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If you’ve seen the Jack In The Box commercials promoting the imaginary Jumbaco, then you probably already figured that someone would end up trying the item out, even if it isn’t actually on the menu. Sure enough, Serious Eats has gone ahead and tried it so the rest of us wouldn’t have to.
Surprisingly, the review is pretty positive other than the fact that it is so messy:
Cheeseburgers and tacos share a lot of the same core ingredients, so the flavors blended together well (with the exception of the pickle)…The shell added some texture, and the two extra slices of cheese and taco “meat” brought a touch of simulated Mexican flavor to the burger, which is pretty mono-texture and bland on its own. On the downside, you need about one napkin per bite, and under no circumstances should anyone ever look at the slimy meat paste inside the tacos.
Now that you’ve seen someone else eat it, would you try the Jumbaco out?
Sometimes getting in your car and going down the street is just too much work, but you still have to eat at some point. That’s why Burger King is planning to try out a delivery service in certain U.S. markets. Presumably, if the plan goes well there, the service will expand to the rest of the U.S. Would you order delivery from BK or would you rather just head over to the drive through?
Link Via The Consumerist
Image Via scriptingnews [Flickr]
I recently posted an article about discontinued snack foods, and many of our readers pointed out that some of the foods were still available in other countries. As it turns out, fast food companies operate in a similar manner, offering local favorites to other countries that they would never consider selling in America. Here are a few American fast food establishments and the dishes they don’t offer in America.
In Canada, poutine, fries covered in cheese curds and gravy, is offered at almost every fast food restaurant, but BK offers their own varieties that fit in with the rest of their food –most notably, the Angry Poutine with fried onions and peppers on top.
In Puerto Rico, mallorcas, sweet pastry buns, are a popular breakfast treat and Burger King takes full advantage of the popularity of these buns by offering the King Mallorca, filled with ham, eggs and three different cheeses. If you want something even more filling, you might want to try their Enormous Omelet, which isn’t an omelet at all, but actually one of the restaurant’s long hamburger buns filled with a hamburger patty, two eggs, bacon and cheese. Later in the day, you can always snack on some King Wings, which are buffalo wings marinated in honey –why aren’t these sold in America yet?
In many countries, including the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Colombia and Mexico, you can enjoy the deliciously fatty Cheesy Whopper, which features a deep fried disc of cheese on top of a standard Whopper.
Personally, I want to try the Hawaiian BK Chicken available in New Zealand, which is like all the other chicken sandwiches Burger King sells, only it features bacon and pineapple. Sign me up!
The variety of KFC’s international menus is simply astounding, as the American version exclusively limits itself to fried chicken and a few sides, while the international franchises seem to have no limits on what they serve. On the more standard side, there is the Fillet Tower Burger, which is available throughout Europe and other locations, which is essentially just a chicken sandwich topped with a hashbrown. On the other end of the spectrum is the menu from Thailand, which features stir fries, a tuna and corn salad, fish fingers (like chicken fingers, but fish) and a donut filled with shrimp meat. China offers a similarly strange menu compared to the standard KFC fare, as it includes corn salad, beef wraps, red bean porridge, shrimp burgers and an egg and vegetable soup.
more …
In what is sure to be the wackiest food marketing campaign yet, the French fast food chain Quick have released their Force burgers, to promote the release of The Phantom Menace in 3d.
This bold, and absolutely disgusting looking, burger features a bun that is dyed black, ensuring that only a true Sith Lord will want to have anything to do with it!
What do you think-would you eat a burger with a black bun, or is the color enough to put you off the Vader deluxe?
What is a entrepreneur to do after he makes a fortune from his Flip camera company? Start his own high-tech grilled cheese restaurant, of course. Or at least, that’s what Jonathan Kaplan is doing with “The Melt” restaurant he’s launching. The fast food eatery will offer a variety of cheese sandwiches that can be cooked up in under a minute. Plus, customers will be able to order their food over the phone or internet ahead of time.
I don’t know about you, but I’d be happy to stop by and snack on a yummy cheese sandwich if one of these popped up in my neck of the woods.
Link Via Laughing Squid
A photo gallery in the Lexington Herald-Leader documents how a lucky squirrel retrieved an entire fast-food meal in a trash can at a city park.
