Having, myself, implied places like Moe's and CiCi's are fast food restaurants -- though they really aren't -- I think the label "fast food restaurant" gets applied to too many places.
I dunno. "Fast food" must surely refer to food that is, well, fast - basically, anything that can be prepared quickly. So it applies equally to McDonalds, to Subway, to the street food vendors who are apparently once again becoming trendy in London, and to the tiny little pizza places I used while in Rome.
My friend complained that our city doesn't have any restaurants. I pointed out that there were probably 10 within walking distance of where we were right then sitting, and that I had eaten at one just an hour previous. He said Chili's isn't a restaurant, it's a chain, the same as every other nearby place to sit down and order and eat a meal.
Yeah, that's the problem with people using their own definitions for things. C.f. Humpty Dumpty in "Through the Looking Glass". What he was really lamenting was a lack of
good restaurants.
But hearing/reading other people's opinions of restaurants over the years, my friend is not the only person who seems to think that any "chain" restaurant is crap, and fast food places are the pit of hell where they don't even serve actual, real food. What is this mentality?
The great strength of a chain restaurant is that they're essentially the same everywhere you go, or as close as they can reasonably manage. A Big Mac in Falkirk is almost identical to one in Little Rock, to one in Rennes, and to one in Rome.
The great weakness of a chain restaurant is that, in order to be successful and be the same everywhere, they have to shoot for a very wide lowest-common-denominator. That Big Mac has to appeal to (or, rather, not be rejected by) people who live in Scotland, the US, France, Italy, and anywhere else McD operate. That means that it really can't be terribly adventurous - it almost
has to be rather bland in taste and texture. Honestly, it's surprising that the pickles have survived, though that might be a cunning ploy to give people something else to remove!
Compare that with a local takeaway. They're limited by the fact that their customer base is made up only of people in the local area, but at the same time they're liberated by that as well. They don't need to care that people living in the US, or Italy, or wherever else would hate the food they produce - all that matters is that people who live and work within a few miles like the food.
But even they are limited by the fact that they have to appeal to a wide enough customer base to stay open. On the other hand, if I'm preparing burgers for my own consumption, then there are exactly
two people I have to please - myself and my wife. So, if I want to mess around with different meats, different spice mixes, or even adjust the cooking times and temperatures to find my perfect burger, then I'm entirely able to do so. Of course, the end result probably won't suit anyone else... but that really doesn't matter, since they're generally not going to be eating them anyway.
