What is the special part for you. As far as I can tell (internet search) McDonald’s and In and Out’s Pattie’s are both 100% beef with salt and pepper. That was the part I was referring to re the blind taste. Their respective sauces are probably the main difference, that part is purely a mater of taste, so to speak.
Not knocking the folks who love them but the reverence and hushed tones I hear people speak of I&O about smacks of hype to me. Maybe they’re better but they are just burgers from a chain.
I live in California, mid valley. I pass an I&O every day at lunch. Older one. Lines wrapped around the building and out into the street. My wife loves them, last time we went - 25 minutes.
It’s the sum of the parts, but the beef tastes much better — for one, as far as I know, In n Out has a much fattier patty and is better browned (though they can do much farther in that regard.) It’s juicer and has that cooked beef fat flavor I love. I like McDonald’s, but the taste in beef is very different.
YES! That’s precisely it. My favorite style of hamburger is fast-food burgers, and those are often/usually from a chain. They nail it in every way. Like I said, if I die and go to heaven, I’ll happily while eternity away with In N Out burgers.
I miss In-N-Out since I’ve moved to Washington. Every time I visit Disneyland or family in the Bay Area, Reno, or Eugene, we always make at least one stop.
Part of the “problem” for newcomers is that the best food there is on the secret menu. Their ordinary burgers are good but ordinary. Animal Style is the only way to go.
My regular order is a 3x2 Animal Style, extra toast, and add peppers. That’s three beef patties, griddle-fried in mustard, with two slices of cheese served with caramelized onions, pickles, tomato, lettuce, and the thousand island -ish special sauce. Extra toast is buns that actually get a crust, peppers are banana peppers that add a capsaicin and acid kick.
I ate 4x4’s regularly when I was younger, but it’s too much for the dinky buns even with the extra toasting.
The fries are never great, but order them well-done and dip them in special sauce (available in packets upon request), they’re decent. There’s an Animal Style fries option, but it’s like soggy chili cheese fries but without the chili.
The most interesting is. But I wouldn’t say the best. My order 75% of the time is the regular double
double. 25% of the time I’ll get animal style. In N Out is one of the few places I like tomato and lettuce and fresh onions on my burger, so that’s what I prefer by far there. But the animal style is nice to mix it up.
sorry, it wasn’t til 2002 that McD changed, but why would vegan go to beef place (unless it’s scam)
new york time
March 9, 2002
The McDonald’s Corporation plans to issue an apology and pay $10 million to vegetarian and religious groups for using beef flavoring in its French fries. The action is part of a proposed settlement of lawsuits charging that the company misled consumers
I feel like I’m the odd one out here in that I like pretty much any fast food burger. Yeah, I like some more than others, but there’s none that I hate.
I currently live in California but I’m not a native and I don’t get the fuss. It’s a fine product but the drive-thru line stretches through the parking lot EVERY SINGLE DAY and I just don’t get it. It’s probably true that my expectations were out of whack based on the weirdo cult of In-N-Out but it just tasted like any other burger to me.
The OP mentioned Chik-Fil-A and it’s the same thing there-- I don’t dislike Chik-Fil-A at all but it’s nothing special and certainly not worth any significant wait.
If Burger King didn’t exist, I’d be right there with you. Though, to be honest, if you drop off a Whooper for me, I’ll still eat it. (My friend used to be a corporate manager for Burger King and would bring by burgers for lunch or dinner every so often. It would be rather impolite for me to refuse.) There’s little anything edible I won’t eat.
I don’t know what you mean by “unless it’s a scam” in that context, but I could think of plenty of reasons vegans would eat at McDonald’s. Their fries are actually quite good, beef products or not. They are out with friends who are omnivores and want to eat at McDonald’s. It’s a known quantity when you’re in an unfamiliar area or traveling. They are ubiquitous. And most places, even those that offer meat dishes as their primary offering, have something (especially these days) vegan on the menu.
Same here. KK was much worse than I had expected, after the hype. We finally got a Dunkin’ within walking distance from me, but the indie doughnut place across the road from it is far better than either DD or KK.
Yeah, it was crazy here in Chicago back when KK first entered the market back in the 90s, I want to say. Pure madness. Giant lines and everything. And then it settled down after, I don’t know, a half year or so. And then they disappeared almost completely by the late 00s. Now, there’s a couple that have been reintroduced to the market, but the situation there is much more sane in terms of lines.
That said, I am not much of a donut or sweets person, but a KK right out of the fryer and glazer/icer is a warm, passionate pillowy kiss of carbs. Pure sugar bliss. But one is all I can handle. Paired with a black coffee, it was perfect. The best part is, I almost never had to pay for the donut because, like with crack dealers, the first one was usually free whenever the HOT sign was on. Sometimes I’d come in, just for a coffee to go because the KK was literally fifty steps from my house, but they’d lay that free donut on me, and who am I to say “no” to free stuff?
In that regard, they actually did live up to the hype for me. Second best donut I’ve ever had, only to be rivaled by the ones my aunt in Poland made on the farm (also yeast-risen toroids, though topped with powdered sugar.)
Hot glazed is indeed perfection. That’s why you gotta watch for the sign .
This thread made me hungry for fast food so I stopped by the local McD’s and I realize that one of the reasons I may like McD’s more than others here is because my local franchise is clean, with polite employees, and has very good quality. Not everyone can say the same. Also, McD’s app ordering is pretty quick.
Regarding In-N-Out, I think what we are seeing here is the phenomena of clever and creative marketing and imagery. They got the palm trees, and the t-shirts for sale that have iconic and mystical scenes of imaginary southern California from a happier, simpler time. The simple menu with just a few items, and shhh, the “secret” menu. The whole get-up with the potato slicers on the wall in full view when you are ordering. The wholesome, clean, white uniforms with attentive, smiling staff hustling to get your order right. Every single restaurant built from a formula. I just think it’s all dialed-in really well and people succumb to the overall imagery and experience regardless of the quality of the food. However, if you don’t buy into that sort of thing and all the hype it creates, sure, it’s easy to throw shade on it. It’s just a hamburger, but people appear to like the “experience”, whatever that is.
I grew up in SoCal. I really liked In-N-Out back in the day. It’s still pretty darn good IMO.
The idea of waiting in line anywhere for anyone’s fast food is insane. Right at 12 noon, sure; I can see a couple folks ahead of me to get to a register & place my order. Any other time of day, the best fast food is whichever one nearby has no line and no hype.
Spare me (all of us Dopers really) from the lemmings that now inhabit our country.
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