Cathy2-

The McDonald's franchisee in Cincinnati was very upset with McDonalds as they would not put a meatless entree on the menu. His gross on some of the Fridays in Lent were well under $100. They responded with a pineapple sandwich before the fish sandwich.


JoelF-

>>1) Labor policies? Try working in a ma-'n'-pa restaurant, where they're too small to be regulated by many of the labor laws, and you'll end up much worse. <<

Reminds me of some of my days working in a "Mom and Pop" restaurant ..

"You mean you can't wait until Tuesday for your paycheck ..."

"I know that you have been here since 5 a.m., but if you don't close tonight (at 1 a.m.), don't bother coming in here tomorrow (at 5 a.m.). ..."

And my favorite,

"Business is slow tonight, just take the night off."

Joe:

Thanks for the interesting history on the Filet-O-Fish or how it came to be. I remember when every Friday was fish sticks with macaroni and cheese. It was a real liberator when meatless Fridays was only during Lent.

&&&

Anyway, this conversation is starting to drift from food, which is what this forum is all about.

More Filet-O-Fish history, bring it on!

Regards,

I've got to put in some ripostes to that very long statement:

Sorry, got carried away a bit

1) Labor policies? Try working in a ma-'n'-pa restaurant, where they're too small to be regulated by many of the labor laws, and you'll end up much worse.

Yep, agree entirely. There are all kinds of "violations", or would-be violations,
in those kinds of places. Not to mention the health-department-type violations
(which is usually why the food tastes so good in those places

2) MacDonalds better than the local burgers? More consistent, perhaps, cleaner, possibly, but is it really more enjoyable? The discernable flavors of a McD's burger are ketchup, mustard and pickles, not beef and toasted grain, which is what I'm looking for.

Oh, I dont disagree at all - it isnt a place I see as a destination for burgers, or
anything of that sort My fave is probably Top-Notch on the South Side,
though Ive gotten there only rarely. I like Mike's (or Bill's) Drive-in, on
Western and Howard - I never remember the name correctly, use them
interchangably, and have been corrected on this forum before, but still
dont remember the right name Moody's Pub is better too obviously. There
isnt much doubt there are better local places around, clearly - at least in
Chicago. But the rest of the world isnt neccesarily the same (there are
places, for example, where Olive Garden *would* be the best "reasonably
priced" Italian restaurant in town - the same is probably true of Mcd's as
well.

Most of what I wrote in the last post, actually, was referring to India - since
the contention was made (or so I inferrred) that the major reason people
in other countries (as well as in the USA) were eating Mcd was the
advertising budget, a great marketing campaign etc. I *did* eat burgers
often in India before Mcd arrived - and they were not as cheap, and not
as good either I think (the same with Coke, BTW). And it wasnt Mcd that
*started* the desire for burgers - they existed and were consumed before
Mcd arrived, they just werent very good or as cheap. All this with
no advertising campaign of any sort, bar word of mouth basically.

I'll give you cheaper, and that's about it

Yep, and that is a consideration. I dont live near Top Notch, so make it
there only rarely - and so dont have a problem paying their prices. But
burgers and fries for about 8 bucks isnt something Id do *all* the time
if I was close by, maybe - price would be *some* sort of a factor in
the end. Sometimes you want something quick and cheap with a
decent reliability factor - a week or two ago, at 1:30 am, I picked up a
quick McChicken sandwich, for example (because I think the taste is
ok, it was late and few things were open but the Mcd drive-thru was,
and it was a buck I didnt want to drive further, eat something
bigger, and pay more, not at that moment. Anyway.


I mean, its fast food. And "Slow Food"ists might hate it, but the fact is that,
all around the world, there is *some* place for Fast Food. If youre cheap,
clean and consistent, there will always be some kind of place for you.
When I was in Urbana with a bunch of guys a couple of weekends ago,
we had only about 20 minutes to grab something to eat (and it was 2 of
us, taking it back for the rest). Now Id have *liked* to try Porgy's, since
Ive heard of it - but it isnt close, and nobody else would have liked that.
There was this small Chinese spot nearby, but *nobody* was wiling to
take a gamble on it - when a dozen guys are there for a day only, and
they know nothing about a small Chinese spot in Urbana Illinois, usually
none of them are willing to gamble on what they get there (none of them
have heard of Chowhound or LTH, for a reason probably There were
a couple other options - a Hardee's or some such I think. But the consensus
(as it usually is) was "grab something from Mcd's and bring it back". For
the veggies its often only fries, for the rest its a cheeseburger or a
BigMac or a McChicken sandwich (or, for the conservative muslims,
the fillet-o-fish). The veggies will usually prefer BurgerKing, because
it supposedly serves some kind of veggie burger, but there wasnt one
nearby so it was hard-cheese (literally In this case, for one of
the veggies, we got a "Big-n-Tasty, with extra lettuce and tomatoes, and no
meat" - you havent lived until you see the salesgirls face when you announce
that order at a Mcdonald's in Urbana, Illinois. There was a degree of
incomprehension - you mean, *no* meat, whatsoever, in the entire
burger? Why? But note, even with having to face those kinds of
uncomprehending looks, even the veggie guys suggested Mcdonald's
if there was no BK nearby - none suggested gambling with the
hole-in-the-wall Chinese spot.

