Kerfuffle

Burger King seems to be selling something more than just mediocre fast food these days

I would love to have been in the meeting when this transit poster was sold to the BK client:

The copy doesn't disappoint either...

Fill your desire for something long, juicy and flame-grilled with the NEW BK SUPER SEVEN INCHER. Yearn for more after you taste the mind-blowing burger that comes with a single beef patty, topped with American cheese, crispy onions and the A1 Thick and Hearty Steak Sauce.

Rare that you fee the need for a cigarette after the usual Burger King value meal, but then this ain't your father's Whopper.  Wait, that came out wrong.  Whatever.

[h/t The Consumerist]

Hey you cost-conscious coffee drinker: Is that a real latte... or a McLatte™... you're guzzling there?

I'm sorry.  I just can't help laughing when I see McDonald's peddling fancy-ass coffee drinks right there next to the Snack-wraps™.  But you know, in these recessionary times, Mickey D's is eating Starbucks breakfast (which used to be a maple oat scone, and now is a chicken McMuffin).  Yes, I am a coffee snob; I admit it.  I'm also a bit of a hamburger snob.  And let's face it, McDonald's is to coffee what McDonald's is to, umm, hamburgers.

Fact is, McDonald's sales are up and Starbucks sales are down.  It's not surprising that McDonald's does better in a bad economy, because they sell relatively cheap food.  But I don't get why someone wouldn't just skip having a latte or whatever they waste $4 on at Starbucks rather than spend half the price on a fake version.  (Yeah, i know, Ronald.  You spent a ton of money on all those espresso machines.  But you still have fry cooks making the damn drinks.)  I mean, would a person who enjoys the occasional Guinness or Newcastle suddenly make a cost-cutting switch to Milwaukee's Best?  Only if that person was a serious alcoholic and couldn't tell the difference between The Beast and the good stuff anymore.  If you're such a caffeine junkie, just skip the fancy drinks and go right for the regular coffee (which at Starbucks tastes like coffee and at McDonald's tastes like coffee made yesterday).  On this level, Starbucks is SO worth the extra 35¢.

The folks over at Gawker have this Starbucks versus McDonald's thing pegged...

McDonald's message is this: "Now you have a good excuse to buy a cheap ass burger while you pick up your daily tub of coffee, yuppies." Clear, direct, and honest. Meanwhile, the chief marketing guy at Starbucks is like "McD's will recruit all these new yuppies who will get tired of drinking their swill and trade up to our swill!" while glancing around nervously, adding, "Yea, that's the ticket. 'Trading up.' Yea, I like the sound of that." We all know you're toast, Starbucks man.

I don't know.  I was in a McDonald's a few weeks ago and it had a gas fireplace and some leather club chairs.  This cozy retreat was just this side of the glass doors leading into the McPlayland ball crawl.  Another sign of the apocalypse.

I'll have a cup of the soup, the shrimp scampi and a side of health care

[San Francisco] It's all in the fine print.  Yesterday, on both the lunch and dinner menus, it crawled across the very bottom in something close to six point type.

"A charge of 3.5% will be added to fund the Healthy San Francisco ordinance."

So what is that?  Not even The Google can easily explain it in exact terms, but a few news sites and several blogs weighed in about the program that began last year.  From Medical News Today...

Some restaurants in San Francisco are adding a surcharge to customers' bills, increasing food prices or charging a flat fee to help pay the cost of workers' health insurance under the city's Healthy San Francisco ordinance, the Los Angeles Times reports (Lifsher, Los Angeles Times, 3/17). The program is intended to ensure access to health care services for San Francisco's 82,000 uninsured residents at local clinics and the city's public hospital.

Under the program, which was launched on Jan. 9, private employers with at least 20 workers and not-for-profit groups with at least 50 workers must provide health care benefits at a cost that meets minimum spending levels or help cover the cost of the program. Other funding comes from tax revenue and member premiums. The Golden Gate Restaurant Association has filed a lawsuit against the city, claiming that the program violates a federal law that prohibits state and local governments from regulating employee benefits (Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, 2/22).

So it's not a food tax.  Rather, it's a mandated small business employee health care thing.  Either a business owner provides health care, as ordained by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, or it gets charged for its employees to participate in the city-run program.  I think.

The Wall Street Journal's Health Blog had this take...

Since the beginning of the year, San Francisco businesses have been required to offer health insurance to employees or pay a fee to the city to fund health care.

Some restaurants are passing the fee on to consumers in the form of a health surcharge, which shows up on the bill as a flat fee ($1 per person, or so) or as a percentage (like sales tax).

Restaurants have been pretty unhappy about the ordinance all along. The Golden Gate Restaurant Association sued the city, arguing that the rules about employee benefits can be set only by the feds.

A thing like this can easily morph into a mutated urban legend.  I liked this one found on a Yelp topic page...

