Since my big weight drop, my taste buds have changed. Sugary things do not have the same appeal to me and also a lot of "fast food" items taste more packaged and processed. I do not think McDonald's hamburgers have changed much in the last year or three but I have and they just aren't as good as they used to be…to me, anyway. A few weeks ago, I had an In-and-Out Burger that worried me because I didn't enjoy it. Is it me? Or did I just get a bad one? We'll find out next time I try one.
Obviously, there are upsides and downsides to this. One of the latter is that I like the convenience and timing of fast food. I just don't like most of the fast food anymore. In an airport recently, I had a Burger King burger that shouldn't have made it through the metal detector and still hasn't fully made it through me.
In the last two years, two chains where I have enjoyed the "cuisine" (I'm using that word loosely) are chains that are not plentiful in Southern California. One is Five Guys, a burger dynasty based largely in the East and especially in the South. They're opening their first California outlet shortly in Carson, which is 20 miles south of me (I just Mapquested it) and…well, I'd be surprised if I ever had a reason to go there voluntarily. If you kidnapped a loved one and I had to make the ransom drop in Carson, it might get me there. But that's about what it would take.
The other chain I liked was Chick-Fil-A, which is a bit more frequent in my state but not by much. The one nearest to me is 16 miles…in Torrance, a place I'd probably only visit if I had to stop for gas on my way back from making a ransom payment in Carson.
The signature item at a Chick-Fil-A is the fried chicken sandwich — a breaded filet served on a (sorta) buttered bun with dill pickle chips. It's pretty good. The advertising seems to convey the impression that it's fresh (never frozen) chicken and I don't think that's true. But on my recent travels, I've had a couple of 'em and was quite pleased.
Lately, McDonald's has introduced its Southern-Style Chicken Sandwich — a breaded filet served on a (sorta) buttered bun with dill pickle chips. In other words, it's precise imitation of the Chick Fil-A specialty. It's not as pretty good as the original but it ain't bad at all. It also, by the way, is nowhere near as thick as the above photo and advertising promos would indicate. But if size doesn't matter to you, you might be happy with one.
Last night, I was driving home from the Book Expo, exhausted and famished, and I pulled into a McDonald's drive-thru to get the aforementioned plagiarism. The exchange with the drive-thru speaker went as follows…
HER: May I take your order, please?
ME: Yes, I'd like a chicken sandwich and a regular-sized fries.
HER: Which chicken sandwich would you like?
ME: The one that's the shameless rip-off of the Chick Fil-A sandwich.
HER: Would you like a drink with that?
ME: No, just the shameless rip-off and the fries.
HER: That'll be $4.95 at the first window.
Reminds me of the time I was in a Jack-in-the-Box and a lady ahead of me ordered a Big Mac. Without missing a beat, the counterperson called out, "One Jumbo Jack."