this was a pretty nice convertible, again at the latin gents show. it looks black, but if you looked close in the right light, it's a deep, dark, blue. and so shiny, it really soaked up the refections.
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fast food implies crap food. well they try their best, at least you hope. you hope the food is real and not biomechanical by-products. would rather eat play-doh sometimes. i was given a handful of gift cards to crap food places i frequent on my weird work hours.
the habit has recently been popping up all over. first time i had it was at their original establishment in santa barbara last year. wow, it was good; ate there twice in one weekend. then had it somewhere else, still good. then a few months ago, stopped by one in san luis obispo. uh. college town, college students...i gave them a little slack on the quality.
a new one opened up in whittier not too long ago. first burger there was pretty good, but its been spotty since. tonight, i had a salad. it was awesome in santa barbara. it was average in san luis obispo. this one was soggy. instead of slices of avocados, a scoop of "fresh" guac. i had thousand island dressing, which definitely wasn't a name brand, if not just ketchup mixed with stuff already in the store. i ate the chicken and the bacon bits, and an occaisonal bite of wet lettuce and blue cheese bits. am i just catching a bad batch? or have the bean counters caught up with the success, and started cutting back on quality?
will they go the route of other food chains, eventually adding the brass bell to ring for (dis)satisfaction, with the employees like trained pavlovian seals to respond "thank you!" i always substitute "eff you!"
fortunately, i still have a full card for in-n-out, and they mostly are pretty good, about 95% of the time.