It’s a quick Lazy Sunday this week as Dr. Wife and I hunker down in the cold. I’m casting my gaze back to two posts from earlier this week, one based in the coolness of the watery depths, the other in the fiery crucible of the modern restaurant industry:
Happy Sunday!
—TPP
Dr. Wife and I love Chili’s. For my European readers who aren’t blessed with the family restaurant concept (I assume you eat at McDonald’s or at pubs), Chili’s is a restaurant that acts like it’s all about Tex-Mex and Southwestern cuisine (that’s an Amazon Affiliate link to my highly unsuccessful book Arizonan Sojourn, South Carolinian Dreams, which features a chapter about eating a massive burrito on the drive to the Grand Canyon; I receive a portion of any purchases made through that link, at no additional cost to you), but really it’s a great burger place with chips and salsa. The food is very American, with a bit of a Southwest twist.
Indeed, when I was playing the role of brash American in the comments section over at Free Speech Backlash, I kept joking with my detractors—the people who objected to the idea that the United States should take Greenland, because 60,000 defenseless Greenlanders have the right to sell their sovereignty to the Chinese but not to the United States—that we’d soon be dining together at the new Chili’s in Nuuk. Eating an Old Timer with Cheese in Greenland will be one of them any blessings of American imperialism. Who needs independence when you can get unlimited chips and salsa for free with the Chili’s app?
But I digress. Chili’s and Texas Roadhouse were the two most profitable and/or fastest-growing restaurant chains in the United States in 2025 for good reason: they offer patrons tons of great food at ridiculously low (for the post-Age of The Virus inflationary world) prices. Dr. Wife and I can split a burger and get out of Chili’s sufficiently stuffed for under twenty bucks.
However, all is not well at Chili’s.
Last March I wrote a lengthy post about different experiences at three different McDonald’s, two in different parts of South Carolina, one somewhere in the wilderness that blurs between Georgia and Florida. According to my budgeting software, the last time I purchased anything from McDonald’s was 17 March 2024, which is shortly before I wrote this post on 20 March 2024.
I like McDonald’s. I do not like what it has become—overpriced, low-quality fast food. The classical trade-off of fast food generally, and McDonald’s particularly, is that, in exchange for low-quality food, you get high consistency and low cost. Now the experience is expensive, inconsistent, and inconvenient.
In other words, it’s not worth it. I’ve always seen McDonald’s as “travel food”—the kind of cheap crap you shovel into your face on a long road trip because it’s quick, hot, and fairly delicious—not as everyday fare, but there are so many superior options. Taco Bell is a vastly more affordable fast food experience, and the food is better—and, I’ll risk claiming it, marginally better for you. I’m not saying Taco Bell is healthy, but a bean burrito is filling and cheap, and way less life-ruining than a Big Mac.
That said, I’m hankering for a Shamrock Shake. ‘Tis the season. If I head back to a McDonald’s anytime soon, I’ll be sure to give a full report on the weird, alien world I encounter.
With that, here is 20 March 2024’s “McDonald’s: A Vision of Our Dystopian Future“:
Pickup my newest release: Leftovers III! Use promo code ziggurat to take an additional 20% off all purchases on Bandcamp! Code expires at 11:59 PM UTC on Tuesday, 31 December 2024.
I’ve just released my tenth album of the year, Leftovers III. It’s really an EP, as it just contains five tracks, but it also contains the longest piece I’ve ever composed, “Hanging Gardens.”
This week I’d like to feature the lead track on the album, “Roast Beef Sandwich.”
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After a busy day of scurrying all over northwestern Indiana and Chicago, my brother and I settled into our accommodations at the Palmer House Hotel and rested for a bit. My older brother is one of those guys who likes to have the television on constantly, and he had it tuned—bizarrely—to CNN (I guess he wanted to go for that “waiting-at-the-doctor’s-office” or “sitting-at-an-airport-concourse” feel). We were in Chicago right after President Biden’s disastrous glitching out during his debate with President Trump, and it was interesting seeing how desperate the CNN anchors and pundits were. The Democratic Governors met and announced their support for Biden, and it reminded me of how much work Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer—the one who the FBI plotted to kidnap to pin it on Republicans—has had done.
I showered the grime of Gotham and CNN from my doughy body and put on my best (and, I’ll hasten to add, only) Mickey Mouse t-shirt, and we went to Pizano’s Pizza and Pasta for dinner, a short walk from out hotel room. Pizano’s obviously serves Chicago deep dish pizza, but they also feature “Chicago Tavern Style,” which I thought Pizza Hut made up as part of a recent advertising campaign (apparently, it’s real).
