I have to agree with you, and it's amazing nobody comes out and says this more often.

You can get frikking Cajun in Day-twah? Wow. I guess it's come a long way in 15 years.

Let me state here that I was perfectly happy with all the native Detroit comestibles. Loose burgers, anyone? Yum, yum, eat 'em up...

Some of the best fast food you can get is in Hawaii at a place called Yummi Korean BBQ. I am salivating just thinking about going there.

Tim the Soldier

Anybody that's local to Detroit absolutely MUST get your hands on some Pastor Winans' Fried Corn and some sweet potato fries from Sweet Georgia Brown downtown. I had some at TasteFest and I swear I had sex with Jesus right there on the street.

I also enjoy McDonald's fries. I feel very strongly about them.

What no slyders on the list? Guess they are better in memory than reality. But then again, memory doesn't serve them well either.

I hear you. I ate a doughnut - an apple fritter, actually - this morning. It was good.

I'll have another in a few months, perhaps. :)

hln

Yeah, a related issue Mr. Cosh mentions that seems to elude a lot of anti-fast food types: the companies adapt to local markets when expanding internationally. We were in Malaysia toward the end of Ramadan last year, and all the US fast food outlets had break-the-fast specials. It was adorable. In Japan, McDonald's sells a Moon Viewing Burger each October (it's the most disgusting thing I've ever put in my mouth, but it is localized) so people can get their own august cultural history and a taste of Americana all in one. We don't want children growing up to think fish are square and honey-beige in the wild, but fast food really is one of our gifts to world culture.

We don't want children growing up to think fish are square and honey-beige in the wild...

Uhhhh, wait a minute....

I haven't much use for McDonalds, but I'll pig out on a double Whopper (no cheese) and fries any ol' time.

My latest fast food innamorata is Popeyes Chicken & Biscuits.

The chicken is just okay, but thier mashed potatoes with Cajun gravy are to die for. Thier red beans and rice should not be missed either. I want to try some of thier other sides too, but I can't pass up the cajun taters, yet...

Oh man, I gotta tell ya. After I wrote that, I was thinking, "I shoulda mentioned Popeye's."

Because those potatoes with Cajun gravy are to die for, their Red Beans and Rice are killer, and don't forget to mention their Dirty Rice....

They've just opened a Harold's in Milwaukee. The sides are just okay, the fried chicken is to die for, and that is as it should be from the fried chicken king.

Triticale - I owe my survival during my penniless college years to Harold's Chicken Shack (of course, that just means I took four years off the back end of my life). Unfortunately, I spent one year living immediately behind the restaurant; I know what you're thinking, and yes, for the first month, it was a godsend. But but having shared an alleyway with Harold's, I don't think I'll ever eat there again. I think some of my old clothes still smell like grease.

Coney dogs.

I'm just saying.

Ara's comment reminded me: Nathan's chains (not the original stand, I haven't had the pleasure) used to have good dogs, but the quality has gone downhill at the one near me.

I get the urge for BK or KFC every once in a while, and I eat it. If other people don't like it, they can eat somewhere else.

We used to have a Popeye's off route 2 in Fitchburg, which I would stop at when driving between western and eastern Mass. Darn thing went and closed on me! That was great stuff, better than KFC.

Here in the Southwest our claim to fastfood fame is 24 hour cheap mexican food. A friend of mine is eating tacos from a different place everyday for a hundred days (he calls this the Tacobration, it's the celebration of tacos). And that's only going to a fraction of them (this in a city, Tucson, of a bit over 500,000 people....WTF is our Mexican Restaurant to person ratio? it must be insane).

At least a half-dozen of the local chains are 24 hour, all of them cheap.

As one of the 50% on average of all Americans who has worked at a McDonald's for at least a day (ugh, 7 months in 1990), also often overlooked is the sheer CLEANLINESS, at least at that mother of all franchisees.

I've never seen so much fucking shining chrome (other chains cleanliness will vary depending on the content of their Three Ring Binders :-)

Of course the uniformity makes each chain a monoculture, so when something goes bad, it also goes bad at all of them.

But yeah, you can't get the level of uniformity that American Fast-Food pioneered without having quality control as a bleeding SIDE EFFECT of that process, aside from it's more explicit manifestations.

When I've started to get sick from local food while traveling, I always head for a chain.

How can anyone really dislike fast food? Burger King, Popeyes, McDonalds, Roy Rogers, they are all good. But I love Burger King's burgers the best. And for the record, I am 5'11 and 170lbs.

Amen on the pizza! Pizza hut sucks. The quality of mom and pop pizza places in in direct relation to their proximity to old school centers of mob activity.
Damn, now I'm starving for a double cheese, mushroom, and pepperoni....

Pizza Hut was not too terrible in Michigan. But then, my needs in pizza are fairly simple: pepperoni, mushrooms, cheese. And if the mushrooms are canned, that's fine with me -- I grew up eating those kind. So given my criteria, it's kind of hard to screw up.

But the Pizza Huts out here in Seattle manage to. Once I received a pizza from them that had been smooshed up in the corner of the box, and the crusts were always soggy and gross. Now I understand while the Hut is almost universally reviled. My guess is that competition from the Michigan Pizza Giants (Domino's and Little Caesar) results in marginally higher standards in Michigan than elsewhere.

It took me some time to find a reliable pizza place after I moved here. Turns out it's a little place in a strip mall about a mile from here, a local outfit that has like three locations in all of Seattle. More expensive than the chains, but worth it when I've got the pizza jones.

Ivar's clam chowder in a bread bowl. Now that's fast food to travel for.

Yeah, Ivar's. Mmmmm. Keep clam!