The squirrel climbed inside the can and came out with a french fry. After eating the fry, it went back in the can and came out with the remains of a fish sandwich. Local parks were crowded this afternoon as temperatures neared 70.
The story was featured on the front page of the paper, prompting debate on its newsworthiness. It may be filler for a newspaper, but it’s just right for Neatorama. Link -via Fark
(Image credit: Charles Bertram/Lexington Herald-Leader)
The first hamburger franchise opened in Pyongyang, North Korea last summer. The unfamiliar hamburgers have become such a hit that customers must make reservations, and the lines are still long. Samtaesung (Food) and Cool Beverages calls their sandwiches “minced meat and bread” to avoid using the American word “hamburger”.
According to rates displayed on the restaurant’s menu, the cost of a hamburger is 228 North Korean won, or more than U.S. $2 according to the official exchange rate, putting it outside of the budget of the average citizen.
According to the Pyongyang resident, customers can pay in North Korean won, U.S. dollars, euros, or Chinese yuan.
Initially, the resident said, Samtaesung was frequented only by people who had traveled overseas or those who wanted to try the food out of curiosity, but the hamburger joint soon became very popular.
He said that many Pyongyang residents are now fond of hamburgers, though the greasier taste of the food takes some getting used to.
“The third time you eat a hamburger, you really get to appreciate it. By the time you’ve had your fifth, you’re already addicted to the taste,” he said.
The restaurant is owned by Kim Jong Il’s sister. Link -via Breakfast Links
International symbols for successful brands don’t change a lot, but they do change. The point of a fast food logo is to make a known brand recognizable at a distance for those who are new to the neighborhood. Here are the histories of some restaurant logos you’ll recognize anywhere.
Dick and Mac McDonald made a good living selling 15 cent hamburgers in California in the 1940s. They began to branch out in the 1950s, and wanted a distinctive look for the franchised hamburger stands. A building design by architect Stanley Clark Meston incorporated several of Dick McDonald’s ideas, including the two golden arches that framed the building. Meston hated the idea, until years later when McDonalds became an American icon. The first such building went up in Phoenix, Arizona in 1953. Many buildings also used one golden arch to support the sign out front. As more McDonalds opened, the arches became recognizable to travelers all over the country. Meanwhile, the McDonald’s symbol was a chef named SpeeDee until he was officially replaced as a logo in 1962 and as mascot by Ronald McDonald in 1967. Speedee was nice, but it was the arches that everyone recognized. In 1962 Jim Schindler, the head of engineering and design for the company, sketched a logo that incorporated both the arches and the buildings’ slanted roof. The genius of the design was that the arches formed an “M”. The simplified modern double arch design was trademarked in 1968 and is still in use today.
The Burger King chain began in 1954 in Miami as an Insta Burger King outlet. James McLamore and David R. Edgerton, Jr. changed some Insta Burger King ideas and added some of their own, such as the flame-broiling that became Burger King’s signature technique. The logo was developed in 1967 to resemble a hamburger, with bun halves surrounding the name. It was in use chain-wide by 1969. The design was updated in 1994 to add a blue swirl to the now slightly-tilted burger.
Kentucky Fried Chicken has always included its founder Colonel Harland Sanders in its logo. Sanders was a restauranteur since 1930 and franchised his chicken recipe in 1952. The original logo design was created by consultants Lippincott and Margulies in 1952 and updated in 1978. Schechter and Luth created the red logo in 1991, with the chain name shortened in order to get away from the connotations of the word “fried”. The 1997 update by Landor put a smile on the Colonel’s face. Tesser redrew the Colonel again for the 2006 logo, which put the Colonel in the kitchen, so to speak, as he is now wearing an apron. He’s also noticeably slimmer than he ever was in real life.
Glen Bell opened the first Taco Bell restaurant in 1962 as a spin-off of his Taco-Tia restaurants in California. The first franchise logo resembled someone asleep wearing a sombrero. PepsiCo bought Taco Bell in 1978 and immediately replaced the logo with a simpler and less controversial bell symbol. The even simpler purple and pink logo was introduced in 1995, inspired by the color treatment of the logo as it appeared in the 1993 movie Demolition Man.
