Food: A Love Story (31 page)

Given the power and beauty of Mexican food, it is surprising how few great Mexican fast-food chains exist. For every Chipotle there are a dozen Del Tacos. Of course, Mexican fast food would not exist without Taco Bell.

Taco Bell

I don’t normally fall for expert testimonials in advertising, but Taco Bell’s most well-known spokesperson was a dog. The Taco Bell dog would say, “
Yo quiero
Taco Bell,” which means, “I want Taco Bell.” Sure, it’s cool they found and hired a talking dog that spoke Spanish, but it’s not that impressive of an endorsement, considering it came from a dog and dogs will eat just about anything, including their own throw-up. I’ll never forget when I found out about the death of the Taco Bell dog. It was announced on CNN, and I remember telling myself,
Wow, real journalism is dead.

It seems Taco Bell will do just about anything to get people into their restaurant, or, more specifically, their room with a
microwave in it. None of the food is cooked
at
Taco Bell. It’s reheated and assembled on-site. Taco Bell is fundamentally one step up from an office break room. For a while there was a commercial actually promoting the “Taco Bell Diet,” which I’m pretty sure was constructed on the belief that once you eat Taco Bell, you won’t want to eat again. If you are going to Taco Bell for your diet, you have a bigger problem than your weight.

I NEED A HERO

Sandwich and sub shops have emerged as strong fast-food players. They can range in quality from Panera to Blimpies, but I still prefer a burger and fries. Here are two notable sandwich chains.

Subway

Subway is just the McDonald’s of delis. It is a fast-food sandwich shop that has positioned itself as the healthy alternative to the burger-and-fries places, which is already a turnoff for me. Previously, I brought up the Subway slogan, “Eat Fresh,” but if you’ve bitten into a Subway sandwich, you mostly think,
not so fresh.
Subway shops seem to be everywhere. It’s hard to walk a block in most major cities without passing a Subway restaurant. You’ve probably walked by and breathed in the bread exhaust that is pumped into the street. I always think,
Ah, the smell of bread that was just baked in a dirty dishwasher.
I never know if it’s making me hungry or concerned about the ozone.

All this being said, I still go to Subway, and not just because it’s fun watching a clinically depressed person throw together my sandwich. They are assembling my sandwich right in front of me. You’d think they’d do it with a little bit of flair. I’m not expecting the enthusiasm of a Benihana chef, but it’s always a little awkward while they sloppily slap the ingredients onto the bun. I usually stand there wishing the sneeze guard were facing the other way as I watch them do everything in those plastic
CSI
gloves. Those plastic gloves are always a little suspicious because they’re wearing them before they even start on my sandwich. “Let me just ring up this other guy’s order, tie up this garbage bag, scoop up these heroin needles … Now, what type of triangle of cheese would you like on your sub?” There are mice that would turn down that triangle slice of cheese at Subway. If you prefer your cheese melted, you can get your sandwich heated up in the crumb-filled toaster oven it appears someone stole from a dorm room. The Subway toaster oven always makes me wonder,
Wait, is this even a restaurant?

Subway is another place that shows you how lazy we’ve gotten in our society. I can understand the appeal of fast-food burgers and fries. Who has the time to make a burger? Who owns a deep fryer? But we are too lazy to make a sandwich? “I could make a sandwich at home for like twenty cents, or I could watch this sociopath make it.” To be fair, the Subway employees are not sociopaths, but they do have that kind of faraway look in their eyes as they hold the squirt bottle of goo. “In my country I was attorney general. Would you like Santa Fe sauce?” (
SOUND EFFECT: farting squeeze bottle
)

You have to go through a bunch of steps before your sandwich is ultimately slid into that plastic Subway airsickness bag. The first step is, you have to pick out your bread. And by that I mean, pick out the color of your bread, because all Subway bread seems to taste the same. “Do I want the
whole-wheat-colored bread? Or the Italian-colored bread?” After you select your bread you must identify the toppings you would like on your sandwich. Subway makes a big deal about how all the toppings are free at Subway. “Free lettuce? No way! How do you guys pay the rent? What’s next, free napkins?” I think the toppings are free at Subway to distract us from the fact that we should not be paying for the meat. Once I asked a Subway guy, “Is that chicken or a really old piece of ham?” Subway is also very stingy with their undesirable meat. It’s preportioned and peeled off like a Mafia kingpin wannabe handing out dollars. “Here’s three slices of ham. Get yourself something nice, all right? Don’t say I never did nothing for youse.”

Subway, like other fast-food restaurants, always has deals that they advertise as an incentive for eating at Subway. I had to hire a witch doctor to get the “Five-Dollar Footlong” jingle out of my head. I like cheap deals as much as anyone else, but I wish they would keep the word
foot
out of my food.

Someone told me they saw a Subway with a drive-thru. I’m not sure how that would even work.

SUBWAY EMPLOYEE:
All right. Pick out your bread. Now drive up six inches. What kind of meat? Drive up six inches. Lettuce, onions? Oh, you want it toasted? You gotta circle back around.

Have you tried the soup at Subway? I’m not talking about the tuna salad. I always get the tuna sub at Subway, where they ladle the tuna onto the bread. The tuna is in that giant metal tub with the white puddle of tuna water, like a tuna gazpacho. Very appetizing. I’d love to ask them for a glass of that tuna water. Or maybe bring in a really long straw and just start drinking it. Too much? Did I cross the line? “I was reading this
guy’s book until he brought up drinking tuna water. I found it offensive. My fiancé is allergic to tuna water. It’s nothing to joke about.”

