Here's the last of these…
I really, really like Boston Market and was sad to see the recent closure of the one nearest me. Actually, the rumor a few years ago was that they were all going to close. McDonald's acquired the chain in 2000 with some sort of plan to shut them all down and use the real estate for other enterprises. But someone had second thoughts, they kept the chain going and in 2007, McDonald's sold the whole thing to yet another corporation that seems to want to stay in that business.
What do I like about them? It's food that tastes like food and there are times I'm not in the mood for pizza or something fried. They have pretty good turkey, pretty good rotisserie chicken, a decent chicken soup and a few other items that make me happy. In what other fast food restaurants can you get fresh, hand-carved turkey at all?
I can't think of anything else to say about Boston Market so I'm going to leave it at that. Oh, yeah — I wish they had more of them in the areas where I travel. They're in my Top Five of this list.
I used to like In-N-Out Burger and looking back, I'm not sure why. I think I liked the idea of the place and the friendly employees more than I ever liked the chow. Your basic burger there comes with tomato, hand-leafed lettuce and a spread not unlike Thousand Island dressing. I have them leave all of that off, toss on some onions and then I add ketchup. The buns are good but the meat is pretty tasteless and always so overcooked that you'd never know it hadn't been frozen. Their french fries are unimpressive, though I've found they're a bit better if you request them well-done.
In-N-Out Burger only operates in five states in the west, though a sixth is rumored. In those states, I think there's a powerful loyalty to the brand because it's ours and we want to believe we have something wonderful that other states don't. When folks in Manhattan gloat about New York Pizza, we can fire back and say, "Yeah? Well, you haven't got In-N-Out Burger!" I really think their rep is built to some extent on that kind of bragging.
It causes folks from other states to seek out In-N-Out when they travel to one of the five states. In Las Vegas, just off The Strip, there's an In-N-Out that is said to be the busiest fast food restaurant in the country because it's an easy drive-thru for cab drivers and Vegas has a lot of them working that area. (The In-N-Out right near LAX here in Los Angeles is also always jammed and the line is mostly limos and cabs.)
But although that particular In-N-Out in Vegas is near The Strip, you can't walk to it from there. You'd have to walk on streets where no pedestrian traffic is allowed. So a lot of tourists, if they've rented a car for their stay, drive to or through it to sample one of these famous, impossible-to-get-back-home burgers. And more than one cab driver in Vegas has told me that almost every night, some tourist hops in the back seat and says, "Take me through In-N-Out and while I'm at it, I'll buy you a burger."
As I've written here on this site, a lot of my tastes in foods have changed the last few years, including a newly-acquired aversion to sweets. In my last few In-N-Out visits, I found the burger very tasteless and I wondered on this site if the product had gotten worse or if it was just my morphing taste buds. Quite a few folks wrote in to say their tastes hadn't changed but they were liking In-N-Out less and less. I've given up on them but I've also decided that though I find the premise of the operation and the management to be delightful, I never really liked the food much in the first place.
There. I've said it. Don't bother throwing me out of California. I'll leave quietly on my own.
I wouldn't have put Baskin-Robbins on any list of fast food places…but then I also wouldn't have listed Krispy Kreme. But I suppose both are fast and what they offer is food…sort of. Anyway, up until my sweet tooth went away on me, I liked Baskin-Robbins a lot, though I can't say I liked it much more or less any other place that sold ice cream. I mean, isn't all ice cream good?
Come to think of it, no. A few years ago, a Kosher Ice Cream shop opened near me and I went in and got a Kosher Ice Cream Cone — chocolate, I believe. There are a lot of things Jews don't do well and if this is what all Kosher Ice Cream is like, add another to the list. I think I had about three licks before I consigned my purchase to a trash can. Awful, awful stuff…and the general public seems to have agreed with me because they were out of business in under three months. That was just enough time for everyone in the neighborhood to try it once, I guess.
As I wrote here once, the Baskin-Robbins concept of 31 Flavors was always lost on me. I liked the chocolate, the vanilla, a couple of flavors that combined chocolate and vanilla in different configurations, a flavor called Lemon Mousse, orange sherbet…and that's about it. They could have gotten just as much of my business with five flavors. My most frequent order was a two-scoop parlay — vanilla on the bottom, orange sherbet on the top. (I learned that once from a Peanuts comic strip: Always have them put the vanilla on the bottom so the top scoop bleeds into the vanilla instead of the other way around.)
Oh, and I should mention the cakes. The cakes were great. When asked to bring dessert to a party, I'd stop and get a Baskin-Robbins Ice Cream Cake and everyone always loved it.
At the Baskin-Robbins near me, if you bought a cake, they'd write a message on it for you. I always asked for something really stupid like, "Congrats on Beating the Morals Charge" or "Happy Bar Mitzvah, Buddy Sorrell." One time, I asked a teenage lady behind the counter to have the cake say, "Happy Birthday, Your Name Here." She wrote it down, then asked, "Do you really want me to put my name on it? And by the way, my birthday isn't until next month."
Actually, even before I gave up ice cream, I hadn't been to a Baskin-Robbins for about ten years but there's something kind of happy about those places. I smile a bit every time I see one. They just closed the one nearest me and it's now an empty store for rent, which is sad news. Unless, of course, someone opens a Boston Market in its place.