MOUTH OF THE COLUMBIA: Fast food, part 3: Sub shops go head-to-head
Published 5:00 pm Wednesday, May 26, 2010
It would be possible to continue this well-intended foray out of my familiar territory for weeks and weeks, as each drive-through provides an astonishing array of foods differing greatly in taste and quality, each location worthy of its own reconnaissance and dissertation. But I’m not so comfortable in these waters. One must forget everything he knows about real food and food history to traverse this genre with any sense of fair-mindedness … or must he?
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Is the multi-processed, pre-cooked, re-heated beef involved in a McDonald’s hamburger not an affront to the original freshly-ground hamburger sandwiches of the late 19th century? Should Taco Bell’s audacious bastardization of traditional Mexican foods be accepted for what it is and not contrasted with the real article from which it takes so many names? I worry about a generation of children that will grow up and travel to Mexico in search of “authentic” nacho cheese sauce.
This will be my final take on fast food.
First off, an apology on not making good on all of my promises. I mentioned I’d be comparing fast food coffee with Starbucks and Starbucks food to fast food restaurants. As it turns out, the food menus I’d seen in Portland and Vancouver were not indicative of the offerings in local Starbucks. Faced with various cookies and scones and only one savory sandwich item, I decided to scrap that. And as for the BK and McDonald’s coffees, I tried a few iced beverages. The former tastes like YooHoo and the latter is just way too sweet. Both lacked the coffee in the coffee. But what did I expect?
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Sandwiches: Subway vs. Quiznos
Subway is the only “fast food” restaurant I actually patronize on a somewhat regular basis. They’ve used their healthy alternative ad campaigns to incredible success, beating out Burger King for the No. 2 spot in the fast food world. And although you can certainly get high-calorie food at Subway, it’s much easier to make a healthier decision. All of the nutrition information is on the napkins, and the fat-free sauce choices are listed throughout the store. The best thing about Subway is the variety of breads, condiments and vegetables to customize your sandwich. It’s also nice to see your sandwich being made. I’ve never found anything objectionable in a Subway sandwich. One thing I’ve noticed is that different locations offer different things. I used to get pastrami subs locally, but it’s hard to find it anymore. Spinach and carrots also pop up sporadically at other locations. The biggest surprise to me was that Subway’s breakfast omelet subs are actually good.
Quiznos has been around since the 1980s, but hadn’t launched a successful national advertising campaign until much later when it set its sights on Subway. Establishing themselves with the toasting worked up until Subway started offering the same service within a couple of years. I first gave Quiznos a try about 10 years ago and was disappointed with the texture of the bread. It was as if their signature toasting was just a cover-up for staleness. That and the fact that what I like about subs is the vegetables, the idea of a handheld salad, and that doesn’t work too well with their conveyor belt broilers.
A recent trip to Seaside’s Quiznos proved considerably better. The classic Italian sub ($6.99 for the equivalent of a footlong) had four meats, mozzarella cheese, black olives, lettuce, tomatoes and a red wine vinaigrette which really made the sandwich. The bread was pretty browned, but not overly so. I really liked it, but I didn’t have the veggie options of Subway, and a toasted Spicy Italian sandwich would’ve been $5 and bigger. From the “signature subs” line I tried the Prime Rib and Peppercorn ($7.69). This time the bread was burned, and the salty, crumbly beef inside had no business being called prime rib. I tasted no peppercorns in the titular sauce, and the sauteed onions were few and far between.
Also available are “torpedoes” and “bullets” – thin baguette sandwiches, large and small respectively. The Pesto Turkey Bullet ($3) was satisfactory for the price. Good turkey, not a lot of pesto.
The last line available is the “soft and toasty flatbread sammies” portion of the menu. Why they’d adopt the annoying kidspeak word “sammie” is beyond me, but for $2.89 the Chipotle Turkey sandwich was OK.
I now know that Quiznos is better than it used to be, and if dragged there I know what to get and what to avoid, but I still prefer Subway.
– The Mouth
mouth@coastweekend.com
Asking around, I heard the same thing time and time again: Taco Time is better than Taco Bell, but it’s more expensive. I knew there was more, so I set out to see for myself.
First, the menu at Taco Bell is huge: 15 tacos, 17 burritos, plus multiple variations of gorditas and chalupas, nachos, salads and things the company seems to have invented itself, such as the Enchirito® ($1.79) – a hybrid of burrito and enchilada, and the Crunchwrap® ($2.29), a stop sign-shaped concoction consisting of a crunchy fried corn tortilla with various ingredients and a soft flour tortilla folded around it.
