Being in California, most of the DQs here have ice cream, Blizzards, hot dogs and fries. All those burgers and other items you see in the commercials, nope. So, how are DQ burgers compared to McDonalds, etc?
compared to mcdonald’s…great. they are actually not that bad. and they have the best fast food onion rings.
I suppose it is all relative. You wouldn’t catch me eating at one, thinking them pretty horrific… Then again, I think McD’s is pretty awful as well.
But I’m an admitted snob when it comes to food.
I always found DQ had the best hot dogs. As others noted their onion rings are good too
there are certainly differences in DQ as well. There is a strong correlation between the quality of the building and the quality of the food. Old DQs can be really gross. New ones are not so bad
I think franchise standardization controls are not nearly as strong at DQ than they are at McDonalds. I’d definitely take a DQ burger over a McD’s burger in general though. In the town that I grew up in, the local DQ sold popcorn that remains the best I’ve ever had. But that was something the local guy did, not a standard DQ item.
DQ makes a very nice flame-broiled burger, if that’s your thing. Their mozza mushroom burger is to die for (and only 5 billion calories!).
The only thing DQ is good for around here are their blizzards. Everything else is nasty. Now if I go one town over, their DQ has some awesome burgers.
In my experience, joew has it right. The older the DQ looks, the worse the food is going to be.
The one by me has daily lunch specials for $5.25. Always the same ones every weekday. For example, Mondays is the 4 Chicken Strips Combo. 4 small strips, choice of 8 sauces, more fries than you can ever hope to eat (probably twice as many as a large fries at McD or BK), two pieces of toast, a drink and a small sundae. Hell, I’m a big guy and I normally can’t eat all the fries.
I probably only eat there about once a month, but that’s more because the combination that it is a fuckload of calories and not quite as convenient to get into the local one than the 8 billion fast foods down the street. (Can pretty much only get in there from one direction and have to exit in the other direction)
I loooove me a cherry dip cone.
The closest comparison is probably Burger King. But it’s actually closer to charcoal burgers. On one hand, that’s more like a homemade burger. On the other, the similarities it does have are often not the part that people like–they aren’t big or juicy. And a lot of people would say they taste burnt.
Then again, I haven’t been to ours since it’s been remodeled, so it might be different.
Oh, and yes, the chicken strips are awesome.
BTW, anyone else notice that Sonic and Dairy Queen seem to compete almost directly–trying to have the exact same things? (Though I’ll admit that Sonic’s burgers are better–something to do with the onions.)
ETA: I can’t think of any food they have that is worse than McDonalds. But, then again, the only thing MickeyD’s has going for it taste-wise are the Chicken McNuggets.
Their food is as good as most other places. They are especially good at their icecream products. I love soft serve ice cream; which basically comes out of a carton. Great onion rings; second to Sonic Drive In onion rings.
Cherry dip cone?
They don’t lets us has cherry dip cones in Canada… 
This is why we are a superpower. I am not particularly fond of Dairy Queen, but do like cherry dip cones from better establishments.
They’re best with chocolate ice cream.
I’ve only tried a burger once, and I don’t remember thinking it was anything special.
I mostly just go there for the blizzards.
Dairy Queen burgers: Compared to McD’s, great. Compared to In N Out, not so much.
They’re decent. And, like donuts, there are no bad burgers.
Dairy Queen is my favorite fast food, bar none. I love their shakes. A little too much… Their burgers are better than anyone else’s, as are the onion rings.
McDonalds has better fries though. Dairy Queen uses those bumpy tasteless fries that are becoming increasingly common.
Dairy Queen has chocolate and vanilla soft serve. Their dips are cherry, chocolate and butterscotch.
It seems like all the ones in DFW only have vanilla soft serve and chocolate dip.
It’s not fair!
I was very sorry when the Dairy Queen in my hometown closed down several years ago. One of my favorite things about road trips is stopping at a DQ for lunch or dinner.
I ate the food at a Dairy Queen once, sometime around 1990. It was so awful that I’ve never eaten non-Blizzard products from them ever again