The last fast food burger I had--and the last fast food fries, and the last soda of any kind (it was a Coke) was in April of 1977. I remember it because I was driving myself to California, in a '65 Olds I had bought from my brother for $150. I had just turned 19.
I did it because that was the point in moving across country to somewhere I had never been, to an area where I knew no one, in the first place: to break from the habitual, the usual, the 'safe'. I was somewhere in Illinois, made that purchase (a Big Mac, Coke and fries) and when I got into the car with the food just decided that this was one of the things I was going to change. Did so -- and never looked back. Over a very short time I lost the taste for it and, meanwhile, was developing tastes for all sorts of things I'd either never had, never had done well, or had never even heard of.
I eat pretty well on the road. I cook while traveling (sometimes professionally, sometimes not), fine dine when I have time somewhere, find good, usually non-chain restaurants (and taco trucks!) when I am not fine dining, and eat very simply but well when I am in the truck between spots. I am quite happy with a hunk of artisan bread with a piece of great cheese or almond butter on it; a hard boiled egg or two aprinkled with fleur de sel and Aleppo; a mango cut onto a pile of frisée or arugula and drizzled with good oil and vinegar.
Here's an interesting thought (for me anyway): I was thinking in the past many weeks of doing a fast food burger taste test -- just for myself, just to see. It has been a very long time, obviously, and I think it might be fun just to sample fast food burgers from the various national and regional chains and see what I think of them. Why not, right?