See also: The Stories Behind Ten Famous Food Logos, Evolution of Car Logos, and The Evolution of Tech Companies’ Logos.
On April 15, 1955, Ray Kroc opened his own McDonald’s franchise in Des Plaines, Illinois (seen below). While tons of people head to this so-called “first McDonald’s” every year, the fact is, the building standing there is not only not the first McDonald’s (Kroc actually opened the ninth location of the franchise), it’s not even the original building, but just a reconstruction. Even so, that spot of ground did have a huge impact on American life as we know it and spawned what was at one point the largest restaurant chain in the world –the title is now held by Yum! Brands (KFC, Taco Bell, etc.) and followed by Subway.
Image via ChicagoGeek [Flickr]
When I was a kid, I always thought whoever Mr. McDonald was, he must be super rich. As it turns out, Richard and Maurice McDonald, who started the original restaurant, only made $2.7 million on the deal. While that does seem like a good amount of cash, just think how much the restaurant is worth these days. To make matters worse, the brothers insisted on retaining the rights to their first restaurant in San Bernardino, so Ray opened a McDonald’s restaurant right by theirs and ran them out of business. Worse still, even though the original deal involved the brothers earning 0.5% of the chain’s annual revenues, Kroc refused to honor that part of the verbal agreement after the McDonald’s brothers refused to sell him their original restaurant and the land it stood on.
And it’s not like the McDonald’s Brothers didn’t do anything but open an everyday burger joint; if they did, Ray probably wouldn’t have been so interested in taking the whole thing over. They innovated many of the ideas that have made modern fast food restaurants so successful, including assembly line kitchens, simplistic menus and self-serve counters. The menus had nothing on them but hamburgers, cheeseburgers, French fries, potato chips, sodas, milkshakes and apple pies. Because things were so quick and efficient, prices were about half of what it cost to get a similar meal at a diner.
Image via _skynet [Flickr]
It wasn’t too long after Kroc took over completely that the chain expanded out of America, first to Canada, then Costa Rica, Panama, Japan, Europe and Australia. These days, there’s McDonald’s located all over the world. In fact, the image above shows just how widely spread they are in the U.S.
While this world-wide globalization has led to many negative views of the corporation, some people say the company has actually helped improve the standard of service in some areas of the world. For example, when McDonald’s opened in Hong Kong in 1975, it was the first restaurant to consistently offer clean public restrooms. Soon afterwards, customers began to demand the same from other restaurants in the area.
Whether McDonald’s has a positive or negative impact in the country it enters may be a matter of opinion, but one thing the restaurant takes great pride in is their localization of the menu based on the native tastes of the area. Some interesting menu items from around the world include:
Images via Weather Sealed, xetark [Flickr], Allan Reyes [Flickr],
Even in America, certain locations have their own specialty treats. The McLobster and McCrab are served seasonally throughout New England. And in the late 1990’s, Chicago locations offered a hamburger with barbecue sauce and Canadian bacon that was dubbed “the Beef Wennington” after a notable Chicago Bulls player.
Many of the company’s biggest successes were actually created locally by franchisees, including the Filet-O-Fish, the Big Mac and the Egg McMuffin. The Filet-O-Fish was made by a Cincinnati franchise owner who wanted to offer his Catholic customers a meal they could still eat on Fridays and during lent. Ray Kroc tried a similar idea at his original restaurant, but his Hula Burger, a sandwich a pineapple slice in place of meat was a huge flop.
As for the Big Mac, it was created by an early Pittsburgh franchiser who wanted to serve something adults would enjoy when feeding their kiddos at the restaurant. The corporate heads told him he could only create new menu items creating ingredients on the existing menu, which is where the Big Mac was born.
The Egg McMuffin was in a similar position as the Big Mac inventor, only he went ahead and added a new creation to the menu without contacting headquarters. The corporation was quite upset that he started selling the McMuffin without their blessing, but they quickly changed their minds when they saw how popular it was.
