by those chicken strips I had a couple weeks ago. They were all breading…and not even particularly good or fresh breading. When you can't even make fat fried in oil taste good, you're really doing something wrong. KFC is reportedly planning to change the look of the Colonel, younging him up and going for a hipper mascot. If they want to get my business back, they ought to try making the chicken the way it was made when the chain originally became successful. There was a reason for that success and it wasn't because ol' Harland Sanders looked like a happening dude.
For now, I'm giving up on all those places — every one except In and Out Burger, which is in a class by itself. And I'm writing this message to remind myself that I'm giving up on Arby's, KFC and Jack-in-the-Box and, while I'm at it, Burger King, Wendy's, Carls Jr and all the rest, up to and including the place with the Golden Arches. I know the food isn't healthy at any of them but I need to remember that's not the reason I'm crossing them all off my list. I'm doing it because what they serve doesn't taste good to me any more. I'm sorry these places have ruined their products…and sorrier still that they didn't do it twenty years earlier. If they had, I might not have needed Weight Reduction Surgery,