We all know that the first bite is with the eye… but the second bite should be tasty and fill you with happiness. Sadly it rarely does at such establishments.

Quite!

Even fast food can be good food when it is skilfully prepared from quality ingredients. The banh mi I’ve been noshing on recently have been better, and generally cheaper, than my foul breakfast at MaccyD’s. ‘Cheap and fast’ should not equate to ‘cheap and nasty’; if you find your fast food to be lacking then vote with your feet and dine elsewhere.

When I ordered a Big Mac to ‘eat in’ not too long back, I was surprised at how little effort they appeared to have put in to making the food presentable. When I opened up the box the top of the bun was half off and the other half was squashed to a pancake under the other part of the bun… Mayo was partly on the burger and mostly on the bun… and there was more filling scattered around the box than on the burger.

I stood up, took the whole lot back to the front… walked to the front of the (long) queue and in a loud voice (addressing nobody in particular) announced that I needed to see the manager about the quality of food I had been served. Not a very English thing to do… but I got immediate attention from the manager who I proceeded to lecture on food quality. I remember the exact words I used as I handed it back to him for a replacement:

“Get with the programme… hustle, hustle”

If only more of these “family restaurants” got with the programme. Start with better quality ingredients… and teaching the spotty teenagers preparing the food about food quality. We all know that the first bite is with the eye… but the second bite should be tasty and fill you with happiness. Sadly it rarely does at such establishments.