jhlurie

okay if we are changing topic to something random and unrelated, here's a personality test, tommy: which celebrity death was more of a shame... Milton Berle or Dudley Moore? (saying "Billy Wilder" is a cheat, you've got to pick between these two)

well... they seem to have Momos at least. If Momo eats Momos is that cannibalism?

Oh... wait. I'll grab the "gross" crown from Liza. The best way to ensure proper space in a restaurant is... (...drum roll...) flatulance. thank kew. thank kew. (bowing out)

I see it as on the same level as asking "do they use animal by-product free" cooking oil. It's the same thing... a question of whether the terminology changes because animal products are present with the vegetables. Frankly, I'm not sure if it should or shouldn't... but it's a valid question if tommy's claims about "veggie" being a derivative of "vegetable" are true.

I'm wondering if anyone has ever tested this out in an organized fashion. If a series of older looking people dressed sloppily were compared against a group of younger looking people in "young" clothes, who would get better service? It reminds me of an electronics store I used to stop at in Greenwich Village. I got used to being ignored in Jeans, until the day I went in while wearing an expensive suit. I got "sirred" left and right. This was back when I had a full head of hair, and did indeed look young--suit or no suit. Then again, in that case it was a case of them guessing that I had money to spend--since plenty of people "browse" in that type of store without any intention of buying. By definition most people who eat at restaurants enter with the money they need to spend and every intention of spending it. So in that case I can only chalk up a difference in behavior to whether or not they think you can afford to make a return visit.

Hmmm. Are green beens with bacon in the sauce still veggies?

And I thought it was a "three foot" rule. And Wilfrid is right... stop fishing for compliments. ;) It's not that we don't want to give, we don't want to make your hubby unduly jealous. :)

to some extent that's hard to do... but for at least the first part of this response... sure. And the heart of the issue may be whether or not it is reasonable to expect a low-level employee to be a representative for an entire multi-billion dollar chain... Did the kid screw up. Sure he did. Did B.K. screw up because the kid screwed up? I'm not sure... More importantly who is at fault? This is where (lawsuit or not) those unmentionable damages come into play. Maybe it's just me, but I wasn't raised as a moral absolutist. To retain even a little bit of hope in this world I have to believe that major infractions are less morally defensible than minor ones. That's why damages are more important in more than just a legal sense to me. If the damages are low I have at least some belief that it is at a minumum uncouth and at maximum dangerous to encourage people to make a fuss over issues of this type, because our energies should be better directed towards problems with greater consequences. Now in a purely intellectual discussion... sure I can see your point. But if this came down to ANYTHING in the "real world", be it lawsuit or just going down to your neighborhood BK and hassling them, I would see it as a waste of energy--both actual and spiritual. As for the completely seperate issue of whether or not B.K was TRYING to pull a fast one... this is related. We can suspect whatever we want, but if the wrongness of the action is so open to debate then what standard can you use OTHER than damages to assess how much we care about the issue?

ah... the "stupid employee" angle. :) I can see a bit of your viewpoint on this. Then again (and I know this is hardly an "enlightened" politically correct argument... just a realistic one) what else did your friend expect from someone who works at a Burger King for a living? tommy's argument still works in general... should you really expect an authoritative and informed answer from a 16 year old or senior citizen making ten cents an hour over minimum wage? Perhaps it seems a bit unfair to your friend, but I don't think it's way out of whack to expect a more informed answer from a restaurant manager, and perhaps then a slightly greater level of responsibility if the answer was wrong. Then again... you use the word "fault" in reference to this whole incident. Doesn't fault imply that there were damages? That's most of this whole debate... are elaborate rules and regulations necessary when the damages are negligable? Okay... lets take this a step futher. A lot of people are allergic to peanuts. Laws have been passed to regulate labelling of when peanuts are used in packaged goods. But do those same laws extend to un-packaged food? Maybe they SHOULD because in that case a mistake might KILL someone instead of morally outraging them.

On the issue of "consumer protection laws", these are always spoken of as if they were one concrete movement--one definitive set of proposed laws or regulations that would become some kind of magic wand to stop all instances of corporate greed. To any reasonable viewpoint, I can't see how that would be true. If DAMAGES occur then consumer protection laws make sense. But to use them to create something out of nothing is just plain wrong. I won't debate that a vegetarian could be "damaged" by eating meat. But how do you put a value on that damage? Should you? Consumer protection laws should prevent people from getting hurt. In some cases they should punish evil doers. What they shouldn't do is take the place of common sense. We don't need a huge beurocracy to be "Daddy" for us, just a smaller one that keeps people from acting like criminals.

