I’m a big BK fan (as much as one can be a fan of this kind of food). BK’s burgers to me are far and away better than any other fast food place I can think of. But their fries ars so gawd awful that I rarely go there. I rarely go to any of them anymore, but if I have to grab a quick bite, I’ll get McDonald fries. Since I hate McD’s burgers, the fries have to suffice. They almost always do.
About 3 weeks ago, for the first time in years and years I had a craving for BK, so I went to one that is relatively close to me - and found that it has been closed for years and years. I settled for a McD and threw most of it away.
** Whacks SS with a large carp **
Burger King does not seem as robust in its attempts to capture a large market as McDonalds, but the burgers are still better (based on a relatively recent re-sampling of the Big Mac). McDonalds delivers a fairly bland product, and I try not to be annoyed that this is a profitable niche. Wendy’s has a tasty burger, though the meat seems less moist in general, but Wendy’s is generally a pretty good value for your burger dollar.
In terms of fries, McDonalds is still considered the champions, presumably because they don’t have Checkers’ everywhere. The Burger King fries have a special mecha-polymer coating that make them crisp on the outside and fluffy on the inside if you eat them in the first ten minutes. Afterwards, they become more rubbery and brittle. Wendy’s had perfectly serviceable fries, though I understand that they’ve recently reformulated and I haven’t tried the new kind.
I’m not sure about other areas, but around here, BK can be summed up with two words, slow and inconsistent. No matter what time of day you visit, the BK it will always take them twice the time to complete your order than any other fast food place. Add to that the simple fact that the same burger from the same BK can be acceptable (but never good) one day, and something I wouldn’t throw to a coyote the next, and you understand why I won’t stop there.
I used to have a Whopper at least twice a week; it was my go-to meal when I was on the go. I don’t know if I changed, or the Whopper changed, but I’ve tried them several times in the last couple of years and absolutely hated it. Something about the sauce. Backyard Burger or Wendy’s nowadays for me.
In this past week I have seen two Burger King locations that have closed; until then, I had never seen a closed “Big 3” fast food restaurant. Both were in what otherwise seem to be thriving areas.
Ditto what everyone has said about cleanliness and modernization at Burger King. I like their burgers more than McDonalds’, but McDonalds has cleaner and more inviting facilities, a much larger menu, and generally more friendly and clean staff. The occasional times I go into the Burger King around here there is maybe one other customer in the place, who is either a senior citizen, crazy ranting mentally unstable person, or an ill-dressed, sketchy looking teen/20-something who doesn’t seem to be buying anything, but just standing around, maybe a friend of an employee.
Last time I was there the two employees there were having a discussion about whether stealing food from their place of employment counts as embezzlement.
What? Last I checked they sell at least seven different kinds of hamburgers.
That’s my experience as well, right down to the mysterious “friends of employees” who are always hanging around. Sometimes in winter the BK restaurant is so physically cold as to be uncomfortable. Always the restaurant is psychologically cold. Generally I avoid them, and when I don’t I regret it.
Their burgers give me the shits, and the King mascot is creepy as hell. I prefer Hardees or Mickey D’s.
Not any more. I didn;t care for the first major change to veggie oil, now the recent change where they stopped using beef flavor makes them tasteless.
I so rarely eat at Fast Food, except when I am on the road, and I admit seeing a McD’s and knowing they will be clean, and the food edible (even if bland and not very good nutritionally) is a nice thing to know.
I do like In&Out, however, and will stop there in preference to any.
This is a real key to the problem: Burger King is the only major fast food chain (in this area anyway) to even offer onion rings. Instead of trying to capitalize on that, they’ve undercut it and made it something even fans feel they have to apologize for.
Burger King is being run by morons and has been for decades. I still like a Whopper every now and then, but every time I get one, it’s a little longer before the next time I get one.
If Wendy’s sold onion rings, Burger King would be bankrupt inside of 6 months.
I use to love McDonald’s. Their Quarter Pounders with Cheese were wonderful (yeah, I know, “wonderful” is relative, but the cheese was gooey, the burger was nice and juicy, and the bun was warm.) Nowadays I can barely eat them anymore–they’re dry, overly salty, the cheese is plasticky, and the buns tend to be kind of chewy. I’m not sure what happened, but with the exception of one McD’s in a more upscale area that still makes good burgers, I haven’t been impressed.
Whoppers were never as good to me as QPC’s in their prime, but nowadays Whoppers still taste like they always did. Thus, between the two my burger of choice is now BK, despite the fact that there’s a McD’s about 5 minutes from home. I’m sometimes tempted to go into McD’s and order a burger made fresh without salt and pepper and see if that helps (I think it’s the microwaving that really messes it up) but thus far I haven’t done it.
McD’s fries are still the yummy winner, though.
Let me guess - I-80, about 5 miles west of I-55? I drive by that one every couple of months.
The backlash from this infamous assassination probably hasn’t helped either. 
… the hell? 
At McDonalds the only thing I know of that is microwaved are the cinnamelts and the breakfast burritos. Oh, and those little folded egg things. I only eat the round eggs on the muffins that get a real egg cooked fresh.
The burgers are never microwaved.
on long road trips I always like to stop at McDonalds b/c thier bathrooms are always very clean.
I’m a pescatarian so for me it’s fish sandwiches and McD’s fish seems like something you’d eat in a HS cafeteria whearas the BK fish is a very hearty sandwich with better quality bun, however you pay for that in calories, the BK fish is way worse for you in terms of calories and fat. It’s really quite obscene.
fries and shakes are better at McD’s.
Was this some sort of whoosh on the part of RealityChuck? Maybe they’re not hamburgers any more, but something along the lines of “preprocessed pasteurized genuinely artificial quasipseudo mystery meat patties”?
This thread is making me hungry, and there’s not a BK, Hardee’s, Wendy’s or even KFC for 50 miles in any direction.
MacDonalds doesn’t count.