I grew up eating McDonalds, because my grandfather grew up eating at the first of the Canadian McDonalds franchises, so it became something of a ritual for us.
Those childhood memories still have me craving the occasional Big Mac and cheeseburger from them. I don’t find shame in that any more than I find shame in a college kid who works hard to make their ramen awesome, or the mother who tries to liven up their Kraft Dinner because it’s all her kid will eat. Food shaming gets no one anywhere.
That being said, many millions of folks DO eat regularly at McD’s, and that means where they go, a lot of meat and egg providers go. To that end, I’m thrilled that they’re taking this stance on meat traceability and cage-free eggs, because once the big guys can pull that off, it makes it a lot harder to point to the big guys and say “yeah, we treat our animals and animal products like crap, because that’s what you have to do to compete with the big guys!”
Egga muffins and hash browns are our favorite hit-the-road travel breakfast.
My cousin went to hamburger U back in the day and I always gave her crap about this and she was quite insistent that this was a rumor with no truth to it. The burgers were lame* on their own, sorry to say.
*not that I, like many others, don’t occasionally enjoy one, and I consider them essential for travelling when I just need something quick and cheap.
Any nostalgia I had for Dairy Queen recently suffered an extinction level event. A nuked burger with a soggy rubber bun and American lettuce with that chemical stench. (I don’t know what that stench is, but packaged US salad mixes frequently have it.)
Hah. Yes. That sentence was incomplete. “I can’t bring myself to go to McDonald’s to buy a burger.” But stopping during a road trip for a shake or a hashbrown or a sundae or to use the restroom does happen.
I get a giggle whenever I see sliders on a fancy-bistro menu and think, I bet none of these hipsters know that sliders was the nickname for White Castles because of the way those little greaseballs would slide right down your throat.
I’m old enough to remember when they didn’t appreciate the term “slider” at all. Now they use it on the menu.
There’s still an old-school “Porcelain Palace” White Castle in Joliet, one of the few I’m aware of that still exist. There are closer locations to me to get my fix, though they’re all newer buildings.
Sliders in Greenpoint were our go-to apres-bowling meal when I was a kid. 6-8 of those (downed with a milk shake) was normal for me.
Back around the late 80s (?), a fast food burger chain called “Castle West” opened up in SoCal (at least in San Fernando Valley). Trying it a couple of times, we determined from the burgers and the décor that CW was brazenly attempting to copy White Castle, perhaps in an attempt to capitalize on east-to-west coast migration. CW came and went in a flash… from public disinterest?.. from a WC lawsuit? To this day I have no idea.
