After barely any food yesterday and another drag of a night with insomnia I thought I’d cheer myself up with a tasty breakfast treat. Most of the breakfast establishments in Woolwich are just too horrific to visit, so I found myself in MacDonald’s. How bad can it be, I thought? I had no idea…
This was what MaccyD’s had the temerity to serve me under the pretence of it being breakfast:
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This travesty of a dining experience consisted of a bacon roll with brown sauce and a hash brown. The roll itself was a flavourless piece of spongy pap; bread only in the very vaguest sense of the word. However, the appalling bread was not a patch on the utter horror that was the soggy, limp, strangely chewy and actively nasty bacon. I’ve had some pretty poor bacon in my life but this was a memorably ranking experience in the annals of vile food. The brown sauce? Well, it was brown. I’d like to dispense with the hash brown as rapidly as possible: it was a rancid lard-soaked conglomeration of fungal foot shavings. Only not so tasty.
I was staggered by how mind-bendingly nauseating this array of filth was. I could not bring myself to choke down more than a few mouthfuls. Even after a night of no sleep and little food there are some depths to which I cannot sink.
I guess MaccaD’s is the place we all love to hate.
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.
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.