So, my friends and I were having dinner in the city this past weekend, when we were hit with the "health tax" on the bill. Hmmm....never heard of this, so we asked the waiter, who told us the mayor has recently enforced a health tax of 50 cents on each food item sold throughout restaurants in the city. The money is pooled and then distributed to the homeless. They get $500 CASH to better their lives! Is it just me, or is this a bad  idea? I only see homeless people now calling up their buddies to come on down to SF to cash in monthly! Also, I don't think that they'll be spending this allowance primarily on food and shelter.    [emphasis mine]

Is it wrong of me to assume that this person (a) took the waiter's word for it on this interpretation of the law, (b) invented a few things, and (c) likely voted for John McCain in the last election?

A blog called Yellow Limes seems to be saying this screws consumers and workers...

And now we have this. The San Francisco city council, in all their infinite wisdom, now mandates that all businesses offer health care to their employees or pay a fee to the city to fund that care. So, as we all know, it's the consumer that bites the bullet in the end.
:::
The real question is, when workers get laid off because their employer can no longer afford to keep them on payroll, who's going to support them then?

The nutroots of the San Francisco city council would be wise to make an attempt to understand the law of unintended consequences.

I still can't figure out what the hell the thing actually is, and am not going to make a huge effort to learn more.  But one thing I'm sure of:  this is why San Francisco gets tagged with that "Nancy Pelosi and those San Francisco liberals" labels by jackasses like Bill O'Reilly.  As if it is a bad thing to try and make some people's lives better.  Yeah, it might be a badly flawed attempt.  But at least they are trying something.  Given the precarious financial situation of the State of California, the city knows it can't count on help from those guys.

Startling new research reveals proximity to fast food outlets is connected with obesity rates. Easier access drives more consumption. Well, what d'ya know.

Today's "No shit?" news from the Los Angeles Times...

Teens who attend classes within one-tenth of a mile of a fast-food outlet are more likely to be obese than peers whose campuses are located farther from the lure of quarter-pound burgers, fries and shakes.

Really?  I just thought those joints ended up by the schools kinda by coincidence.  Maybe the fast food people knew that if they opened a store within a tenth of a mile, kids would be more likely to go there.  Wow, what a gamble:  Will kids be willing to walk a whole 176 yards for a Supersized Big Mac "value" meal?

Please, go on...

Those are the findings of a recent study by researchers from UC Berkeley and Columbia University seeking a link between obesity and the easy availability of fast food. The academics studied body-fat data from more than 1 million California ninth-graders over an eight-year period, focusing on the proximity of the school to well-known chains including McDonald's, Burger King, KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut.

Their conclusion: Fast food and young waistlines make lousy neighbors.

The next thing you know, we'll be reading that if you place a huge bowl of M&Ms on a table in front of kids during a round of video gaming, they will be far more likely to eat a lot more M&Ms.

Gotta run. I want to gt my application in for that research grant before any of you beat me to it.

I went in for the best walleye sandwich and found my new favorite beer in the process: New Glarus Crack'd Wheat

We were in the  Old Fashioned, a great tavern on Madison's capital square last night before the hockey game.  That is the place that serves the best friend walleye sammich you will ever taste.  Ever, ever, ever.  

Aside from the great food, the Old Fashioned sports one of the most extensive Wisconsin beer lists around.  That's one of the best things about going there, along with their 30 tap lines.  You can drink three different Wisconsin beers each week for a year without repeating a single brew. Of course, that would mean including cans of Blatz, Schlitz and Hamms as part of your rail, but that can be done if they are ice cold... and for a buck a can on special, why not?  (I'm told they make a great old fashioned there too -- brandy, of course, since this is Wisconsin -- but I've never gotten past that beer list.)

I try to look for obscure truly micro brews that I would never get anywhere else when I'm at the Old Fashioned. I even shy away from otherwise favorite products from nearby breweries like Capital, Gray's and New Glarus.  I'm glad I didn't do that last night.  Otherwise I would not have had the pleasure of enjoying a New Glarus Crack'd Wheat.  I was looking for something unfiltered, kind of wheaty, that might rival a Bell's Oberon, a Michigan favorite of mine.

Crack'd Wheat jumped to the front of my favorites list before I finished the first pint.  The second confirmed it.  The brewery describes it as follows...

This is Dan's bold creation. You hold the international marriage of a sophisticated Bavarian Hefeweiss and an assertive American Pale Ale. Amarillo dry hopping drives Wisconsin Red Wheat. Traditional open top fermentation cultivates our proprietary Bavarian Weiss yeast in our own Wheat Beer Cellars. Absolutely 100% natural bottle conditioned. This is a living beer. 

Expect to pour a thick creamy head into your glass. Savor the fierce onslaught of clove, cinnamon, and citrus nose. Our very popular Imperial Weizen ratchets down for the session. Drink to adventure and friends in Wisconsin. We are the state of beer.

