Are there any drive thru restaurants that are higher end than fast food? I know In n Out offers drive thru while Five Guys does not. Chipotle is apparently thinking about drive thrus but doesn’t offer them yet. Excluding gimmicky or one-off stunts, are there any fancier drive thrus out there?
How are you defining drive through? Applebee’s and Ruby Tuesday (and probably other’s) have call-ahead take out. No drive through window, but generally a special entrance to pick it up.
You can get a sprig of parsley on your Big Mac, some places.
This is more or less what I was going to ask. Forget special entrance; a lot of places have call-ahead with curb side service. I think that’s pretty close to the premise of drive through service to me. You’re going to a nice restaurant and you don’t have to get out of your car to be served. Outback does it, and so does my local Chili’s (after undergoing renovations a few years ago to create a special entrance to pick up your food).
The local Panera has a drive through. Depending on your definition of nice restaurant…
Well, after polling every drive-through on the planet, I’ve concluded that it’s still your personal preference and taste.
Huh, I had no idea such a thing existed.
I wouldn’t count any call-ahead service as drive through. If you start down that path, then you have to count super-fancy restaurants that will send a meal to a hotel or otherwise cater to the super-rich and celebrities.
I’d limit drive-through to a meal that can be cooked while you are in your car without holding up the people behind you in line more than usual. Otherwise there’s no point to the question.
I’m gonna go with the McDonalds “Big Breakfast”.
It depends on your definition of “fancy” but IIRC you end up getting 2 pancakes, sausage or bacon (or both maybe?) and a hashbrown.
Not your typical “burger/chicken and fries” and you get a lot of items
I’ve seen places on Diners, Drive-ins and Dives that serve full BBQ dinners through a drive-thru window. If the OP will allow car-hop service, it gets even fancier.
The “fanciest” restaurant I know of with a drive-through window is Boston Market, so obviously I’m setting the bar pretty low!
Their food isn’t exactly gourmet, but you can get a plate of turkey with mashed potatoes, meatloaf with corn, or roast chicken with stuffing.
At any rate, that’s one of the only places I know where the drive through window offers food that requires you to use utensils.
A St. Louis radio DJ liked to drive his Rolls-Royce into White Castles drive-thrus. That’s about the total opposite of the OPs question!
[QUOTE=Exapno Mapcase]
I wouldn’t count any call-ahead service as drive through. If you start down that path, then you have to count super-fancy restaurants that will send a meal to a hotel or otherwise cater to the super-rich and celebrities.
I’d limit drive-through to a meal that can be cooked while you are in your car without holding up the people behind you in line more than usual. Otherwise there’s no point to the question.
[/QUOTE]
I tend to agree, so it has to be a form of drive up order while you wait in the car and pick up the food in a reasonably fast time. And that’s going to limit the quality to precooked, fast cook or no cook foods. The order first offsite and pick up is a different model.
McD’s does have some higher end foods which can make a pretty nice meal.
Boston Market also came to mind.
Domino’s does drive-thru. You can get their fancy spinach & feta bread (drools) through a window.
That would include El Pollo Loco, KFC, Del Taco, McDonalds…the list is quite extensive. Any place that serves sides other than fries, basically. Unless lots of people eat salad with their hands. 
How about some of the pricier pasta dishes from Fazoli’s? There are some good Penne bakes for example, combined with a salad would be a step above Burger King.
I see McDonald’s now has a third-pound steakhouse burger for a limited time. Hardees / Carl’s Jr always has a big burger option, but to me these are all still fast food.
Culver’s has chicken, shrimp or fish dinners (around here, especially walleye).
Fazoli’s has a pretty wide variety of fairly impressive pasta dishes, and at least the store they used to have in Tallahassee was drive-thru. Looking at their website now, they offer things like penne with creamy basil chicken, cherry apple almond salad, etc.
With wider distribution, Wendy’s has been offering some interesting sandwiches, esp. on limited rotations… Asiago Ranch Chicken and some other similar ones I think even have permanent spots now.
I’d go with Speed Queen Bar B Q in Milwaukee. Get a half&half plate of outside meat and beef, cole slaw, black-eyed peas, and greens.
Maybe not “fancy”, but damned good!
Carrabba’s, a higher end Italian restaurant, has curbside service. I think the Outback/Carrabba’s/Chili’s is as good as you’re going to get.
As does Applebee’s, and they’ve had it for over a decade. Applebee’s was my client (I work in advertising) from 2000 until 2004 or so, and we’d already launched it by the time I moved off the account. I worked on the team that introduced the service, including helping to develop the name, which was a big sticking point; they originally were going to call it “Curbside”, but that reminded too many of their customers of “curbside garbage pick-up”. They wound up calling it “Carside To-Go”.