A lot of it is based on familiarity - people have been to Mcd, they know what
to expect there. Most people would rather go with Mcd than Culver's
for example, because they *know* Mcd and dont know Culver's, and when
theyre on the road they have no desire to try something that may or may
not be reliable in their eyes (I suggested it once, but couldnt say for sure
if there was a veggie option, or a fish sandwich - Ive never consumed either
of those at Culver's after all. So the idea was unanimously rejected over
my protests Once I was with a group of basically non-veggies, and
suggested Culvers - and did actually manage to convince them. They were
all fine with it, and so they will probably be willing to do it again the next
timie - though they did feel it was a bit more expensive than Mcd (and at
least a few suggested the higher price was not worth the difference to
them). But the few who did try the Frozen Custard will, I think, uniformly
be willing to go to Culver's on the road again in the future

c8w

It is Bill's.Mike's was where CVS now is.At Asbury and Howard just over the Evanston side.

c8w wrote:Food culture? Bah. As the Pope might have said (thru John Cleese in Monty
Python), "I may not know much about culture, but I know what I like"
People who think they know whatever, presumably because theyre
"cosmopolitan" or "well-travelled" or "multi-cultural" or whatever, theyre
entitled to their opinion, of course - opinions, as someone once said, are
like hotmail accounts (and something else I wont mention), everyone has one
Some of us prefer not to go by what the cultural-police think

c8w:

Sorry that you didn't see the message from the moderators calling for an end to the unpleasantries. In responding here I hope to avoid becoming overwhelmed by the dangerous passions which led this thread astray last week and additionally to stick as much as possible to the culinary and eschew the political.

You make the charge that I am a member of the "cultural police" and one presumes from what you say that you consider me not in any real or positive sense cosmopolitan or well-travelled or multi-cultural; it appears the intended implication is that I am a fraud whose knowledge is limited to "whatever" and whose opinion in matters such as this is worthless. Some or all of that might very well be true and, indeed, I don't especially think of myself as being multi-cultural. Let me add, no one who actually knows me would ever think I am either politically correct or likely to become a policeman of any sort.

But I like to think I am not wholly ignorant about culture and cuisine and remain sufficiently curious to continue to try to learn even at my advanced age. I also try to remember not to hammer the categories of "what is good" and "what is not good" to fit precisely into the categories of "what I like" and "what I don't like." There are things which I recognise as or am willing to concede are good -- good in a sense that is fairly universally obvious to people who think seriously about food -- even though I don't like them. Raw oysters, Senese spleen toast, "buttery' chardonnay, milk (as beverage), salads dressed with mayonnaise and most (not quite all) things that are exceedingly sweet please me not, but I would not argue that they are in any general or basic sense "not good."

On the other hand, there are some things I do like which I would never wish to argue are "good" in any universally recognisable sense: The hot dogs, roasted peanuts and "cheap" beer sold at many or most ballparks are of strikingly poor quality and questionable nutritional worth but at least in the context of watching a game, I can enjoy them well enough. Ordinarily, I wouldn't consume stuff of that quality if given it free of charge but nostalgic, sentimental, in any event, affective factors render it pleasurable (though not delicious) even at the obscenely bloated prices demanded at major sporting events.

But not for a minute do I think that the affective factors actually transform or transubstantiate the cheapest of tube-steaks into a form of salume or charcuterie that is by any culinary standard "good." And I certainly would never try to convince someone who never goes to ballparks that these are foods and beverages that are worth even considering consuming, much less that they are indisputably "delicious" or "spot-hitting." Nor would I feel moved to decry as a pretentious culture-cop someone who might say that the tube-steaks of Wrigley or some other stadium are nothing more than ground-up salty animal by-products with non-meat filler and chemical enhancement, things made to please vulgar or unsophisticated or childish tastes while earning maximum profit for the purveyor: that is the reality of the transaction. I like those lousy hot dogs and the watery beer -- at least at the ballpark -- but don't feel the need to claim that they are therefore "good." And note too that this is not a matter of snobbery about beer or hot dogs in general. There are, of course, well made beers and well made hot dogs and, for that matter, well made hamburgers, and they can be and are "good." Then, there are things that are made with highly processed, cheaper ingredients according to inferior recipes and cooked under essentially industrial conditions; those are "not good."

In response to your comments on the discussion of the Golden Arches, I feel constrained to say not too much in light of the admonition of the moderators, and will limit myself to the following points:
- First, I do not find the kind of argument you offer in defence of McDonald's food compelling: "McDonald's is good because there are restaurants that are worse."
' Second, I believe firmly that the highly processed and nutritionally imbalanced McDonald's products are, when considered as food, not good. Obviously, I also think that McDonald's products do not taste good and, while recognising that each person has the right to decide for themselves what they like, that does not mean that in the context of trying to talk seriously about food, everyone must agree with the politically correct notion that whatever some individual likes is per definitionem good.

I won't begrudge anyone whatever pleasure they find in eating chez McDonald, so long as they don't begrudge me the pleasure I find in sitting in a ballpark and eating a villainously cheap and criminally over-priced hot dog. But don't try to tell me that any of this stuff is "good." And insofar as such "food-products' that are not good become popular over foods that are good, to the degree that such food-products have come to comprise a very significant portion of the overall diet of many people, that is truly to be deplored. Each must decide what the value of their cultural background is to them but I know that there is much in mine that has been lost and stands yet to be lost. Some developments are neutral, some all in all very positive, and some to my mind quite decidedly unfortunate.

But I do hope someone informs McDonald's of your discovery that they need no longer spend hundreds of millions of dollars on advertising. They will be "lovin' it."


Antonius