Image Via VirtualErn [Flickr]
It’s not only the menu that headquarters like to keep consistent. Locations are largely required to look similar to one another on the inside. That’s not to say there aren’t a few stand out locations though. The “Solid Gold McDonald’s” by the Rock and Roll of Fame is themed after fifties rock and roll. Victoria, British Columbia has a restaurant with a 24-carat gold chandelier and other fancy light fixtures (seen above). The McDonald’s in Stratford-upon-Avon has a very subtle design, as all buildings in the area are required to conform to the historic look of Shakespeare’s birthplace.
Whether you love McDonald’s or loathe it, there’s no arguing that the restaurant has had a huge impact on our society. Heck, Fast Food Nation has estimated that one of eight workers in America have been employed at the restaurant at some point of their lives. So you guys have any weird McDonald’s in your area? Maybe one with unique menu items or a strange design.
Image Via buschap [Flickr]
Sources Mental Floss #1, #2, Food Network Humor, Wikipedia #1, #2, #3
Vetutius Placidus’ thermopolium (snack bar) in the ruins of Pompeii will reopen nearly 2,000 years after a volcanic eruption destroyed the city and Placidus’ clientele:
The thermopolium, one of the best preserved sites in Pompeii, has been closed to the public for years in order to protect it from further damage. But following months of detailed excavation and preservation work, all visitors will soon be able to go inside and get an idea of a typical ancient Roman lunch establishment.
Inside, as in many modern cafés and bars, visitors are greeted with a large, L-shaped, decorated counter where customers stood to enjoy a quick lunch. Cylindrical holes in the bar contained glass dolia, or jars, displaying food.
Link via The Presurfer | Photo: flickr user lyng883, used under Creative Commons license
John Manley of Wilmington, North Carolina suffered frequent pneumonia and coughing spells for over a year before the real culprit was found: there was a jagged inch-long piece of plastic lodged in his left lung. It turned out to be part of a utensil from Wendy’s Hamburgers. Manley was referred to Dr. Momen Wahidi, director of interventional pulmonology at Duke University for removal of the object.
Wahidi said Manley’s case presented challenges because so much scar tissue had formed around the object. But he was soon able to uncover more and more of the mystery item. He called out letters — an A, a B, a U, an R.
“We figured out during the case that it was saying hamburger,” Wahidi says. “But why would something that says hamburger be in this patient’s body?”
Manley thinks he probably inhaled the plastic when he gulped a drink. He now drinks with a straw. Link -via Terra Sigillata
Looks like America is not the only country that needs to be weary of fast food. While not many outside the US can see the appeal of
a Big Mac, people in Morocco just love the McArabia.
This new sneaky tactic of adapting global fast food chains to the local palette is happening all over the
world from squid topped Dominoes pizza in Taiwan to KFC’s vegetarian Chana Snacker, a chickpea burger topped with Thousand Island sauce, in India.
Watch out global obesity! I see a plot for a Super Size Me sequel.
Walk into a McDonald’s in Morocco and you’ll find a sandwich you can’t get anywhere else in the world: a cumin-spiced flatbread creation called the McArabia Tagine.
“Honestly it tastes Moroccan,” said Noor El Ghoumari, 34, a man who had just paid 53 dirhams, or about $6.60, for a meal with one of the ground beef sandwiches in Rabat on a recent afternoon. “This is a local McDonald’s and obviously they have to adapt.”
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by CherryBomb.
You read about fast foods of Europe and Asia and Australia, now in the third part of the series, HealthAssist takes a look at fast food from South and Central America. For example, in Panama:
Fondas are one of the most popular places to grab a meal on the go. These small kiosk-type restaurants serve their food from glass boxes heated by a light bulb. Most, if not all of the food served in fondas are fried – rice, hojaldres, pork chunks, empanadas. Fondas also serve a soup called sancocho. Sancocho is a type of chicken soup flavoured with onion and cilantro.
Link -Thanks, Karen!
Continuing the series begun with Fast Food in Europe (previously at Neatorama) HealthAssist takes a look at fast foods found in Australia and various Asian countries. In Indonesia:
In most cities it is common to see Chinese dishes such as bakpao (buns), bakmi (noodles), and bakso (meatballs). Though, pork is not used since the majority of Indonesians are Muslims. Another popular Indonesian street foods and snacks are siomay (mackerel fish meat served with peanut sauce, pempek (fish and sago), bubur ayam (chicken congee), bubur kacang hijau (green beans porridge), satay (diced or sliced chicken, goat, mutton, beef or fish), nasi and mie goreng (fried rice and fried noodle), gorengan (Indonesian assorted fritters).