Subway built its reputation as the healthy alternative, mostly through the successful weight loss of spokesman Jared Fogle. We all know the story. Jared lost all that weight eating only Subway sandwiches. This makes me kind of wonder what Jared was eating before he started going to Subway. Cases of doughnuts, maybe. We all like Jared. He seems like a decent guy, but deep down we all secretly want to see the fat Jared again. “Come on, Jared! We all struggle! Eat a burger!” I can’t imagine how desperate Subway must be to keep Jared thin. “Merry Christmas, Jared. Here’s another treadmill and bag of laxatives. Dig in, buddy. Do you mind if I leave this case of my diet pills here for a couple of years? Feel free to help yourself.” But Jared’s hung in there. He’s been a Subway spokesman for so long that there is a generation of kids who don’t even know about the fat Jared. I have a ten-year-old nephew who thought Jared was the
owner
of Subway. I explained that Jared “was a big fat guy who ate all these Subway hoagies and now he’s thin.” Even my nephew was like, “Well, that’s bullcrap.” I’m not saying Jared didn’t lose the weight, but I’m just suspicious that Jared hasn’t aged in fifteen years. I don’t feel sorry for Jared. I feel sorry for every other guy in the United States who happens to be named Jared. I’m sure some of them have started to tell people, “Actually, my name is pronounced ‘JeROD.’ ”

Of course, Jared didn’t lose the weight just eating Subway sandwiches. He switched from eating burgers and fries every day to eating Subway sandwiches every day. So as a result we think of going to Subway as a healthy activity. “Well, I could go jogging or I could go to Subway and have a meatball sub.” What level of denial are we in when we view eating a meatball
sub as a healthy alternative to a hamburger? Isn’t a meatball sub just five hamburgers rolled into balls, covered in cheese, and put on a bun that can hold five hamburgers?

There’s always an open door behind the counter at Subway revealing a back room. What’s going on back there? I know it’s not the kitchen, because the kitchen is the toaster oven. Do you think maybe Jared is back there? Is he secretly running all the Subway shops like the Wizard of Oz? “I am the great and powerful Jared!” More likely it’s probably a safe room for all the employees to hide in when the Health Department shows up. Eat Fresh!

Arby’s

Arby’s is famous for its roast beef. You’ve probably driven by the Arby’s hat sign, which I always found confusing. “The food tastes like eating a hat?” I always thought someone had to eat their hat when they lost a bet. Maybe the bet was that Arby’s used real roast beef in their sandwiches.

I’m not sure, but I think it’s supposed to be a cowboy hat, since Arby’s signature dish is the roast beef sandwich and cowboys are associated with cattle and Arby’s wants to give the impression that their meat comes from cows. Keeping with the cowboy theme, Arby’s offers a sauce called “horsey” sauce. It may be a reference to a horseradish sauce, but I’d think a fast-food place would make a stronger effort to not associate itself with horse meat.

Arby’s is like the cousin of the other fast-food places, but it’s that weird cousin you never see, and when you do, you always think,
Oh, yeah, you exist
. I love a Beef ’n Cheddar, but there’s nothing really impressive about Arby’s. You’ll never hear, “Well, I met him at Arby’s, so you know he has good taste.”

About ten years ago Arby’s tried to replace the cowboy hat with a talking oven mitt. I guess the idea was to emphasize the “oven roasting” that they do to their bologna-like roast beef loaves. Unfortunately, the oven mitt just made people buy more Hamburger Helper, so Arby’s went back to the hat. Maybe they’ll try the saddle next. Giddyup, horsey!

CHICKEN DANCE

KFC

Fried chicken is not good for you. Anyone who has left a piece of fried chicken on a paper napkin and returned to discover that the napkin has turned into liquid knows this. No one ordering a bucket of fried chicken at KFC believes they are making a healthy decision. Anything that comes in the serving size of “bucket” can’t be that good for you. A bucket, after all, is how we feed farm animals. “Yeah, I’ll have a bucket of fried chicken, a silo of Pepsi, and a trough of pig slop. Make it the
diet
pig slop.” The company was aware of the health perception when it changed its name from Kentucky Fried Chicken to KFC. They didn’t stop selling fried chicken, but they supposedly added non–fried chicken “healthy items” to their menu, like the DoubleDown, which is the strange, two fried chicken patties without a bun, and Popcorn Chicken, or Original Recipe Bites, which I’m pretty sure is just leftover crumbs from making their fried chicken. I guess selling these crumbs as a dinner menu item is less disturbing than selling them as a breakfast cereal.

The most successful new KFC product would have to be the
KFC Famous Bowl. I’m not sure what makes these bowls famous, but it’s certainly not their health benefits. It almost seems like someone at KFC decided, “You know how all our side dishes are unhealthy, disappointing, and taste the same? Why don’t we just throw them all together in a Styrofoam bowl?” The Famous Bowls are like a shepherd’s pie of unhealthiness. They have a layer of mashed potatoes, a layer of corn, a layer of cigarette ashes, and a couple of apple cores. The bowls are like paying homage to the character of Templeton, the barnyard rat in
Charlotte’s Web.