Burger King

So, I don't go to "fast food restaurants".

Of course, that's clearly an elitist conceit: there's a funny sensibility that places like Subway, and Starbucks (where the food is premade!), and even Tim Horton's, fall into a category of "acceptability" where, say, Burger King does not fall.

So, perhaps, I should say: I don't go to fast food hamburger places. Well, except I do go to The Grill Burger Kitchen a few times a year, and my sandwich there would have been faster than today's lunch.

And tastier.

And essentially the same price: that lunch was $9.20, and this one was $8.35.

I do realize that going to Burger King as a guy who doesn't eat beef is possibly silly, but again: my favourite new restaurant near campus in the last couple of years is Fratburger, and they make me quite happy with veggie burgers and turkey burgers. So this shouldn't be a total failure.

Unfortunately, it was. The wait in line and then for my food was long, partly because of bad workflow and partly because (I expect) I hadn't ordered a Whopper, and hence my sandwich had to be made specifically.

The fries were meh. Not really potato-y, with boring ketchup, and not salty enough.

The "tendergrill" sandwich was dry, not tender, and largely flavourless. There was a Mark Bittman article back in March where he talked about how for a lot of sandwiches, decent fake meat would be indistinguishable from boring chicken breasts. This sandwich was a good example of a sandwich that would have been just fine with fake meat.

The toppings were boring too: salty mayo, iceberg lettuce, and flavourless tomatoes. That's it.

Really, the best part of the meal was the "medium" (actually, I think, quite big!) Barq's Root Beer. Barq's got bite.

Yeah.

I had: Combo #7: Tendergrill chicken sandwich, medium fries, medium Barq's
I paid: $8.35
Verdict:
Speed: Not good. I honestly am surprised by how much time this took; I partly went to Burger King because I wanted a quick lunch. I think it was a good 8 or 10 minutes for my sandwich to happen.
Quality: Not good. Really, I just wanted something to be interesting about this meal, and nothing at all was. I can't imagine there's a single person out there who is excited about his or her next Tendergrill sandwich. If there is, I'd like it if we could meet. Actually, I take that back: I expect I'd find such a person disturbing.
Value: Not good. A lot of the Chinese places in the plaza have much cheaper, and larger, lunch specials. If I were trying to just fill up for cheap, this isn't the way to do it. Then again, I think there were other people getting a daily special that might have been much cheaper than what I paid.
Would go back: No, once in 20 years is enough.