It turns out that Chicago Tavern Style is not just a clever marketing ploy by a formerly renowned national pizza franchise; it’s actually a Chicagoan innovation to pizza. Basically, it’s the happy medium between, say, New York Style and Chicago Style slices. The crust is a bit thicker, with a doughier quality than New York Style, but not so thick that it’s like eating a lasagna, a la Chicago Style.
Here’s a handy picture to illustrate:
My brother described the crust as “redolent of the oiliness of a Pizza Hut Personal Pan Pizza from the Nineties,” which is the perfect description. We ordered the “Jeweler’s Special” (the Loop is the old jewelers district in Chicago), which came with sausage and giardiniera. Giardiniera is the blend of various peppers and carrots that Chicagoans put on their hot dogs.
The pie was delicious, but too spicy. Keen observers will note the sheen of sweat on my massive forehead. That wasn’t just because of my excess portliness; the peppers were causing sweat to pour down my face.
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Ever since The Age of The Virus, I’ve noticed a general decline in the quality and value of dining and amenities. Every restaurant, hotel, airline, and putt-putt golf course used The Virus as an excuse to trim out all of those little “extras” that we did not consider as such, those little dashes of additional service or product that made visits to these places memorable. Things like peanuts at corporate steakhouses, or regular cleaning of your linens at hotels (apparently, towels aren’t even a given anymore). Meanwhile, prices at all of these businesses have increased, far outstripping “official” inflation numbers.
We all know that is true; furthermore, we all know it already. But what if we look at the lowest common denominator, the dregs of these businesses? What if we look at fast food?
With school back in session, I’m enjoying sandwiches on a semi-regular basis again. I am a great lover of the sandwich, perhaps the most ingenious form factor for delivering vegetables, proteins, carbs, and fats in a handy, handheld package (pizza and burritos also deserve kudos in this regard).
So it was that I thought I might look back at some sandwich related posts:
Happy Sunday—and Happy Eating!
—TPP
Other Lazy Sunday Installments:
Readers are getting a double dose of Myersvision this week, because had I stuck to the usual schedule of posting our dear Audre‘s pieces on Wednesdays, this plucky little review would have been left until midway through January 2023, and I can’t keep it from you (or Audre) that long.
Audre possesses a love for shows that require people performing at the height of their abilities in stressful situations, often with hard cash on the line. This show sounds exactly like that, with an added twist: the hopes and dreams of the would-be restauranteurs involved are also on the line.
Having money to invest is, surely, a wonderful thing, but it comes with the burden of investing it wisely. We have all heard stories of friends or distant relations who made a good investment that reaped dividends in the long-run. We’ve also heard the alternatives, where some poor cousin—usually hoping to get rich quick—has blown his savings on a buddy’s llama farm.
What makes this show sound particularly compelling is that the investors are not mega-wealthy, the types that can afford to lose a cool mill or two and not worry about their Ferrari getting repossessed. These are people that we might call “country comfortable” that have some quid to toss around, but they can’t afford to see it all lost in a failed specialty grilled cheese restaurant in London.
Well, I’ve said too much, and prattled on too long—I think my introduction is now longer than Audre’s piece. D’oh!
With that, here is Audre’s review of Million Pound Menu:
For the first time since 20 December 2020, musician, actor, and writer Frederick Ingram has posted to his niche blog, Corporate History International (with the great, if somewhat cumbersome, URL of https://corporatehistory.international). It’s a short piece about the KitKat Bar, that delicious, wafery little delight with the memorable jingle:
This week is MAGAWeek2021, my celebration of the men, women, and ideas that MADE AMERICA GREAT! Starting today (Monday, 5 July 2021) and running through this Friday, 9 July 2021, this year’s MAGAWeek2021 posts will be SubscribeStar exclusives. If you want to read the full posts, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for as little as $1 a month. You’ll also get access to exclusive content every Saturday.
Is there anything more delicious and American than steak? Red meat is, perhaps, the finest meat God ever created. Sure, pork and chicken are wonderful in their own ways—who doesn’t love pulled-pork barbecue?—but nothing beats a good steak.
Indeed, the noble Texas Longhorn is virtually a symbol for the Old West, just like the cowboys that guided him to market on the long drives of the nineteenth century. The Texas Longhorn, according to Oklahoma State University’s Department of Animal Science, a product of natural selection, meaning the breed is the only beef cattle in the country that is not the product of human-guided animal husbandry or selective breeding. Instead, the cattle adapted to survive specifically in North America, after cattle brought over by Christopher Columbus and early Spanish explorers made their way into what is now the American Southwest.
The Black Angus—a breed most Americans will recognize from endless restaurant adverts—is the most common beef cattle breed in the United States. Grilling Black Angus steaks and burgers was no doubt a major part of many Americans’ Independence Day.
It’s no exaggeration to say that beef built the West, and fed the country in the process.
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The Portly Politico 