At least legally I think that BK's responsibility doesn't go any further than "don't commit fraud" and "don't violate health codes, regulations and/or laws violating your industry". A lawyer like Steve Shaw should be able to put this into more formal terminology, but is it really necessary? This all comes down to whether or not you want the law to control shades of meaning on terms like "veggie", and how much double-think is expected of a business. Morally? Well as corporate entities it's a bit... unrealistic to expect morality from them. We could speak about the weighing of morality against the amount of "damage" by by the misrepresentation... but I'm not sure we could agree on what that damage is. As a Public Relations move--the only one of these three categories which matters in the short term--it probably wasn't a great idea. Now let's say that on the moral scale that a bunch of influential people got together and perceived this as SO morally bankrupt and so damaging that they decided that something HAD to be done. This is why people group together and lobby for legal changes... although personally I'm not sure I'd like to see that many legal changes in the direction of using government beurocracy to coddle people in ways that they more easily attend to themselves.

Although I mostly agree with tommy, the real test will be to see what they say about the BK Veggie when the nutrional information part of their website goes up -- apparently eventually at this URL (click here--but you won't see much yet...). As much as I believe in "buyer beware", a nutritional information blurb should have full disclosure. Anyone who is near a BK restaurant... perhaps walk inside and see if nutritional info is posted on the wall or available in handouts for the "Veggie".

Legally? I sincerely hope not. Morally? Well... perhaps. P.R.-wise (which has no actual relation to the law or morality)? Yes. It can be trouble.

And the effect of the close quarters is 1000x worse if you are backed up against "deadly small screaming child" or "colicky baby". :D But what I hate even more than other tables being close to me are the chairs at MY table being too close together. I like my friends... but not enough to be half sitting in front of one of THEIR food items. I'm like an old cowboy in that I prefer my back against the wall... so sometimes I DO deliberately accept less personal space. In trade this DOES subject you much less to the chatter from neighboring tables and the ever-annoying waiter's elbow in your soup whilst pouring water for the table.

Let's think of this from a purely economic standpoint for a moment. Could BK afford to maintain seperate cooking areas for Veggie Burgers? Probably not. Nevertheless, they could probably do a bit more to seperate out the grease being used. Without a seperate cooking area it would never be 100% though... Let's be honest... if enough fuss is made of this it's far more likely that they would drop the BK Veggie entirely, as opposed to taking more extreme (and costly) measures to keep it pure. I can respect veganism as a choice... but it's a bit much to expect other people to look out for you. The whole idea of a McDonalds french fry or a Burger King burger or ANY fast food more complex than a side salad being truly animal by-product free is so inherently ludicrous that I'm not sure why anyone would ever make ANY assumptions about it. If Burger King actively advertised it as "vegetarian" "animal by-product free" or "vegan" than slap them hard. If not, and people simply ASSUMED, well...

So we still haven't answered whether it's "west", "ooh-est", "weist", "yest", "chest", "waste", "ehst" or "rutabaga". "Moo-lon" is how the untalented ladies who re-did that "Lady Marmalade" song pronounced it, so everyone else followed. Then again, they also pronounced the name of the song as "Mar-ma-layed". So are we really blaming America... or just silly hip-hop culture? I saw an interview with the director of the movie and he seemed to be pronouncing it correctly. A much quicker first syllable, yes?

I tried smoking a mullet once, but the pricipal caught me and almost expelled me... I wonder if our friend col klink, who always seems to be talking about smoking meats in the PacNorthWest forum knows about smoking mullet.

Okay... I finally caught on to this topic. As someone whose finances originally precluded expensive eating, but whose fortunes have increased enough with time to begin to change that situation, I find the whole discussion about money and forgiveness fascinating. In my limited experience the tie between money and tolerance is in the opposite direction from that suggested by Beachfan's statement "If I had infinite money for long enough, I might be very tolerant". Maybe this has more to do with the fact that I've come from no money, but as I get more of it I find that I expect better service with the expenditure of that money instead of being more willing to blow it off. When I had less, my expectations were also less. On the "rude" service question... I don't know. I've gone both ways on this issue--giving the restaurant another try under a different server and swearing it off. The context of the situation is important... if out of the corner of my eye I notice things which tell me that this treatment is typical, then I won't be back. Or even worse... if I see someone dressed more stylishly than me being treated significantly better, perhaps that will push my buttons as well. :) Getting back to economics for a moment... I don't think that my expectations of good service are significantly LESS for a mid-range restaurant than an expensive one. As per my previous comment, as I get more money I think my expectations rise instead of fall... but that has very little to do with how much money I'm spending. In a way this is very non-politically correct and perhaps a bit arrogant, but again its more a function of my standards getting higher and I'm simply recognizing the fact that rich people are snooty, and as I get older I'm becoming one of them. :D