Yeah, well-crafted marketing language.  But freakin' excellent beer.  Crisp, nice finish, hint of citrus.  The website says it is sold in six-packs as well as in half and quarter barrels.  I'm sure it's great out of a bottle but hopefully it will grab some tap space at more places as the warmer weather approaches.  If it wasn't 11pm on a Sunday night I might have to go looking for one now.

Mmmmmmm.  Beer.

Proof the economy is in dire straits: Chicago's famed Mr. Beef faces foreclosure

Say it ain't so!

From a blog by Phil Vettel, the Chicago Tribune's chief food critic...

Midwest Bank has filed a foreclosure suit against Mr. Beef on Orleans (666 N. Orleans St.), the iconic Italian beef stand in River North.

This is a major blow to the Chicago food scene.  What?  I am not joking.  This is a legendary place that frankly should go at the top of this bailout package Congress is just wrapping up.  I am f***ing serious.  No one, and I mean NO ONE does an Italian (pronounced "eye-tallion") beef sandwich like the one and only Mr. Beef.

The Trib's Jeremy Gomer elaborates...

Mr. Beef, the popular Italian beef sandwich restaurant serving River North for 30 years, is facing a foreclosure lawsuit filed by a bank seeking more than $600,000. 

One of the restaurant's owners, Joseph Zucchero, said the problems with Midwest Bank arose when he had to cover the costs of a business partner who was unable to put up money for another restaurant co-owned by Zucchero, Natalino's at 1523 W. Chicago Ave.

"Here's a guy who spent [a lot of money] to try and [save his daughter's] life.  She had brain cancer.  You don't bail out on a partner.  You don't do that," Zucchero said this morning as he cut meat at Mr. Beef, 666 N. Orleans St.
...
Zucchero insists his restaurants are very successful. Mr. Beef has drawn customers ranging from your average taxi driver to celebrities such as former late night talk show host Jay Leno and the late Oscar-winning actor Paul Newman.

Maybe Mr. Beef can get a loan from Jay Leno.

Starbucks finally realizes what most of us have known for years: Decaf is a waste of money

I love coffee.  But it has to be good coffee.  Admittedly, i am partial to Starbucks and Caribou or really good local places that know what they are doing.  (McDonald's and Dunkin Donuts think they make good coffee... but they don't.  But that's a subject for a different time when I am really desperate for material.)

Decaffeinated coffee, however, is a laughable option, in my not-so-humble opinion.  It's like non-alcoholic beer;  what's the point?  The buzz is part of the whole coffee experience.  The rich, great taste of a freshly brewed cup of French Roast goes hand in hand with the expectation of a little speed buzz.  That's why I can't see wasting money on decaf.

How much of a waste of money is decaf?  Well, for Starbucks, it's around $400 million in less than a year.  That's how much they expect to save by only making continually fresh pots of decaf until noon.  Seems they have been keeping it on hand for those unclear on the concept day and night, only to pour most of it down the drain.  So from now on, the company announced, only the real deal will be readily available after lunch.  Sure, they'll make you some emasculated brew if you are willing to wait.  Or, more likely, up-sell you to a decaf espresso drink.

Times are tough.  Starbucks sales are slumping, and they are closing stores and pulling back in other ways too.  In a lousy economy, $4 for a latte is more than some people can part with... and $400 million for ever-ready decaf is more than Starbucks can afford to waste.

My friend Evan must be devastated.  He is a Starbucks junkie, but always drinks decaf.  Never quite figured that out, but he's OK otherwise.

When you dine at only the classiest of establishments, you meet the most fascinating people.

And the Old Country Buffet on Madison's east side is one Klassy joint, as the Madison Capital Times' Mike Miller reports...

Trading barbs in a buffet line almost led to a tiff late last week at the Old County Buffet on the east side, but the sprouting dispute ended when a friend of one of the parties intervened, only to be arrested for waiving a knife around.

Madison police tentatively charged Faith A. Simer, 19, of Lake Mills, with disorderly conduct after she sat down in a booth occupied by her friend's protagonist with a steak knife and may or may not have threatened him. That was after he may or may not have flashed her the international digit of derision at her, police said.

I love how the police spokesman, formerly a veteran local TV field reporter, chooses his words...

"The victim said he had his eye on his next entree when his right arm connected the left arm of the young woman," police spokesman Joel DeSpain said.

"He says the woman responded by commenting on his girth indicating he did not need any more nourishment," DeSpain said. [emphasis, for bonus amusement, mine]

C'mon!  We were kidding!  With steak knives!

The guy said Simer had a steak knife in her hand and threatened to cut him if he continued messing with her, but he also said the knife was never pointed at him. She said she was just playing around and had no intentions of hurting the guy.

"I will cut you!"