The prices are indeed low, strangely low sometimes. I was surprised to find real cheddar cheese in many of the items, as this is certainly a rarity in the burger joints. Other items were strangely vegetarian. And by strangely I mean it’s easy to make meat-free items with what they’ve got: rice, beans, salsa, tortillas, chips, refried beans.
There’s no end to the combinations. So I didn’t expect to find the Crispy Potato Soft Taco (99 cents), which contains cheese, pepperjack sauce, lettuce and jojos. It wasn’t bad, just unnecessary.
I mentioned the “bastardization” of real Mexican food in the name of word recognition. Were you to look up terms like “chalupa” and “gordita.” you’d find that the names were co-opted into something that has very little to do with the real deal. Taco Bell’s gordita is a pita-wrapped taco, while the chalupa is the same thing with the pita deep-fried. Since gordita translates to “fatty,” it seems they’ve got it backwards. I tried them both and found the fried version to be tough, chewy, and greasy. The soft pita gordita was better by comparison, but still odd.
The Volcano® line just makes everything spicy with “cheesy molten hot lava sauce.” But I like spicy, so most of the things I tried were of the Volcano® variety.
Don’t bother getting nachos at Taco Bell. The thin chips turn soggy just touching their toppings, and steaming themselves with the tight lid on makes things worse. Even eating them fresh in the restaurant, the wimpy chips are no match for the thick refried bean paste. But at $3.49 for the most expensive nachos, who can really complain?
Especially late at night. For most of my food industry cronies, Taco Bell serves only as drunken sustenance when nothing else is open.
They won’t have much luck here on the coast, as the Taco Bell/KFC in Seaside is open until 10 p.m. weekdays and 11 p.m. on weekends. And Taco Bell totally promotes this late-night lifestyle in its commercials.
“Fourthmeal” as they explain, is for when your normal day of eating is over. The ads show groups of happy stumbling socialites headed to Taco Bell after the bars close. But overall, their food is better than I expected, especially for the price. You know how there’s a strange, plastic-like aesthetic to McDonald’s food? Besides the nachos, and anything with “cheese sauce,” nothing seemed that artificial. The crunchy taco shells and the ground beef were not the texture of what you’d make at home, but not as strange as I expected.
And I was not under the influence while taste testing.
Another unlikely restaurant to jump on the health bandwagon, Taco Bell now offers the Fresco® line, part of its Drive-Thru Diet campaign. They’ve got their own Subway Jared, a woman named Christine, who lost 54 pounds eating Fresco® selections, which merely omit cheese and sour cream from regular menu items. For 340 calories and 8 grams of fat, the Fresco® bean burrito ($1.19) was really good, and the fiesta salsa one of the best flavors I had there.
The only really reprehensible thing that happened at Taco Bell involved the Volcano® Burrito ($2.99) that I ordered. About halfway through, there was something hard and sharp in my mouth that couldn’t have been food. I took it out and examined it to find a wooden splinter. I don’t have any idea how wood could have ended up in a burrito, but I’ve certainly read about stranger things found in fast food (yet another reason I usually avoid it). I put the splinter in a Ziploc and dated it all CSI style. Returning to the restaurant the next day with the wood and the receipt, I was asked to wait a few minutes while a more powerful manager could be contacted, and eventually given a full refund for the burrito, which is all I wanted. Offered the baggie of wood back, I asked that it be given to the boss. These things happen, I guess, but I thought it was handled rather well.
Taco Time, barely across the street from Taco Bell, though smaller versions can be found at the Astoria and Warrenton Mini Marts, was indeed better, and indeed more expensive. For about $7, the nacho platter was a little bigger, but a whole lot better, and I suppose I should’ve expected as much. Guacamole and whole leaf cilantro were a nice addition to the ground beef, sour cream, beans, salsa and cheese. The red and yellow chips were also a nice touch, and more importantly sturdier than the competition’s.
The standard crunchy beef taco was twice the price, but a lot better than Taco Bell’s. Still not sit-down restaurant quality, but closer.
The Crispy Chicken Burrito was more of a thick, flour tortilla taquito. It wasn’t bad, but retained a lot of grease. The Big Juan Burrito ($3.19) was satisfactory, but satisfactory is what the wood-free burritos of Taco Bell were as well. While in between a Mexican restaurant and Taco Bell pricewise, nothing at Taco Time really impressed me. But as I never expected to be impressed by anything on my fast food journey, I wasn’t let down.