Hah! Since Gin doesn't taste like anything when its fresh, maybe it gets better with age. ;) But seriously... as far as I've heard the types of alcohol most likely to change taste with time (for good or ill) are those highest in sugar content. I don't think Gin qualifies, but I could be wrong...

The main distinction and difference in quality I've found is between "full service" locations and "express" locations. Yes, even fast food quality varies depending on the size of the kitchen. Shocking.

Is it really much more of a guarantee of freshness that the pattie is kept pre-warmed instead of the entire burger? Sure, the bun might be fresher, but you are still winding up with dry grey meat. And that Microwave step, yuck... I suppose it is to help melt cheese, but still... I remember in ye ancient days liking McDonalds more until I discoved that at my local BK you could actually watch them take it off the fire and put it on a bun. I'm not sure when this stopped, but I'm guessing some time around 1980.

I don't trust anyone who refers to the whopper as a "mouth-watering, finger-licking, juice-dripping burger". That hasn't been true since the 1970's, when they started storing them indefinitely under hot lights before you actually got your hands on them.

Chick-Fil-A does have a special place in my heart. I'm only very familiar with one location, but the basic chicken sandwich there gets the job done. In plain, its fried and its good. The rest of the menu? I dunno... Nathan's used to be on my "try anything" list, but I've yanked it off because the chain became over-franchised, and while the full service location still do the job and do it well, the ones inside of department stores, the ones joined at the hip with Dunkin Donut stores, and the ones in rest stops, actually somehow manage to ruin those great hot dogs. And if you can ruin one of those, I'm certainly not going to try your Deluxe Chicken Sandwich or your Philly Cheese steak. Arthur Treacher's? Yeah... they did add chicken to the menu in the 1970's. You are right, Fat Guy. After some thought I've changed my mind a bit about Arby's. While their food is by no means excellent, I've always found their menu interesting. For a fast food place they actually take a few risks, and so maybe just curiousity would drive me to try most things on their menu, even if my expectations weren't high. It's funny. I only eat this kind of food about once, maybe twice a month these days and yet I still have such strong opinions. I suppose once you've had a few meals that cost as much as a month of fast food you can never truly go back... but that doesn't strip you of your opinions about it. :)

I figured I'd bring back an oldie but goodie. I mean for a bunch of foodies there are an awful lot of strong opinions one way or the other about fast food. But then I thought I'd put a new spin on it. Instead of a simple "yea" or "nay" on fast food, or list of favorite items or any of the other variations we've done, here's something new. No matter how often (or how little) you eat fast food is there any chain where whenever you see a new menu item you feel obliged to try it at least once, within the bounds of the basic ingredients being ones you like. I can say for certain that there are many chains where I'd never try ANYTHING no matter how interesting it looked. Taco Bell is the prime example for me of this. I don't care how good it SEEMS, I've been burned with bad taste and very suspect digestive results far too often to even risk eating at this dump. And some chains where I normally wouldn't eat, but an interesting item might at least get me try. A place like Arby's or the New York-based chain Ranch 1 might qualify. Where do I personally almost always at least TRY every new item? Believe it or not, McDonalds. Not that McDonald's is the best fast food, but in my opinion it IS the most consistent. I may never eat the item again. I may only infrequently eat ANY kind of fast food. I may only eat McDonald's a fraction of those times, and I may never get back to the new item I've tried even if I'd liked it... but at McDonald's (despite rare media reports of chicken heads fried up as McNuggets), I'm really NOT that worried. Cinnabon gets a similar status. It's too darned fattening to eat very often, but if I see a new item, I'm gonna buy it at least once. Anyone else bestow this status on any other chains? "None" is certainly a valid answer, but may get a bit tiresome.

A random internet search revealed hundreds of recipes for Beer Soup. Who knew?