Who likes El Pollo Loco?
I have always liked it but about 10 years ago they started with fancy selections and special sauces and the prices seemed to sky rocket. Frequently I order the basic stuff, chicken and sides.
Carls Jr {Hardees} likes to provide special burgers with sauces like teriyaki and such.
It seems the price skyrockets by 1 dollar for sauce and a strip of bacon- again I order the basic burger.
Does every one like the Grand Mac? (They should have called it the beast)
never even seen one.
never had one.
The OP must live out west.
El Pollo Loco is one of the strange/unexpected things I miss about California. I expected to miss places like In N Out but I never thought about El Pollo Loco much, it was just always there for some quick chicken or a burrito, or taco. It was always good, fast and cheap. A winning combination.
Carl’s Jr, while seemingly the same a Hardee’s is, in reality, much better than any Hardee’s I have been to. Though I do think it’s funny that their $6 burger, which started as a gimmick along the lines of “it’s so good you would think it costs $6” now is actually more than $6 (the last time I checked. It’s been about 5 years since I lived in Carl’s territory.) I used to like their guacamole burger pretty well though.
Never had a grand Mac.
I will toss out having extremely fond memories of Whattaburger from the time I lived in Texas. And I currently have a deep love for Wawa here in PA. Yay for regional fast food.
El Pollo Loco is just an English Speaking version of a taqueria. I can’t imagine there are a lot of large cities that wouldn’t have a few taquerias around. Just know they speak very little English should you choose to go into one.
I’m guessing you have not been to SE Pennsylvania. I have found exactly one real taqueria in my years here, and it’s a 45 minute drive. Not the same. As far as I can tell the whole of the NE United States is a Mexican food desert.
For the record, I used to go regularly to an El Pollo Loco in N. Las Vegas where they were not English speaking at all. I once was waiting for my order and the poor girl could see I was not going to be a Spanish speaker and she had trouble working out how to say my order number in English.
I love El Pollo Loco’s basic stuff- just chicken please and lots of the avocado salsa. If I’m dieting, they have some good low cal salads but I stay away from any thing else (especially seafood!) as they just don’t compare to the basic menu.
At first I thought El Pollo Loco was Gus Fring’s restaurant chain from Breaking Bad. Then I thought I’d eaten at El Pollo Loco at Downtown Disney, but then I remembered it was Pollo Campero. So…I got nothing.
Haven’t eaten at Carl’s or a Grand Mac either.
Trivia tidbit: El Pollo Loco’s headquarters in San Bernadino is on the site of one of the original McDonalds and features a museum showcasing the CEO’s collection of McDonald’s memorabilia.
I will weigh in here on the OP’s reference to the new Macs.
The Grand Mac is an excellent idea. The Big Mac has been pretty much unchanged for over 40 years; the taste is virtually identical to what it was in the early 70s when I first ate one. But in the interim, it has gone from being a gigantic burger (compared to the basic hamburger that McDonald’s and other outlets served at the time), to being somewhat smallish, actually, with most of its “size” derived from the middle slice of bun. By comparison, Carl’s Jr. (as alluded to in the OP) and Hardee’s, as well as other chains (Jack-in-the-Box, for example) have made a lot of hay out of offering absolutely enormous burgers. One-third-pound and half-pound burgers are now the norm for the top-of-the-line offering. McDonald’s needed to up its game.
The Grand Mac tastes pretty much exactly like a Big Mac. But it’s quite large, too large for me to eat comfortably in one sitting, unless I skip eating fries with it. So I was happy with the one I had, since on that particular day I was particularly hungry.
By comparison, the Mac Jr. should be avoided. The bun-to-meat-to-sauce ratio is all wrong. As a result, you don’t get the same classic Big Mac taste. I suppose for someone who isn’t expecting that, it might be ok (it’s kinda like the burger my mom used to make for me in imitation of the Big Mac back in the 70s). But for a Mac lover like me, it’s quite skippable. Which is too bad, because my metabolism much prefers eating something that size these days.
As for Carl’s Jr., they still do a decent job, but I’ve never been as impressed with them from the point that the franchised out their stores in the mid-to-late 80s. Prior to that point, when all stores were company stores, their Quality Assurance program was one of the best in the business. My then-wife, who managed one, lived in absolute fear of the QA visits; scores under 95 could mean losing your job as a manager, and they did things like white glove tests on the tops of door moldings. As a counter-person/fry cook for them (briefly!) in '81, I remember standing behind the cook station one afternoon using a paddle spatula to put exactly 5/8 oz. of mayonnaise on the crown of a bun over and over and over, with the asst. manager supervising me weighing the bun crown each time, telling me if I was within 1/8 of an oz., then scraping the condiment off and making me do it again. Why? Because that’s exactly what QA did when they visited, only you didn’t get several attempts to get it right. They simply grabbed a crown that you were preparing and weighed it. That sort of attention to detail in the stores, combined with a really good menu, made eating there a joy. After they franchised, QA went to heck and a handbasket quickly, and these days, it’s pretty hit or miss. Plus, I hate that they got rid of the flaked/formed steak sandwich. 
