Drive-thru West Virginia
During the past few weeks, I’ve been doing a lot of job-related traveling around the state. As a consequence, I’ve been eating fast food more often than I’d like. I have now sampled three different versions of a spicy chicken sandwich — at Wendy’s on the way to Sophia, at McDonald’s on the way to Grafton, and at Burger King on the way to Welch. Wendy’s has the best, with a good, soft bun and a moist chicken breast that has a nice spicy flavor. The “premium” spicy chicken sandwich at McDonald’s was decent. They use green leaf lettuce instead of iceberg, which is nice, but the chicken breast was pretty thin and the bun was a little dry. Burger King’s Spicy Tendercrisp Chicken Sandwich came in third. Maybe it was just because the experience of eating it while navigating the very curvy road toward Welch, West Virginia, made me fear for my life, but I didn’t enjoy that sandwich very much. (Forgive me for not giving the sandwich a detailed examination, but I was trying to keep my eyes on the road.)
What about the fries? I’ve read Fast Food Nation* and watched Super Size Me multiple times, so I’m well-versed in the evils of the fast food industry and McDonald’s in particular. But there’s just no getting around the fact that McDonald’s has really tasty french fries. (Also, Josh swears that they have some special variety of Coke with just a twinge of cinnamon favor. I think we need Eric Schlosser or Morgan Spurlock to crack this mystery wide open.) I like the thicker fries at Wendy’s, but they’re a little too smooshy (yes, that’s a technical term). Burger King comes in third in the french fry department as well. They are basically a less tasty and greasier version of the fries at McDonald’s.
Think a serious food writer would never write about drive-thru experiences? Tell that to Frank Bruni, food critic at the New York Times, who just wrote about a cross-country fast food tour of the United States. During his trip, he ate at a Wendy’s in Morgantown and both a Rax and a Hardee’s in Parkersburg. (By the way, I’m from Parkersburg, and I thought Rax had gone the way of the dodo.) The chili at Wendy’s in Morgantown even made Bruni’s list of top ten fast food favorites.
Thankfully, my spate of road trips has come to an end (for now), so I can get back to eating real food, i.e., food that has not gone through extensive flavor engineering and lab testing to appeal to my taste buds. I’m sure my arteries will thank me.
*Incidentally, Richard Linklater just made a movie based on “Fast Food Nation” that will be released this fall. It seems strange, since the non-fiction book doesn’t seem like it would lend itself well to a narrative film, but from the preview, it looks like it could be good.
— Jennifer Hughes
June 5th, 2006 at 4:30 pm
Very interesting. No shame in reviewing fast food — it varies by purveyor and appeals to the common palate. Hell, remember the big stink a few weeks ago when Mr. Bee’s — the WVU Law School of chips — changed their oil? See, cheap junk has a special place in the American heart (or stomach). Give the people what they want.
June 5th, 2006 at 4:43 pm
Very true. And some chains do better at it. Check out the very good waffle fries at Chik-Fil-E. And the curly fries at Burger King. Or Chef. I can never sort those two out. Except for those scary Burger King commercials with that guy in the King mask.
June 5th, 2006 at 5:26 pm
Burger Chef doesn’t exist anymore. You can relive the magic of the defunct fast food chain at this web site.
I found that Mister Bee debacle pretty funny. I haven’t eaten their chips for many, many years but I might have to go get a bag just to see what all the fuss is about (maybe after I recover from my fast food orgy). I remember touring the Mister Bee factory when I was in elementary school and getting to eat a chip hot off the conveyor belt, which I thought was pretty cool.
June 7th, 2006 at 7:42 pm
The last time I was in New Jersey, I brought home more bags of Dipsy Doodles than I care to admit. We’ve all got our something, I guess.–>