worst fast-food burger joint

this thread was destined to result in a tangle of horse meat conspiracies and accusations

Yes McDonald's fries changed the fat and got significantly worse. Can't stand the smell of being in a McDonald's anymore and absolutely will not eat their fried offerings but I do think they bring some decent sandwich game, especially at breakfast. I get drive-thru or takeout. As a 50-year-old American human, I can simply eat McDonald's as a medicine for hunger. I know what to expect, it's easy to eat, I am not disappointed. Not a gourmet experience but by no means the worst.

I can eat a burger from Steak & Shake, Wendy's, Roy Rogers, Sonic, In & Out, or Five Guys without complaint (which is not to say that it always sparks joy, just that I can consume their offerings without being deeply sad afterwards).

Hence I voted for White Castle, which is uniformly bad & hated

The rest I have either not tried or don't remember well enough to opine

i'm loving it (this thread)

lol the in n out voters itt are classic ilx 'thinking too hard' votes. only one of these places has served me still-frozen food and that was burger king.

― Nedlene Grendel as Basenji Holmo (map), Tuesday, December 7, 2021 2:33 PM bookmarkflaglink

"now when you get home, you're gonna wanna pop this in on Meat setting for 3 minutes, or until you see oozing pus coming out of the burger and it starts to turn reddish. then put the toppings back on!"

BK has the high aspect ratio chicken sandwiches going for it

May need to quibble on Steak & Shake a bit because I don't quite regard it as a "fast-food burger joint" in the same category as most others listed here.

I'm originally from St. Louis and throughout my life Steak & Shake has been a place you went, parked, got a table, ordered from an aproned server, got food on a real ceramic plate, and then paid for as if you were at a normal restaurant.

Therefore it is taxonomically distinct, in my mind, from the rest of the places (where you order at a counter and the food is in a bag or maybe on a plastic tray). At Steak & Shake you could have a milkshake taller than your head, in a real glass vessel, perhaps even with more of it on the side in its metal shake-containing entity. An actual real cherry with a real stem.

I don't know why presentation should matter this much but it does.

Plus, I have distinct memories from the 1970s of A&W restaurants with a phone at each table, so that you could order from there - we shall never see the likes of this again, although Red Robins (and Olive Gardens) have web-enabled table kiosks that get close to that same magic.

I guess it's not so much the presentation but that the food is of a quality that's capable of being presented in that way.

Hence I voted for White Castle, which is uniformly bad & hated

Counterpoint: White Castle is good and loved.

Steak & Shake was the only restaurant I'd ever seen get entirely shutdown for too many health code violations

McDonalds fish filet sandwich is good. I think their restaurants tend to be cleaner and more pleasant in the Midwest. Shake Shack burgers are tasty, if a bit greasy. For worst, I would write in Johnny Rockets, due to an unfortunate reaction to one of their burgers about 10 years ago.

Crown Burgers – Restaurant chain based in Salt Lake City, Utah, U.S.

lol at this making the cut. they aren't terrible tbh.

mcdonald's has a few ok things ime but it all tastes like a simulacrum of food

Most curious to try Max Hamburgers of the far-flung options.

Johnny Rockets is very depressing. I swear it was the shit in the 80s and 90s tho.

Who will rep for Culvers? Any good?

RE: Five Guys, I was a happy customer of the original pre-franchise Five Guys location (Arlington VA circa 80s/90s), like, my burgers were made by one of the titular five guys. Very local, pretty tasty. Their handling of fries remains pretty solid, at least at the locations I go to.

Unfortunately the franchised locations - especially those in airport terminals - are not bringing the same attention to detail, so I can totally commiserate with folks who are disappointed.

xps Yeah Crown Burgers is a cut above the likes of McDs etc.

My Steak 'n Shake experience did not involve aproned servers and ceramic plates, lol. I only ever ordered via the drive-thru, but I don't think the indoor part of it was at all fancy. This was in Florida.

I have to say: A couple years back, I went into McDonalds & Burger King in Barcelona just because they had cheap beer on tap and there was a bathroom

I'll rep for Culvers. xp

Culver’s is very good

i wish i could have culvers :(
i think its very important to check out the local mcdonalds when traveling abroad. i love mcdonalds as a brand. so twisted and gross. great colors and 70s nightmare characters. theres an unofficial mcd's museum out here in some dude's house it's sick.

Culvers is ok. Which in fast food graded-on-a-curve terms means its pretty good. Custard flavor of the week or month or whatever is a good marketing tactic, though I find their custard suffers when compared to places that only do frozen custard.
I remember going to their attempt at an upscale fast casual place, Blue Spoon, near their headquarters in Prairie du Sac and liking it but apparently it's closed.

Who will rep for Culvers? Any good?

