Fast Food Connoisseur

The older I get, the more I realize there is very little I do well in life. Fast food is one of those things, though. Whenever I see a friend post on Facebook about the latest fine eatery they just dined at, I simple laugh to myself, go to the Checkers website to see what specials they have this week and pat my gut while cooing, “Patience, my pet” to it. Back in the day Jesus was able to feed thousands with a few fish and a loaf of bread. In the modern era, McDonald’s has picked up the slack and served billions with patties of meat that are semi-flammable and glow in the dark. After making that connection, I’m not ashamed to admit that fast food is my church. So let me share with you a few of my favorite places of worship. None of them will disappoint, and I promise they’ll send your blood sugar so high that you’ll hacksaw off your own feet just to save the diabetes the trouble.

CiCi’s Pizza


I first bristled at listing CiCi’s as a mere fast food venue, but then realized that anyone referring to it as a restaurant would sound like the biggest piece of white trash shit that ever walked the Earth. For those of you unfamiliar CiCi’s, it’s a pizza buffet that features all you can eat pizza, pasta and dessert. I think there’s also salad there, but: 1. I couldn’t tell you and 2. Who gives a shit? Only the most self-loathing of eatbeast fatties would ever deign to put an ounce of green on their plate in a place like CiCi’s.

A wise man once said, “Pizza is like sex: Even when it’s bad, it’s still pretty good.” CiCi’s tests that adage like no other pizzeria I’ve ever been to. In fact, the perfect analogy to describe CiCi’s is this: Ever had a woman in your life who you don’t find particularly attractive, but she bugs you constantly for sex and, every few months, you forget how lousy it is with her and cave when she sends you a 3 am text? CiCi’s is that woman. Don’t despair, though: Even after the joy of non-stop mediocre pizza has faded, CiCi’s offers fantastic people-watching opportunities. Be it a broke immigrant family, white trash down from Appalachia or stoned college kids, there’s always a little entertainment with your dinner.

Checkers


What I love most about Checkers is its pricing structure: It offers two of the same, massive burger for $4 or $5. They KNOW no one eating their slop has a friend in the world, so it’s just you, ordering the twofer deal, acting like you have someone to go home to with that second burger. And Checkers is unique in that it offers no place to eat inside, so anyone purchasing food there either has to drive all the way home with it or eat it in the parking lot like an animal. I mean, you’re not ordering food at Checkers because self-control is one of your strong points. So it’s just you with the other whales in the parking lot, shoveling down 82 oz of fried beef fat, casting the same furtive glances at each other that guys who went to porno theaters in the ’70s must have shared. Once in a while the second burger actually survives my initial gorging and I take it home, confident that I’ll eat it five hours later as a second meal. Instead, within 15 minutes I’m staring non-stop at it and sweating like Robert Downey, Jr., confronted with a bathtub full of whiskey.

There is also a design element unique to Checkers that I must praise: The double-drive through. Sure, it speeds up nothing because both windows are serviced by the same kitchen and has led to countless fatal accidents, but it does allow you to go back for seconds without condemnation. More than one time I’ve wolfed down two burgers only to realize, “Hey, the fact that I’m committing suicide with food is depressing. Let’s get a milkshake to cheer me up!” (Inexplicably I always order a small milkshake, as if that’s the secret to a healthy meal at Checkers.) At your average fast food venue, I’d be too disgusted with myself to drive up to the same drive-through cashier twice in one sitting. Thankfully, Checkers spares you that shame, and you can go back for seconds without having to don a fake moustache or wear a burger wrapper like a bandanna to cover your face.

Taco Bell


To this day, I don’t know what Taco Bell gets a bad rap. Everyone I know calls it “Taco Smell” and jokes about it giving them diarrhea, but the place has never once given me the runs (which is more than I can say for McDonald’s, whose Big Breakfast once made me shit so explosively that I had to resort to hand-scrubbing certain areas of my bowl a month later after it became abundantly clear they’d never flush themselves clean). The food tastes decent enough to me and every last item on the menu is dirt-cheap.

My only complaint with Taco Bell is that I always get suckered in for whatever the “new” item on their menu is, even though it is always some permutation of crap they already serve. There was a Volcano Taco that was just a normal taco with a red shell. Then a Black Jack taco which was a normal taco with a black shell. And a Double Layer taco that was just a soft taco smushed against a crunchy taco. On one hand I realize it’s my fault because I shouldn’t be relying on a new bit of fast food to make me forget how much I hate my life, but, on the other hand, stop treating your menu like Legos and mashing shit together and calling it a new item, okay? That’s like a wife trying to bring excitement into a stale sex life by wearing a wig. It’s pathetic. And might end up with him punching you and then having sex with the wig.

Tagged as: CiCi's Pizza, Fast Food, McDonald's, Taco Bell.