Link -Thanks, Karen!
Fast food grease as art? Yep. Watch as artist Phil Hansen creates a huge replica of the Mona Lisa using nothing but grease squeezed from hamburger patties – and it only took him 10 double burgers to do it.
He didn’t just do this for fun, though… it’s actually an Arby’s ad.
Previously on Neatorama: Bruce Lee Speed Painting | Phil Hansen’s Influence: a Body Paint Art
HealthAssist is beginning a series on fast food around the world, beginning with Europe. In Denmark, sausages resembling long hot dogs called røde pølser are dipped in ketchup, and bread is a side dish. In the Netherlands, french fries are most commonly dressed in mayonnaise. Of course, in Belgium you can buy waffles from a fast food stand. In Poland, enjoy Zapiekanki which resembles a pizza sandwich. In most of Europe, fast food means sausage. Link -Thanks, Karen!
Self proclaimed mainstream-subversive art collective Superflex, decided they’d answer a question nobody had ever bothered to ask: "What does a McDonald’s restaurant look like as it slowly fills with water?"
Although we should thank them as they took the time to painstakingly recreate a McDonald’s and slowly flood it, filming it all for an exhibition at the South London Gallery.
It’s actually quite a satisfying thing to watch a generic boring fast food joint wash away, be sure to check out the video on the page.
Their latest work is a short film, “Flooded McDonald’s”, where they’ve (shockingly accurately) created a full-size replica of the inside of the ubiquitous fast food joint and then slowly filled it with water. Playing now in an exhibition at South London Gallery, the film is exactly what the title suggests and yet so much more.
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Jake.
Are you dying for a Whopper right now, but don’t have a dime to your name? Do you have Facebook? Well, problem solved – download the Whopper Sacrifice application. If you have 10 friends you’re willing to dump on Facebook, Burger King will send you a coupon for a free burger. Plus, the people you ditched get e-mails saying that the King means more to you than they do. I think that’s weird, and pretty crappy. But I guess if you get 10 friends in on it and warn them that you’re going to dump them but not to be offended, you can have yourself a pretty painless, free Whopper. Or you could just dig around in your couch cushions and check the dryer for coins. You can probably come up with a couple of bucks for a Whopper.
Previously on Neatorama: Whopper Perfume. I have to say, their marketing gets my attention. It doesn’t send me to Burger King, but it does get my attention.
As if the Burger King isn’t creepy enough all on his own, now you can smell like him. I’m still hoping this perfume is a joke. It’s called Flame, and for a mere $3.99, you can smell like “the scent of seduction, with a hint of flame broiled meat.”
That’s really all I can say about this. Color me flabbergasted.
Link via Slashfood. Photo from Adland.
Apparently, taking a bath in the sink is becoming a meme of sorts for fast food workers. Last time, it was at Burger King in Xenia, Ohio. This time: a KFC in Anderson, California. Redding Record Searchlight has the story:
Hijinks in the sink at an Anderson fast-food restaurant have cost three girls their jobs.
After closing the Anderson Kentucky Fried Chicken one recent night, the girls stripped to their underwear or changed into bathing suits and took a bath in the dishwashing sink. One of them posted the photos of the event on her public MySpace Web page.
The girls’ manager said she first learned of the photos on Tuesday and suspended the trio. On Wednesday, they were fired, said Rick Maynard, a KFC spokesman.
And the girl that posted it on her MySpace page? Here’s her reaction:
After removing the photos on her MySpace page from public access late Tuesday, the 17-year-old girl who had posted the photos made her entire page private Wednesday.
She also put up what appears to be a message for the media.
On the lone part of her page that is still public, she wrote: (sic)"Its a sad world when one has to stoop low enough to go through ones dirty laundry….one womans trash is anothers treasure! -Thanks alot for having good respect how can you live knowing the little bit of money you made was made hurting someone!"
This bit of news above puts Mike Jacobsen’s "Sizzlin’ Chicken" design (on Neatorama’s Online Store) in a completely different light:
