Lawrence C.
Yelp
In recent food writing, McDonald's has become the stand-in for much of what is wrong with the way that America eats. It's used as a signifier for corporatization, overhomogenization, the evils of advertising. And it's cited as an actuality, too: an actuality of aggressive unhealthiness, of crimes worse than negligence against the youth of America, the destitute. Rightfully so. I agree with nearly all of the points that critics raise against it.
And yet, in my heart, McDonald's occupies a special place. Growing up Asian meant that the vast majority of our meals were home cooked and unfailingly authentic, the flavors truly foreign to a Western tongue. Even the occasional more generally recognizable dish that might cross the table -- say, spaghetti -- would pass through the lens of my mother's pots and end up mutated into something Other. Don't get me wrong: I loved, and love, her cooking. But in those tireless old days, she'd either be cooking up a huge new vat of food, or we'd be eating the copious amount of leftovers (in periods that could occasionally be measured in weeks). A great privilege, yet a yoke.
In that setting, fast food was an exotic honor to be earned, a reward for performing well on an exam or being particularly virtuous. More than Taco Bell, more than KFC, McDonald's was our symbol of hard-won triumph because for some reason nothing was more American -- or more representative to us of the promises of the American work ethic -- than McDonald's. So when I got to go, I knew I'd done something special, or at least noteworthy. Thus, McDonald's was formative (in its way) of my notion of food as pent-up, then released, happiness.
Formative, too, of many of the sensory pleasures that later superior meals would give me. Who can bite into a Joe's Shanghai soup dumpling and not recognize in the subsequent agony a little bit of the same pleasure/pain of ripping into a McDonald's apple pie? Who can deny that the crisp-exterior to succulent-interior transition of a pied de cochon shares something in common with the lowly McNugget? What better symbol can there be for the delicious mystery of any unaccountably wonderful foodstuff you inexplicably enjoy than... the McRib?
And the fries... The fries! In my life to date, I can remember only ONE time I have had fries at another establishment *without* thinking, "Gosh, these would be better if they were from McDonald's." (It was at Keens.) I can eat them fresh or cold, with ketchup, with that "sweet and sour" sauce, or just naked in all their glory.
It's a rare pleasure for me to indulge in McDonald's these days, which is undeniably good for me. Why I ended up in a Park Slope location on a Friday night is beyond the scope of this review. I will say that the weirdness of the McCafe concept, with its "nicer" interior styling, still threw me for a loop during what was essentially a nostalgia trip. A nostalgia trip to a place which has undoubtedly done much more harm than good to society. But what do you want me to do, give them 1 star? You would know and I would know that I'd be lying.
Probability of return within 1 year: 1% to this location, 40% to McDonald's in general
