Shackler’s Revenge

Completed InFamous with full Good karma.  I’ve started a new game where I’ll be Evil instead.

Minnie and I had dinner at a new place in town.  This is a chain called Beef O’Brady’s.  I know there are others, because I’ve seen at least one.  Ours is quite small, as I doubt most of the others are, since it was put in the old location of a small restaurant that no longer exists. …I was sorely disappointed.  Or, to keep it a bit more optimisitic, I was unimpressed.  It is possible that they just aren’t on top of their game yet, or maybe I just ordered a less than awesome meal, not sure.  I ordered something called a "Slider Basket," and for those who don’t know, the word "slider" refers to simply a small burger.  As in, small enough that you can slide several into your belly in a row.  Krystal, White Castle, even Ruby Tuesday’s "Minis" are sliders.  The basket came with three of those, and while the patties were probably four times the thickness of that on a Krystal, the diameter was smaller.  The fries were pretty good, but the second side promised on the menu– pineapple coleslaw– was nowhere to be seen.  For a price of nearly $8, I could have gotten a Big Mac combo and had a couple of dollars left for perhaps an apple pie or vanilla cone.  The worst part was that the little burgers, though they were supposedly beef (as would be expected at a place called "Beef O’Brady’s"), tasted a lot like slug burgers.  For the uninitiated, a slug burger is an invention which, to my knowledge, cannot be obtained anywhere outside of some 50-mile radius of my hometown.  The patty is a mixture of some type of soy meal and very little beef, fried and put on a regular hamburger bun and traditionally topped with mustard, chopped onion, and often pickles.  The flavor of a slug burger is very unique… and I would say an acquired taste… and not at all appealing if produced by anything other than an actual slug burger.  (They are called "slug" burgers because one could originally buy one for a nickel– half the price of a beef burger in those days– and many people would try to pay with fake nickels, also called slugs.)

Minnie’s meal was better in flavor, but still lacking.  Her ten-piece honey-barbecue boneless chicken wings were quite tasty, but came with no sides, not even fries, and was also roughly $8.  We could have gone to the deli in Wal-Mart and gotten something nearly identical for about 4 dollars a pound, which would most definitely have contained more than ten pieces.  So I suppose I can’t really judge them too harshly, and for a few reasons as mentioned above– they haven’t been open long, and perhaps I made a less awesome selection than I could have. 

I was thinking about something else on the way home from this.  When I decided that a Big Mac meal would have likely been just as filling and probably more delicious, I came to ponder a moment on McDonald’s dollar menu.  Now, generally if you go into McD locations in different towns, you can usually expect to see slight variances in the menu, like how much things cost and what is and is not on the dollar menu. (I’ve even been in one that had an entire item I’d never seen before, though I can’t remember what that might have been.)  I have been in at least one location where the cheeseburger and the double cheeseburger were both on the dollar menu.  What’s up with that?? In Corinth, the cheeseburger and the so-called Big’n’Tasty are both dollar items.  Why order the humble cheeseburger (though I am really fond of the horrid things) when you can, for the same price, get a cheeseburger with a whole extra patty?  Or, for that same dollar, a burger with lettuce and tomato (which the cheeseburger does not have), a distinct lack of ketchup (which the cheeseburger stubbornly boasts), and a thicker patty?  Not that the Big’n’Tasty is actually very good… at least not to me.  And here’s another mystery that’s popped up lately.  I’m not sure if they’re available everywhere, but we now have something called the McDouble.  I ordered one of those recently, since they are, you guessed it, dollar menu items.  I was pretty shocked when I got it, because I would have described the sandwich in my hand as a mere double cheeseburger.  What’s the difference??  Regular bun?  Check.  Two thin patties?  Check.  Cheese?  Check.  Onion diced so small as to be unrecognizable as onion?  Check.  Mustard and (godammit) KETCHUP?  Big check.  This is a fucking double fucking cheeseburger!  What gives, Ronald?  You’ve got two identical items on your menu with two different names!  I would also like to mention that at this particlar McDonalds, while the McMisleading McDouble is a dollar menu item, the double cheeseburger is like $1.39!  They are the damn same!  Somebody explain this mytery.