Time for three more of these…
My entire experience with Dairy Queen in the last thirty years came in 2008 when I was a Guest o' Honor at Convergence, a terrific multi-media fan convention in Minneapolis — terrific because it was all about people having a good time socializing and not particularly about anyone making any money off anything. They are also, if my experience is at all typical, extraordinarily nice to their Guests o' Honor, which is not always the case with conventions, especially conventions which figure the guests will be making a lot of loot selling autographs or artwork.
Anyway, right across the parking lot at the hotel there was a DQ Grill & Chill — close enough to be the convention lunchroom. I went over there to eat often and really liked the burgers and I think I tried the chicken strips, too. I no longer eat ice cream or desserts but if I did, I'd have tried theirs and I'll bet you the very computer on which I'm now working that I would have liked 'em fine. There are very few DQs in my hometown but if I'm near one when a rapid meal is needed, I won't hesitate to go there. So I have nothing but good things to say about Dairy Queen except that they don't have enough of them in my area.
The Popeyes chain was founded in 1972. It has no business connection to Popeye the Sailorman and I'm not quite sure what it's called; seems to be either Popeyes Chicken & Biscuits or Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen.
I first went to one in the early eighties on a visit to New York. If they had Popeyes on the West Coast then, I sure hadn't seen one. I was literally stranded in Manhattan one weekend due to a blizzard that had closed the airports just when I was supposed to have gone home. So Saturday late morn, I was wandering around the Times Square area, observing the snow removal — we don't see a lot of that in Los Angeles — and I decided to find and patronize the legendary Drama Book Store which I'd heard about for years. I found its location in a phone book, hiked to that address and found that it had moved. There was a sign on the door saying where it had moved to…but someone had torn off that part, presumably because they needed the new address and didn't care if anyone else did. I tried Directory Assistance but they still had the old address.
So I gave up looking and when I spotted a Popeyes in the ground floor of the huge office building at 1600 Broadway, I decided to grab a bite of lunch in this fast food place I'd heard good things about. Though the chain had, as I said, no official connection to Popeye the cartoon character, the store was decorated with cut-outs of Popeye, Olive Oyl, Wimpy and Bluto that were then sold in novelty stores. Leonard Maltin later pointed out an amazing coincidence to me: That building at 1600 Broadway was where Max Fleischer had had his animation studio that made the first Popeye cartoons. But the more amazing coincidence was that as I sat in a window seat there and munched on my chicken, I looked out and on the second floor of the building across the street, I saw a sign that said "Drama Book Store."
The chicken I had there was okay but nothing I'd miss if I never went to another Popeyes. As it turned out, it was at least ten years before I did, by which time they were all over Southern California. And in the interim, they had not only expanded but gone seriously Cajun on us. My friend Harlan Ellison persuaded me to try the new Popeyes chicken and I did, forgetting that Harlan loves spicy, hot food and I do not. I literally could not eat it…and I am not misusing the word "literally" in saying that.
That would have been the end of Popeyes for me but years later, I was trapped at an airport, needed a meal and the only open eatery that seemed even remotely possible was a Popeyes. I asked the lady at the counter if I could get chicken without cajun seasoning. She said, "We have a mild and a spicy." I said, "Fine, give me the mild." She gave me what she said was mild. I took it to a seat and it was too spicy for me. I took it back and said, "There must have been a mistake and you gave me the spicy." She said, "I don't think so but I'll give you another order and we'll make sure it's the mild." She did and I still thought it was too spicy.
Friends tell me the chain's mild really is mild and that the outlet must have been confused. I haven't been to another one to check. I do hear their biscuits are great, though…and mild.
To most folks, Panda Express is to Chinese Food what Sbarro is to Italian. Yeah, it's Chinese Food and it's edible but that's about it. The same company operates a chain of very fine sit-down restaurants called Panda Inn, where I can get a very good meal if and when I can impress on them that I don't want hot and spicy. Based on my past experiences at them, I feel I need to specify that about everything, including the steamed rice and the check. Also, because I have my myriad food allergies, I have to ask them to leave things out…say, the zucchini in the Mushroom Chicken.
The steam tables at their fast food eateries present too many hazards for me. Everything is pre-made and therefore already mixed with something I cannot eat, usually red and/or green bell peppers. They have the Mushroom Chicken but if you ask them if you can get it sans zucchini, one or both of two things will happen. One is that a server will start trying to make up a plate from their steam table, picking out the zucchini. For me, that's like if they were serving Chicken with Arsenic and they started trying to pick out most of the arsenic for me.
Or sometimes, they get that I'm asking if it's possible to get a fresh batch made without the zucchini in the first place. I've given up asking this because they react like I'm asking them all to grow feathers and fly to Mount Olympus. I hear "no can do" from the ones with limited English and the others explain that everything has to be made in whole batches and they can't make a whole batch "wrong" for one person.
Thus, there are but three things I can eat at a Panda Express: The fried shrimp appetizer (passable), the Teriyaki Chicken (pretty decent) and the steamed rice. If all of this is fresh, meaning it's been on the steam table for under two hours, I'm fine. Often, it is not, which is my other problem with these places. I'd like to like them but they don't make it easy.
More to come…