Yeah, it was considered a cultural treat (import from Indian sub-continent, originally) , and it does get cold in the desert at night. Now it’s common. But it once was a rare delicacy.
It’s like Fried Chicken in the South. It once was a delicacy; a once a month treat on a Sunday supper. Now, you could eat it three times a day (not that you should).
Effort, scarcity and ceremony all impact flavor is odd ways.
My wife likes to take the kids to Chick-fil-A (for the play ground, and they had free breakfasts for a while,), and I usually order half unsweetened ice tea/half lemonade. Their Sweet tea is too sweet for a decent Arnold Palmer.
I’m pretty sure if and when hipsters take over Texas, and Texas culture and hipster culture combines into some horrible many tentacled monster, we’ll have jalapeño tea with our Franklin BBQ.
Franklin’s burned down so flaming jalapeño sweet tea?
Shake Shack opens in Kansas City on September 6th. So I’ll get to try it out soon enough.
Let’s not be uncivilized. Sweet tea is for those damned (with the -ed pronounced) Southerners. Let I-35 be the dividing line between good taste and antebellum irresponsiblity (insert the linemustbedrawnhere Picard gif)
I’ve seen it at multiple grocery stores in the KC area.
I finally got around to going to the new Shake Shack that just opened in Kansas City. I had the Shack Stack, which is a burger with a fried mushroom patty on top. It also has lettuce and tomato. And when you bite into that breaded mushroom patty, it has melted cheese in the center.
This was delicious. The crinkle-cut fries were good, and the Kansas City-exclusive frozen custard “concrete” was very good too. It was a local seasonal pie mixed with vanilla frozen custard. The seasonal pie in this case tasted like a raspberry pie.
All in all some great food. Pretty costly though. It cost about $30 for two of us, which is about what it costs to go to mid-tier sit-down places like Chili’s, Red Robin, Applebee’s, Olive Garden, Red Lobster, etc. Given that it’s a fast-casual place, I was hoping the price would be closer to Chipotle, which costs about $15-$20 for 2 people, depending on what you get.
The Shake Shack that opened here closed within a year. I think they made a pretty bad mistake location wise though. They put it on a busy commercial street but in a part of town that only the probably middle-lower income area would visit. Put it 4-5 miles north and it probably becomes a hot spot, assuming the food is that good. I know the newspaper reviewed it here and while liking the shakes they pretty much panned the burgers.
In KC, they put it in the area of town with the highest priced shops in the area. So it sounds like they didn’t make that same mistake here.
They did the same in Atlanta, up in Buckhead, in a very spendy mall area. I think it’s doing fine, but I also think it’s super overrated.
There’s one in London, too, in Covent Garden, which again is quite affluent and upper end. But London is now full of very good high-end burger joints, too.
Maybe someone brought this up in this thread, but I was in Paris back in June and I walked the Champs - Élysées after scaling the Arc de Triomphe – just wanted to walk down one of the most famous streets in the world.
There were of course high end fashion stores but also a McDonald’s. I was very surprised to see a Five Guys there as well. It was pretty busy too. I was hungry and thought about grabbing a burger, but then I thought WTF dude, you’re in Paris. At least find a sidewalk cafe. So I did.
I had a nice walkabout. Walked to the Eiffel Tower finally and then caught the subway back to our Air BNB.
Yeah, I occasionally go (there’s another near St. Paul’s now) for a hotdog and malted shake, as both are hard to come by in London, but I’d never go for a burger. There are at least four better places for about the same cost within walking distance of my office.
This happened SO MUCH when I was in the Navy. We would pull into a port and 3/4 of the folks would beeline for the first American branded restaurant in the town. It was a bit sad. :(
Good on you for trying local fare.
The Shake Shack in Chicago is right on Michigan Avenue across from Grant Park where there’s tons of foot traffic. So they’re always busy.
I haven’t been back to Paris since my last visit in 1989. But I remember that McDonald’s on Champs Elysee back from my first visit in 1982. I didn’t like French food all that much as a kid, but I’d never had McDonald’s before, so that place on the Champs Elysee was my favorite place to eat in Paris. I was 6, 7, 8, 10, 12, 13 during my various visits to Paris. I was really sad to see that McDonald’s was replaced during most of my other visits because someone broke the glass front and they cashed out and relocated during some of my later visits.
It’s kind of cool to hear that McDonald’s is back on the Champs Elysee. I know that sounds stupid, even to me, as an adult who is completely surrounded by them, but as a kid, it was kind of a magical place with great food.
I was so underwhelmed by Shake Shack. It had such a reputation, and when it first opened here, lines around the block type of hype.
I finally went there this summer, and it seemed like a very average burger and fries (the shake was good, but not amazing) for an exorbitant price (for fast food in particular).
I know this was essentially mentioned earlier, but I agree with the assessment of others who did not get it.
Five Guys, on the other hand, I really like. I feel like I’m hastening my death by a month every time I eat it, but that’s a separate issue.
Maybe the franchises have quality control problems. The original shake shack here in NYC really does make an exemplary smashed-type burger.
Taken while visiting Cannes in June of this year
I don’t care for their burgers or shakes, but those delivery scooters!
I just think it’s a regional thing. When you have better options locally that don’t charge you an arm and a leg (which we do around here) then it really doesn’t come across like the world saving burger chain people make it out to be.
Frankly, I think a lot of people simply don’t have a lot of variety in their diet so when you introduce something like that to them, they’re fooled because it actually is a step up from what they normally eat.
