They used to have the best fast food fried chicken. Popeyes, KFC, Church’s, none of the other chains come close to Hardee’s fried chicken. And they had (still have, actually) great biscuits too.
Hardees had a great hot ham and cheese, plus a really good roast beef too.
In-N-Out here in California has double drive-thrus. The passenger-side lane is just as busy as the driver-side. Even if you are alone, you can usually reach far enough to use the passenger-side lane.
Hardee’s has always had the best biscuits. No contest.
When I was a kid (70’s-80’s) Hardee’s had Arby’s type roast beef sandwiches but I haven’t seen them in years. Apparently, some locations sell them but I haven’t seen them around here.
I totally understand not changing your name to “Big Boys.” It’s a silly sounding name, with a silly looking mascot. The local Shoney’s never claimed it even was a Big Boys; it just had the mascot in some pictures inside, and it looked so kitschy. I always thought that it was funny how stupid everything looked back then.
Big Boy’s sounds like a it’s a kids’ restaurant, and the mascot looks like something kids would hang out with. Yeah, Shoney’s has its Bear, but he seems to be specifically for the kids, while Big Boy was always shown to be more like Ronald McDonald, a general mascot.
Yeah they did! My Dad used to love those. I thought I was one of the only people on Earth who remembered. When I mention those, and sometimes the chicken, I just get a blank stare from most folks.
It is Hardee’s here in North Carolina but who knows what would have happened if this guy had won his case? We just might have become a Carl’s Jr. state.
From the Fayetteville Observer
(fayobserver.com snerk)
And one day, all the things you remember of your youth will be derided as stupid-looking by some youngsters.
Big Boy was never a kid’s restaurant, in my experience. It was a family restaurant with a more pronounced emphasis on distracting the kids so that the grownups could maybe catch a break.
We don’t have Hardees here in Phoenix metro, but I can get a similarly good ham and cheese at Arby’s. I never seem to find it on the menu, but they make it for me. I guess I just can’t see it - must be buried somewhere.
Now if only they could make decent fries. I hate their curly fries. I went to an Arby’s somewhere in the Midwest, and that franchise still had normal fries. I wish I could get the one by me to do that.
Were you Wisconsin born and raised? I think Marc’s Big Boy is the only true version. I loved it when we went to Milwaukee so I could get a Big Boy burger. Then we found the one in Oshkosh, and I got to go a lot more often.
Arizona had “JB’s”, which, despite being part of the franchise, just wasn’t the same.
Agreed. It was basically the same as Roy Rogers which I seem to keep talking about on the boards lately even though I haven’t had it in probably 20 years.
Try Arby’s potato cakes. You might have to wait a bit for them to make them, but they are pretty good.
Pretty much. Marc’s is my standard for Big Boy. They’re all gone now.
According to Wikipedia, it was the same recipe as Roy Rogers.
In all the Bob’s locations I’ve ever been to (SoCal area), there has always been a red relish on their Big Boys, not a thousand island’s sauce. That’s what made it better than a Big Mac.
Another Carl’s Jr./Hardee’s difference - some of the restaurants offer both Carl’s/Hardee’s food as well as some Mexican items. In Carl’s territory, the Mexican menu is from The Green Burrito, which was a chain in the SoCal area for a while. For the Hardee’s stores, they call it The Red Burrito.
A few years in the early 90s? Hardee’s sold fried chicken for a lot longer than that, going back to at least the mid-80s.
I remember loving to go to Bob’s Big Boy in SoCal because they had free comic books. With Big Boy, and Dolly (my parents wouldn’t let us buy real comic books, so he was the only superhero I really got to look up to*)!
*And Reddy Kilowatt.
I had completely forgotten about those comic books until you just now mentioned them!
So, of course I had to go looking online for images, of which there turn out to be plenty, and inadvertently run across the fact that early Big Boy comics were written by Stan Lee.
There was a place in my college town that switched back and forth between Hardee’s and Roy Rogers a couple times in the 90s, but they always seemed to have the same menu.
Agree. Pretty much all Hardee’s in North Carolina.
Hardee’s Wikipedia page has a map that shows the locations of Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s.
What magical lands must Wyoming and Oklahoma be, to have both within their borders!
And more all the time. A truck drove by yesterday carrying a big illuminated store sign and a couple drive thru signs, and I drove past the Bellwood store today.
BTW, there are currently FOUR stores in the “Chicago area.” You city boys always forget about how the burbs are include in the area. If you don’t mean “Chicago AREA” just say “Chicago,” 'kay? 