Absolutely not.
Quarter Pounder with Cheese runs circles around a Whopper.
Absolutely not.
Quarter Pounder with Cheese runs circles around a Whopper.
Wendy’s used to be my go-to for fast food and then I had a string of bad experiences at multiple restaurants in the early 2000s and gave up on it. These days, I’ll prefer any local greasy spoon diner over most chain restaurants (Five Guys excepted) because even if the food is cut rate, it still isn’t overprocessed and manipulated like chain fast food.
The Founder was an entertaining movie but it took a lot of liberties with the story of the Dick & Mac McDonald and especially Ray Kroc; if anything, it made Kroc look less manipulative than he was in real life. The McDonald’s really innovation was limiting the items on the menu and training employees to basically run a clockwork food factory instead of a standard made-to-order kitchen, so food was delivered practically as fast as you could pay for it. My memories of McDonalds going back into childhood in the mid-‘Seventies was never that it was especially good, but it was quick, came with crispy fries, and of course the toy in the Happy Meal that usually disappeared under some piece of furniture half an hour after you got it home. Somewhere their is a planet connected to a manifold of wormholes that sucks away Happy Meal toys (and the gadgets that used to come in childrens’ breakfast cereal) and sacrifices them in a giant gaping maw of existential cosmic evil. Or they’re all floating in the South Pacific.
Stranger
I’m surprised to hear you say that. It’s either a matter of different tastes, which is fine, or maybe a matter of specific establishments. I did mention some time ago about a Burger King near my former house that I really didn’t like, and it appeared to be because they were badly managed and had poor quality control.
What I’d say objectively is that one of McD’s biggest overall drawbacks is that their burger patties are fried, which gives them a distinctly greasy texture. BK’s “flame-broiled” system doesn’t involve any actual flame in their modern equipment, AFAIK, but it does involve the patties going through a very hot broiler where the grease drips off and it imbues them with varying amounts of smokiness that you can often detect.
I’m not particularly out to defend BK. There are much better burgers out there (especially my own!) but they’re pretty good among the big mass-market chains. Many of the upscale ones either don’t exist here in Canada (In-n-Out) or I haven’t tried them (Five Guys), but Harvey’s is great. You order your burger, and the patty is placed on an actual flaming, smoking grill, then assembled with cheese and the toasted bun, and then you choose what you want on it from a large array of condiments.
I am gonna have to object to this claim. Hamburgers like a quarter pounder are a decent meal for any adult, especially when served with an order of fries and a drink.
McDonald’s is okay. It’s certainly better than Burger King.
I am bit surprised by this because every Whopper I’ve ever had, whether good or bad establishments, have been overly greased mess. Maybe it’s the smoke stuff. It’s terrible. It’s why if I get a Whopper these days I’ll get the Impossible Whopper since it doesn’t have the same grease/smoke nastiness. McD’s burgers don’t have nearly the same icky taste.
Indeed. It seems American portion sizes have become so massive that a 520 calorie burger (QP with Cheese) with fries and a drink is now deemed as not filling enough…
Bullshit. I was getting ketchup only burgers at McDonald’s in the late 60’s which is as early as I can remember.
That’s all that it is. There is no such thing as a truly objective rating of food and especially not fast food. As a kid I loved McDonald’s, absolutely hated Burger King. As an adult I tolerate McDonald’s (which I eat at fairly rarely), largely dislike Burger King (which I eat at very rarely indeed, have to be on the road with someone else who is driving the food choice). BK’s distinct “flame-broiling” makes the hamburger actually taste bad to me. I hate that “smoke” flavor that reminds me less of smoke and more of lighter fluid. My preferred genuine fast-food (not fast-casual) burger is Wendy’s.
But it’s all just personal variance in preferences. I also dislike papayas .
The husband of a friend of mine has eaten nearly 33,000 Big Macs since 1972. He’s said they taste about the same to him now as they did in the beginning. FWIW
My brother-in-law shares this opinion; he calls BK’s burgers “Sterno-burgers.”
It’s probably what you started off eating. I hugely prefer McD over BK but I can’t say that it’s objectively better. I worked at McDonald’s for a year or so around 1980. I still like it on occasion. The fries definitely used to be better.
I used to share this opinion, but I now firmly believe that it’s almost impossible to get decent customer service at a Wendy’s these days.
I like Whataburger and Milo’s (an Alabama chain). I thought In-N-Out was overrated.
OT: but I still don’t understand why Kroc didn’t just glean enough info about the operation, and go start his own burger place. I wasn’t under the impression that the McDonald’s name was particularly famous at the time.
Being a bit younger than most, I probably had my first McD’s around 1981ish, as a 6-7 year old. My parents were something of pre-foodies and thought it was junk, but they took my brother and I there for some movie tie in or some such that I can no longer recall.
As a kid, I was totally only into it for the toy / special event, because while I loved the fries, I was a kind of a picky eater and hated the condiments, and while I could ask for a plain burger, it was very hit or miss.
Otherwise, my choice for fast food to eat was Long John Silvers (I was weird), followed by the local burger chain Blake’s Lotaburger (still cooked on a griddle), with BK being last (no Wendys there at the time).
I found McDonalds, then and now to be basically the same, with pretty much no taste, and I’m eating just to fill up on something for a long drive. It’s not objectionable, but at the price, it’s also utterly not worth it.
If I’m travelling and need just off interstate fast food, I’ll generally go Wendy’s > Burger King > McDonalds, but most of the time I just won’t bother unless it’s one of THOSE drives (9+ hours).
Don’t know the joke, but a saying of my father’s was “You don’t go to McDonald’s for hamburgers, you go to McDonald’s for McDonald’s.” Which is true. If I want hamburgers, I have lots of choices. But if I want McDonald’s…
Would like to note that extra butter is free, a fact I’ve been exploiting lately…
Every time I’ve had a Burger King burger, it’s always tasted dry. Is that the result of their flame-broiling?
Also, my father was very picky when it came to hamburgers made at restaurants and fast-food places. Anything that was charcoal grilled (or something similar like flame-broiled) made him sick to his stomach so avoided eating hamburgers prepared that way. Was something unique to my father or do other Dopers (or their family and friends) have the same problem?
I think that is worth a quadruple bypass and a metric ton of Lipitor. Does he keep a tally or is this just a statistical mean based upon sampling some time history of daily consumption?
Stranger
You’re right about the absence of the McDonaldland characters in recent years. The Happy Meals, though, are still tied into movies frequently – maybe five or six a year. But once your kids grow up … all that’s off your radar.
He keeps track. And he’s actually quite healthy and active.
In my experience, they were just as bad in 60s.
Is your friend named Melania?