Then she added that the guy had been wiping his eye with his middle finger "as they leered at one another from their respective booths," DeSpain said. She made it plain to police that she considered his eye-wiping to be an obscene gesture.

Imagine sinking so low on the dining circuit that you are permanently barred from the Old Country Buffet for reasons other than over consumption on shrimp night.  Quite an accomplishment.

Mmmmm. Is that charred monkey I smell in your luggage?

Our family never really had any weird food traditions around the holidays.  I did date a guy for a while whose family always had spare ribs and sauer kraut on every holiday buffet.  We did a "soulful" Thanksgiving with a lot of Deep South dishes a few years back.  And Tom's mom used to make "ham balls" which she thought were very popular until I confessed I was feeding them by the handful to the dogs.

But we never went for monkey meat.

From WaPo...

Customs officials searching the bags of an African man who flew into Dulles International Airport on Friday discovered three charred monkeys in his luggage, as well as deer meat and dried beef, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials said yesterday.

The man was traveling from Bangui in Central African Republic, a small country north of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He admitted he was carrying the meat, a common food in parts of Africa, after a trained dog alerted authorities to the man's bag, customs spokesman Steve Sapp said.

The monkey carcasses, inadmissible under U.S. law, were confiscated and are being inspected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; monkeys can easily introduce infectious diseases to humans, Sapp said. The other meat was destroyed, and the man was allowed to enter the country without penalty, Sapp said.

Foreigners visiting the United States sometimes try to bring with them exotic foods that are part of their native cuisines, especially around the holidays. But this was "a first for many of us," Sapp said.

All together now:  "EEEE-yuck!"

A small benefit of the lousy real estate market: Chicago's Goose Island Brewpub to remain open

No doubt about it, the economy is a mess in all kinds of sectors, including the commercial real estate market.  As businesses of all sizes fail or close locations, there are a lot more empty storefronts than usual.  Aggressive overbuilding and questionable lending practices only added to the woes of commercial property owners. 

But sometimes there is a little good news resulting from all of the bad.  Among them, the landlords of the building that houses the Goose Island Brewpub on Chicago's near north side decided to be reasonable in renewing the brewery's lease.

From the Chicago Tribune...

They raised a glass in celebration at Goose Island Beer Co.'s pioneering North Side brew pub Tuesday night: The well-known spot isn't going to close at year's end.

John Hall, Goose Island's founder and chief executive, said he reached a last-minute deal with the pub's landlord to stay at 1800 N. Clybourn Ave. for three to five years, averting the closing of the home for Honker's Ale and other brews.

"I'm thrilled," said Hall, who bought everyone in the place a beer. "They called me last week and said we want to try to do a deal. We compromised in a week on something we couldn't do for a long time."

Hall said he couldn't talk for the other side, but he indicated the weak real estate market may have helped get the agreement done. In April, Hall had said that the landlord, CRM Properties Group, had asked for a significant rent increase, reflecting the popularity of the trendy neighborhood.

When Goose Island began in 1988, it brewed all its beer at the north-side pub.  It led the resurgence or locally based microbreweries and regional craft-brews.  The pub itself was a pioneer in the early redevelopment of what is known as Chicago's Clybourn corridor.  Once one of the few popular businesses near North and Clybourn, it soon was surrounded by new residential and commercial construction and full-scale rehab.  Lots of land was purchased, redeveloped, and flipped and the market boomed.  Suddenly there were more chain and big-box stores and theme restaurants,  and fewer unique and independent retail establishments.  And the traffic on Clybourn between North and around Beldon became a nightmare.

Corporate greed is a powerful thing.  Even sub par properties were being snapped up, bulldozed and reinvented.  It is what led developers to tear down part of the old building where Goose Island is located.  Once a very cool mixed use retail space that also housed the now-defunct Remains Theatre, the land was cleared to make way for a lovely Bed Bath & Beyond store and parking lot about a dozen years ago.  Remains sunk a lot of money into the space but it didn't pay out, I gather.  Such a shame for a theatre group that gave us William Petersen, Gary Cole and Laurie Metcalf.  They were urban pioneers in the corridor and became victims of its success for their efforts.  A little non-profit theatre group can't compete with a national retailers of pillows and shower curtains on a revenue-per-square-foot basis.

Goose Island announced earlier this year they would shut down their original brewpub.  Apparently the property owners thought they could squeeze more out of either the brewery or a new restaurateur.  And then the economy tanked.  Suddenly the climate isn't so good for new nightspots.  So, even though no one wants an economic downturn, we have some bright, albeit small, spots.  The continued operation of Goose Island is one of them.

Stop in next time you are in Chicago.  The food's pretty good, and the beer is some the best you'll find of Midwestern microbrewery products.  My favorite Goose?  The Nut Brown Ale.  (But it still has not unseated my all time favorite, Kalamazoo's  Bell's Oberon!)