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There was a wonderful short video some time back, which I doubt I could find now, of a debunking experiment involving McDonald's food. A foodie convention was in town, filled with the kind of people for whom "McDonald's" is an epitat. Some pranksters took Chicken McNuggets, sliced them up, and artfully presented them as appetizers. I think small slices of bread, toothpicks, and some salady garnishes were involved, with all the ingredients coming from the Micky D's menu, sliced and rearranged. And presto: add a little imagination, and Chicken McNuggets become hors d'oeuvres.

The foodies raved over them.

There are two possible morals to the story. One is that most foodies are pretentious poseurs whose opinions are mostly affectations having to do with status markers rather than food. The other is that McDonald's food is fine; simple, cheap, and convenient, but fine in its class. These two explanations are not mutually exclusive.

I don’t doubt what you watched and that many gullible people were duped, but I sort of doubt that the “foodies” in question were actual “foodies” - as in people who really understand and appreciate good food made with fresh quality ingredients and lovingly and artfully prepared. Gussying up Chicken McNuggets with some garnishments doesn’t change the fact that they are made with ground up chicken and chicken “by products” with lots of added fillers like cornmeal and other binding and filler additives and then breaded with way too much breading…..the texture is rubbery, the color of the “chicken” looks sort of grey and only vaguely resembles and tastes like “chicken”.

Although I will say that I am a fan of the show “Chopped” and some of the chefs make some amazing dishes with odd, unusual and sometimes “bad” pre-packed food items that no self-respecting chef would ever use in their restaurant and they do some amazing things with the ingredients, repurposing them, but then that involves a lot more than just slicing them and putting them on a plate with some artfully arranged garnishments.

That’s not to say that I’m a food snob; in a pinch, when I’m getting home very late from work with nothing in the fridge and too tired to cook and nothing else open, I will sometimes stop at my neighborhood McDonalds but mostly at this time of year to get a Shamrock Shake, although I usually prefer the Wendy’s located right next to it – I find Wendy’s marginally better than McDonalds. But by far the best “fast food” chicken is found at Chick-fil-A.

Just because these folks were attending some sort of food event/convention doesn’t mean they actually know good food and as I’ve learned, there is no accounting for some people’s taste in food.

True story. In the early 90’s I was with a big bunch of friends in OC, MD – we were all attending an AA convention; my husband being a recovering alcoholic and very active in AA and I being in Al-Anon. One of our friends kept raving about this really great restaurant located out of town, somewhere between OC and Salisbury; how great the food and service was – that it was a “family style” restaurant and in my experience “family style” and serving old fashioned “comfort food” doesn’t preclude it from being very good food.

So a bunch of us followed him and his wife to this restaurant with great anticipation of getting a really good meal.

When we drove up it looked like a ramshackle dive bar/mobile home (not that outward appearances mean much, I’ve gotten some great meals at places that don’t look like much from the outside), but the parking lot was mostly empty – not a very good sign for a Saturday night even in early September, the weekend after Labor Day.

Our large group consisting of about 15 people got seated very quickly and it’s no wonder since we seemed to be their only customers – but heck, I was thinking the place could be a “diamond in the rough” since it was well off the beaten track and several miles off the main highway, far from the tourist traps, but then I wondered that if this restaurant was so good, why don’t I see any “locals” eating here?

We soon found out.

Our server, an older grey haired grandmotherly looking lady was very, very nice and quite attentive. But I and one of my friends knew we were in trouble when she brought us the “bread basket” and it was, and I’m not at all exaggerating, a basket of what looked like packaged grocery store bought hamburger rolls, and they were not heated and they were very dry and stale. And it wasn’t served with pats of butter, butter making even stale bread a bit better, but with a plate of semi melted margarine.

One of my friends, who BTW grew up in New Orleans and had family in the restaurant business down there, high end restaurants and who really knew her food, asked the server about the “Crab Cakes”, asking if they were fired or broiled and having myself grown up in Baltimore and knowing something about crab cakes and thinking I might want a good MD style crab cake too, our sever then told us “neither - they come frozen and we just heat them up in the microwave”. : (

Needless to say, she and I skipped the crab cakes. But what I ended up ordering was not any better. I ordered the “home made” meat loaf with mashed potatoes and green beans and what I got was more like a very old and well out of date Swanson frozen TV dinner heated up in the microwave than what I would expect to pay for at a restaurant. It was horrible - bland, tasting of freezer burn, and came to the table lukewarm. My friend ordered a ceaser salad with grilled chicken and what she got was a plate of brown around the edges, half mushy iceberg lettuce with a few pieces of what seemed to be frozen and breaded chicken nuggets half warmed up in a microwave and cold in the middle and with a slice of half melted American Cheese on top. Ug!

To add injury to insult, the lighting, the electrical system in this restaurant was on the fritz and or was possibly possessed by demons or the ghosts of former diners who died tragic and untimely deaths from eating the food served here. The wall sconces in the dining room kept going from dim to bright to off and back on again. I swear I thought that the place might go up in flames any minute from an electrical fire and given the meal I was just served, it might have been a blessing to be put out of my misery.

The whole experience was so bad as to be comical. My friend from New Orleans and I joked for many years after about how horrid and yet how comical is all was.

Yet our friend who recommended this place to us and convinced us to go there, after our very bad meal said, “didn’t I tell you how great this place was?”

He actually thought the food and the service was good.

There is no accounting for some people’s taste.