Road Trip: Burgers and Fries

Kingman, Arizona

Four long days of driving from St.Louis to the Grand Canyon and on to California meant four quick lunches. This gave us an unanticipated chance to directly compare the quality and taste of MacDonald's, Burger King, and In-N-Out burger. Here's what we decided:

• MacDonald's quarter pounder with cheese isn't that great. On our second visit, I had a McChicken-Cheddar which tasted of nothing but pepper, and had too much breading. The fries are skinny, a little soggy, and not really super tasty. Also they don't pick up the catsup as effectively as the competitors' fries do.
• Burger King's Whopper Jr. was juicier than MacD's burger, and had more lettuce. The fries were thick, crisp, and tasty. Better on both counts.
• In-N-Out Burger deserves its reputation. We see why there are such long lines at all of them -- we stopped at the one in Kingman, Arizona. The burgers are even better, the cheese is meltier, and they have the most lettuce and tomato. The fries are thick, crisp, and just a bit better than fries at Burger King. As I've written before, In-N-Out is a superior hamburger joint, though I'm not sure I agree with people who think it's over-the-top-excellent food and who write poetry about it.

Len pays for In-N-Out Burgers.

So glad our burger-and-fries diet is over and we're in our little apartment with a real kitchen!

Goodbye, Sunshine

In-N-Out Burger, Carlsbad, California

After a glorious sunny morning in Del Mar, California, yesterday, the six of us checked out of our motel and headed north. We stopped just up the freeway in Carlsbad for our last cultural experience: lunch at In-N-Out Burger. We seem to agree that it's a good burger -- though maybe not quite up to the hype and poetry that it sometimes inspires.

By the time we drove up to our airport hotel near LAX, we had lost the good weather: fog or smog now obscured the blue skies we had enjoyed for 10 days. We said our goodbyes to each other and to California in the evening, preparing to fly back to our separate homes early in the morning. It was still dark when the shuttle dropped us at the airport this morning, so I don't know what the LA weather is today.

We arrived back in Ann Arbor happy with our experience of on-time flights and good luck with lines in the airports. As soon as we got home we had to shovel the snow out of our driveway and get over to Whole Foods to stock up the house in anticipation of a predicted storm that's supposed to drop more and more snow (though the predictions are currently being moderated). So many people had the same idea that there were empty shelves and depleted supplies at the store. But we're ready for whatever storm comes our way tomorrow.

The Holy Grail?

After years of procrastination, we finally ate dinner tonight at In-N-Out Burger. We never got around to it during our stay in San Diego in 2009. We are leaving here in just over a week: lucky that we made it this time.

Our expectations were very modest: we had heard that though it's very highly hyped, most level-headed hamburger eaters find the food here just a bit better than MacDonald's. Our expectations were met. AHHHHH.... an ordinary hamburger!



Most of our fellow customers were probably not influenced by Julia Child's admiration for In-N-Out Burger, unlike the foodies lining up at the Super Rica Taqueria. My guess is that most of our fellow customers haven't actually heard of Julia Child at all, since they seem to be mainly high school students, some maybe too young to have even seen "Julie and Julia" (which didn't mention either In-N-Out Burger or Super Rica anyway). I overheard a conversation about falling off a skateboard. Nothing about Julia Child.



So this is it. The Holy Grail, not. Another peak California experience, perhaps.