5/11/05 | McDonalds Wins Fast Food Poll
[ Currently Eating: Sandwich ]
I could have seen this one coming a mile off. McDonald’s took first place in the Fast Food Poll I had on the site for last month, though not with some serious competition from Burger King. I’m actually quite surprised that Burger King made such a strong showing. It must be all their new “silent scary king mask” commercials that they’ve been pushing lately. Or perhaps it was their Enormous Omelette which seemed to get enormous publicity.
I’m a bit sad that my own fave, Jack in the Box, came in third. Belatedly, I also realized what with the furor over the Wendy’s chili finger incident that I should have included them in the poll instead of Carl’s Jr. I have a lot of good memories from Carl’s first introducing the Western Bacon Cheeseburger though, so I thought I’d include them:
As far as the cheapest restaurant of the four is concerned, all of them have their 99 cents menus and various other promotions. I feel that Jack in the Box promotes their 99 cent menu more than the others, although McD’s definitely has their “Day of the Week” specials that are extremely popular. I actually think Carl’s comes in a bit expensive, but maybe that’s because when I used to eat there when I was a kid I would go for the “strange” sandwiches, like that Chicken sandwich that actually had(has?) alfalfa sprouts in it, which are more expensive than plain old hamboigers.
Has Eric Schlosser’s book Fast Food Nation really gotten to everybody and convinced them to avoid fast food restaurants? I haven’t read the book yet, so I can’t really comment. But I’ve heard from many friends who have read it that it’s been at least partially responsible for a 180 degree turn in the way they eat. 
I have a lot of fond memories of eating at Arby’s when I was a kid. But at the time I didn’t make a huge distinction between eating a Arby’s vs. eating at McDonald’s because I ate in fast food restaurants a lot less back then. So perhaps I didn’t appreciate the size of the roast beef sandwiches back then. Because they have certainly shrunk. 
I must get Pizza Hut Coupons in the mail nearly every single day. In college, I used to think what a great service this was, bringing me deals on pizza right to my door. If you wanted to order pizza for takeout, you just checked your mail. 
It’s nice to see other people talking about Cheap Eats. Matt Helms from the Detroit Free Press wrote a short piece on the Tim Horton’s doughnut and fast food chain. This must be another one of those East Coast things (akin to something like the love for Dunkin’ Donuts that I experienced in Boston) because I’ve never heard of Tim Horton’s. It seems as if the chain is actually part of Wendy’s International Inc. and there are currently over 500 locations, though none near me.
Man, Burger King really brought it when they decided to make this breakfast item. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a crazy looking fast food sandwich, it has just about everything in it that your average Meatasaurus would want to chow down on. It is just enormous, sort of reminds me when Carl’s Junior first came out with the Western Bacon Cheeseburger. I just couldn’t believe you could put hamburger, bacon and onion rings together. Is that, like TWO layers of scrambled egg loaf surrounding the meats? Makes me salivate a bit, I’d really like to try it when it comes out. 
Anyhow, I guess size does matter. The only way these companies can afford to have 1980 prices on their food is to shrink them. They should have some sort of size criteria for having to add a “Jr.” to the front of the name if it shrinks beyond a certain size, because my Filet-O-Fish was the size of a hockey puck. Surprisingly, it also came in a cardboard box. I would have thought they would have dispensed with the outer box and wrapped it in paper like their other hamburgers in order to save costs. I guess that it really is important to them to keep the fish crispy, but I could have used more fish and less box.
Well, at least they don’t have to worry about keeping the lettuce crispy anymore. They’ve done away with that, not that it added much to the package. I note that they still tend to “over-tartarize” their fish. There must be about two tablespoons of tartar sauce slathered on. I wiped some off, put in some spare iceberg lettuce from the fridge and chowed down. 
Besides the small size of the fish (the processed rectangle measures about 3 x 2.5 inches.), it was quite good and crunchy. I bet you could put other things in it like tomatoes and stuff. But then of course it’d go down in Cheap Eats score. In any case, you can get two and that’ll fill you up for lunch. McDonalds hamburger meat in general tends to give me some kind of mean gas as well as the runs. I don’t know what it is, or what kind of filler they put in it but I try to avoid it no matter how cheap it gets. Until they fix that, Filet O Fish and Chicken McNuggets are the only things I’d get. Besides fries that is…