I steer clear of El Pollo Loco because so many of their chicken combos have the chicken on the bone. Bones don’t belong in fast food. The bright yellow color also makes me nervous.
Carl’s is where I tend to take my lunch break on the nights when I don’t bring my own. I get annoyed by the cheery, upbeat-sounding robot that asks me if I want to try whatever special they’re pushing. Generally, I order their lowest-priced item, and ask the live person who eventually comes to the microphone to pass along to management that the customers hate the robot and want them to hire real people.
Recently, an all-night McDonald’s opened across the street from this Carl’s. The staff there are slowly getting used to keeping the line at the drive-thru moving.* Pretty soon, I expect to be able to go there without worrying that my lunch half-hour will be over before I get my food, let alone have time to eat it. I haven’t tried the Grand Mac yet.
*Also they need to keep their shake machine working in the mornings. I like a Shamrock Shake while I drive home from work at 6 a.m.
Thanks for replys. The grand mac must to eaten w 2 hands as it slides around.
I have a related question. At some places they have burgers wrapped in paper or in a container that is foam or heavy paper.
Some places wrap the burger inside with another paper wrap that only covers part of the burger.
Often people use this to keep the burger held together while eating and keep your fingers off of food.
MY QUESTION IS- what is the official name of this paper half covering piece.
I have always wondered if there is an official hambergerology term.
Downside: you have to go to San Bernardino
(I live in Riverside, so no room to complain, I know)
It looks like McDonald’s has dropped the Grand Mac.
I rarely eat fast food, but if I ever want a quickie burger, it’s always at Carl’s Jr. (the western double bacon). That may amount to 3 times/year.
I love Pollo Loco and while they’re not exactly scarce here in NorCal, I’m usually closer to a real taqueria or Rubio’s so frequent those more. I have to go out of my way for PL, which means I eat there maybe once/year.
I don’t even remember the last time I ate a McD burger. At least a decade but probably much longer. The most common thing I’ll ever eat there is the soft serve cone (maybe 3-4 times/year). Entree (once/year) will either be McNuggets, Filet o’ Fish or McRib (when in season).
That was true in the 1980s, when I moved to New York, and Mexican restaurants were essentially “Margarita Mills” where you’d go to get completely trashed on tequila before consuming sloppy “combo platters” of tasteless enchiladas, beans, and rice.
By the 1990s several upscale Mexican joints appeared in SoHo and the Upper East Side. Ten years later there was an onrush of Mexican immigrants to Brooklyn’s Sunset Park. Now, due to competition, pretty good Mexican food is available all over the city. It ain’t California or Texas, though.
The fast food places I can’t comment on. Don’t eat it.
I’ve only been to El Pollo Loco in LA. The place I went downtown was fantastic, another place out in the valley gave us a pile of chicken infused grease. That was a long time ago, don’t know how it’s gone since. Also no Carls or Hardees in these parts but the Carls out west was far and away better than McDs, that King place, and pretty much every other fast burger place I’ve been.
I believe that there may be parts of NYC where real Mexican food exists. Out here there are lots of Domincan places which are great. If Mexican immigrants moved to Brooklyn they probably opened so. We shops. I know there are upscale restaurants, but that isn’t the same thing. To bring it back to El Pollo Loco, one of the things that was great was you could get a taco or a burrito from a drive through in about 5 minutes for 5 bucks or less. Made with good pinto beans and rice and fresh salsa. You could also get their (very good) bone in chicken pieces, but that’s a different situation.
Upscale Mexican isn’t what I miss. I miss street corner Mexican. Right now I’m pretty sure that the best Mexican food to be found within 20 miles of my house is at my house.
What makes you think that?
I live in a town filled with authentic taquerias, but they all cook their meat on a flat top. For the short time we had an El Pollo Loco, I enjoyed it because the chicken was flame grilled and so much tastier to my tastebuds way of thinking.
I call those wrappers “unnecessary garbage that is in my god damn way”.
To the original questions, El Pollo Loco makes a decent burrito, but i hardly ever go there. And Carl’s Jr is pretty good, but again I hardly ever go there. And I never go to McDumpers.
