Fast Food

By Lyn Duff, WireTap. Posted May 22, 2000.

Growing up in a single parent home I had my share of fast food. Breakfast was a run through the McDonald's drive thru for the Big Breakfast or an egg mcmuffin, hold the ham. After moving to San Francisco during high school, the definition of "fast food" changed to Noah's bagels, a grilled chicken burrito from the local taqueria, or -- in moments of sheer desperation -- a blueberry powerbar washed down with an carrot and orange odwalla from my neighborhood corner store.

A recent drive to the South Bay reminded me of the existence of "real" fast food that most people eat. So I decided that, in order to get in touch with my suburban roots, a day of noshing some greasy burgers and fries was in order.

I started my day at McDonald's which probably is the restaurant that best explemplifies American fast food. McD's has moved beyond the standard "bacon egg and cheese biscut" to more sophisticated breakfast fare. I shelled out two and a half dollars for the steak bagel which featured "juicy steak and sautated onions." This was probably the chewist bagel I have ever had. By chewy, I don't mean soft and chewy like a good new york bagel, I mean, this was like a year old Lender's bagel, straight from the freezer, but worse. The steak was, well, similar to cafateria meat in a greasy gravy kind of a way. I tossed it and decided to try the Spanish Omlet bagel with "green peppers, onions and savory sausage." This was actually a bit more palatible and left me, as any good fast food meal should, feeling bloated and greasy.

I wasn't hungry for more, but had to try one more breakfast item before heading out to work. Anything with a name like "Fresh Fruit Yogurt Parfait" just screams to be eaten. For two dollars and nineteen cents I expected the fruit to actually be fresh. Instead I got plain yogurt sandwiching some frozen fruit topping (the kind you get on ice cream) spinkled with granola. The exact same item could have been purchased at safeway for 79 cents. But I guess if you're hanging with your friends, and McDonald's is the place to go, this is a good alternative for the dieting crowd (unless you're on the Atkins diet, in which case, hold the granola).

By 11 I was hungry and anxious to try some new culinary delight at my next stop: a Taco Bell and KFC combined. One bought out the other and now you can have combination lunches like two chicken strips and two tacos with a drink for $3.89. I grabbed a friend and we planted ourselves at a filthy booth with our tray of artery-clogging food and a cup of ice cold Storm to wash it down with. Taco Bell's newest feature is the chlupas, a fried version of the gorditas (basically it's a soft taco with a really super thick tortilla). The chlupas is a gordita that is fried and then baked giving it a custy shell.

While McDonald's has new food that calls out to the healthy and more sophesticated side of people; KFC and taco bell are trying to appeal to our desire for texture and excitement in our food. All of their new food items are either very crunchy, or very spicy, or very different. KFC was promoting their new line of chicken sandwhiches which "feature delicious split top buns from Peperidge Farms." Ranging from 2.29 to 2.99 they came in a variety of differnt styles including roasted, triple crunch, original, and honey bar-b-que.

The Taco Bell side of the restaurant was promoting wild chlupas in such flavors as the Supreme ("cool sour cream and ripe tomatoes"), the Santa Fe ("spicy sauce and southern salsa"), and the Baja ("zesty pepper jack sauce and freshly prepared salsa"). We settled for the Baja Chlupas and a Triple Crunch sandwhich.

The triple crunch was so named because its main ingredient is three strips of very fried chicken (this chicken was just about fried to death!) between the split top bun with some sort of neon orange colored sauce that tasted like a sour version of thousand island dressing. The bun actually was quite good, and the tomatoes were fresh. The lettuce was limp, but hey, who's complaining? All in all, it was okay, ranking five on a scale of one to ten.

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