― kurt schwitterz, Tuesday, December 7, 2021 3:21 PM bookmarkflaglink

I've only had their cheese curds, which were decent, but not even the best *in my city*! (sadly the best curds here are from a guy with a food truck that you can't easily access regularly, and I don't remember the name of his business)

The Johnny Rockets at Cedar Point was the worst burger I’ve ever eaten. Awful processed crap.

My Steak 'n Shake experience did not involve aproned servers and ceramic plates, lol. I only ever ordered via the drive-thru, but I don't think the indoor part of it was at all fancy. This was in Florida.

― Josefa, Tuesday, December 7, 2021 3:28 PM bookmarkflaglink

I waited tables there but the to-go traffic was humongous and continuous, regardless of what the in-restaurant traffic was. and people also came in to place to-go orders en masse.

so it was a sit down restaurant, but one that does enough to-go traffic to really qualify for this thread IMO (agree w/ you!)

during one shift, Anthony Bowie of teh Orlando Magic came in and started making fun of me because my non-skid shoes weren't working real well. he said "You slippin' and slidin' over there!"

Johnny Rockets is the worst of all worlds. first of all, nobody wants to go to a 50s-styled indoor diner anymore, the food is mediocre af, and the 'jukebox' plays the same 3 songs over and over again cos nobody wants to waste their money playing songs because they can just put on headphones and Spotify w/e they want.

Cedar Point Johnny Rocket the only Johnny Rocket with the appropriate background of screams

nobody wants to go to a 50s-styled indoor diner anymore

I'm not sure if this is true

Culver's is, for a fast food burger, great. Not the place I'd get curds but the frozen custard is fully acceptable. I don't think it's as good as Five Guys but, despite its appearance on this list, Five Guys is not by me a fast food burger.

I went into a 90s diner the other day

it was dumb

if you go to the cedar point johnny rocket's and then a little ohio rascal cuts you in line for the raptor, did you eat at ed debevic's?

xxpost considering I've waited 15-20 minutes almost every visit, you ain't kidding.

Sometimes I like to put on my blue suede shoes and take my gal out for a malt, dropping a couple nickels in the old wurlitzer

wait what is a 90s diner?

Considered voting for A&W, which I have only been to once, and which I really remember nothing about except forming the determination not to go to A&W again. But I don't even know for sure whether I had a burger.

Instead, I voted for Mooyah. The burgers are perfectly good but it's owned by private equity and I read an article somewhere about how their employees are required to travel predetermined step-minimizing paths to avoid accidentally engaging in any non-revenue-producing bodily motion, and I found the whole thing so incredibly depressing that I never ate there again. (It helps that the one close to me is a block from Five Guys, which makes a better burger in a similar style.)

so don't blame me if Uncle Bill's Burgers Blasted Out Your Ass isn't on the list.

*scrolls down* Yup, it's Neanderthal.

I love Culvers, of all the fast food places around here it's by far the best

I live about a half mile from a Culvers that's across from a Hardees, it's funny driving by at lunch and seeing the Culvers drivethru backed up nearly into the street while the Hardees one is wide open.

Out of the ones on the list that I've eaten, Sonic is trash to me.

they fuck up tater tots, which I thought impossible

I think Burger King changed their buns recently, in a bad way, but usually they're my favorite.

The only A&Ws I've ever encountered are the ones paired with KFC.

MrBeast is one I tried recently and seems to be from the "tastes like MegaAWESOME" school of burger where it's chock-full of calories and sodium and all these massive gimmicky toppings but isn't really 'good' per se

A&W is no Dog N Suds

I'm always pleasantly surprised when I see a stand-alone A&W in the old pagoda/hop kiln style building... they've seemed like a doomed franchise for decades now

its because they have mini corn dogs. where else you gonna get those

Sonic is the fuckin pits. Saddest food. There is a Heavens Gate level cult with the drinks and the ice tho.

In 2007, Jack in the Box began a commercial campaign for their new 100% sirloin beef hamburgers, implying that they were of higher quality than the Angus beef used by Carl's Jr., Hardee's, Wendy's, and Burger King. That May, CKE Restaurants, Inc., the parent company of Carl's Jr. and Hardee's, filed a lawsuit against Jack in the Box, Inc. CKE claimed, among other things, that the commercials tried to give the impression that Carl's Jr./Hardee's Angus beef hamburgers contained cow anuses by having an actor swirl his finger in the air in a circle while saying "Angus" in one commercial and having other people in the second commercial laugh when the word "Angus" was mentioned.

Amazing

I'd rather have black angus anus than carl's jr any day of the week

going down a wikipedia franchise wormhole, one of my favorite places to visit on a quiet afternoon every year or two

did you know that long john silver's used to be owned by yum! brands but is now owned by a group of franchisees