Based on the tiny rendering (pictured) on the Brooklyn Eagle’s site, this is going to be one classy Arby’s.
Horsey Sauce and More
Based on the tiny rendering (pictured) on the Brooklyn Eagle’s site, this is going to be one classy Arby’s.
New Adventures of Old Christine
Not a particularly fresh angle either, anti-Morgan Spurlocks abound. Deshan Woods, who lost weight by eating exclusively at McDonald’s, is just one that I had time to look up. Even the Swedes got into the debunking.
There is no secret to losing weight. Reducing calories and increasing activity are tried and true (spending an hour at the gym, then eating fried chicken will not result in weight loss—I can tell you that first hand).
Almost anyone could lose weight eating fast food daily. 2,000 calories is the number typically used as an ideal for the average woman’s daily intake (2,500 for men). If you wanted to lose a modest but healthy one pound per week you would need to shave 500 calories a day off this number.
For 1,500 calories you could scarf a Whopper (670 calories) and a Cinnabon (730) every single day and lose weight (1,400 total). You probably wouldn’t stay full and would become completely scurvy-ridden and deficient in essential nutrients. So, you could also eat zero and near-zero-calorie roughage like carrots and broccoli and use the remaining 100 calories for an apple (65 calories) or an orange (85 calories).
This is assuming you are completely sedentary. 45-minutes-to-an-hour on an elliptical trainer would probably allow you a small handful of fries (220 calories for BK value menu size, 340 for a small).
Fast food isn’t a particular weakness of mine, though I am proud of my proposed miracle diet. I do like to drink, however. Why blow hundreds of dollars on those silly juice cleanses when you could drop weight fasting on seven martinis a day (roughly 200 calories each)? Everyone knows that cleansing is about getting thin not detoxing or being healthful.
Unrelated: why do people insist on spelling lose as loose?
Five-Dollar Foot Longs 105 Stories Up
Subway is hardly an adequate replacement for Windows on the World but for now the sandwich chain is the newest and only food vendor at the Freedom Tower construction site.
I’m still not clear how the whole operation works in a shipping container. Too bad it’s not open to the public.
AP Photo/Mark LennihanThere Goes the Beef
Keeping balance in the universe (or at least the Asian continent), Japan loses Wendy's after a 29 years in the country while the chain returns to Singapore after a ten-year absence.
In Russia Burgers King You
In what sounds like fake news, the mayor of Moscow apparently started a doomed chain called Russian Bistro in 1995 to compete against McDonald's. Their slogan: "It does not hurt to try."
Bun Troubleshooting Tool photo from a photo tour of a Russian McDonald's factory at Funatiq.
Chain Links: Hipster Black Shirts
Slate asks why Arby's is struggling more than other fast food chains. Moneybox columnist Daniel Gross thinks it's the low quality meat, lack of healthy options and "killer non-meat app." Hey, what do you call that Jamocha shake?
Meanwhile, Brooklynites who don't care about taste and fast food salads will soon be treated to the borough's first Arby's in the historically landmarked Gage & Tollner space.
On the other end of the spectrum, Ruby Tuesday has spent around $100 million in efforts to create more upmarket food, service and decor, pretty gutsy in this economy. Will servers "clad in hipster black shirts and black pants," lobster tails and wine suggestions work for a chain best known for its burgers?
Tidbits I didn't previously know: Ruby Tuesday owns an inn called RT Lodge that used to only be for managers but is now open to the public (road trip?). Also, Peter Glander, Ruby Tuesday's executive chef (pictured above with the chain's founder) used to be a sous-chef at The Modern.
White Manna
Did I love it? Sure. Then again, I love White Castle. No burger snoberry here.
Technically, White Manna isn't a chain because it's not affiliated with the Jersey City location with the missing N, White Mana. Close enough for me, though.
Perhaps to my detriment, I’ve never been one of those single-minded bloggers who can focus clearly on passions like pizza or hating cilantro. In this case, I’m talking about burgers, the everyman foodstuff of the moment.
Recently my attention has been drawn to Nick Solares’ New Jersey slider posts on A Hamburger Today not because I’m slider-crazed but because I’m in this part of that state, specifically Linden, at least once a month if not more getting my share of mall culture and classic late 20th century chains. And I’d never paid any mind to these still thriving (well, some of them—the Linden White Diamond closed right after I read about it) relics I drive by on a regular basis.
White Rose System in Roselle was a bust because I became inexplicably car sick on the way there and couldn’t appreciate my full-sized ketchup-heavy kaiser roll slider (slider doesn’t equal mini burger, it is specific to the griddle steaming process) and crinkle cut fries, and these places almost always serve crinkle cuts.
The following Saturday on the tail end of an unusally burger-filled week (Thursday I had a cheeseburger at Waterfront Ale House—they’ve always done right by me but on this occasion by medium-rare came out medium-well. Maybe that’s why I forget my uneaten half in the car overnight and didn’t even feel pain when I tossed it in the trash) we decided to try the no-secret-to-anyone (heck, Guy Fieri’s graced the compact red-and-silver diner with his outsize presence) White Manna in Hackensack, a little further north than my usual stomping grounds.
Two seats opened up at the counter after we arrived so we weren’t relegated to the midget seats in the window. I know Americans have grown since the ’40s, but a whole foot? This was the perfect spot for viewing the cooking procedure, which takes a little longer than you might think. Compared to McDonald’s (I was going to say White Castle to be more apples to apples but a person could go gray waiting for a combo there) this is not really fast food. It can take ten minutes for the naked balls of meat to make it from the right side of the crammed griddle to the left, potato roll on top, cheese melted, steamed through and through.
The finished product is a bit more substantial than a White Castle slider, and the meat’s texture is less baby food mushy. If you order yours to stay you add you own pickles, ketchup and/or mustard. The only off part to me were the onions, which are thinly cut rings instead of chopped bits. There’s no way to take a bite without a strand or two of onions pulling out while you try to gnaw free.
White Manna * 358 River St., Hackensack, NJ
First There Was Cake Batter Ice Cream
Photo from less apathy more cake
Yes, the internets have been abuzz over the Japanese Burger King’s Windows 7 Whopper. That’s an impressive novelty to be sure.
But why am I just now hearing about the Burger King cupcake shake? It appears that the cupcake trend has finally began to trickle down to the fast food arena. First, red velvet cupcakes quietly showed up in Southern California Taco Bells and now this.
When do you think fast food joints will start deploying food trucks? Northwest chain, Burgerville, already has a Nomad.
