in the 70s, Food of the Seventies

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Commentor Name:	Ed Cranston
Comments left:	Growing up (mid 60's to early 70's), we seldom ate fast food. It was more of a special treat back then, not a regular staple of your diet as it is today. If we were out late, shopping and running errands and mom didn't have time to cook dinner, she'd take us all to get hamburgers on the way home. This, as I say, was a rare occurrence and it was always the same thing. There was a McDonald's and a Burger Chef next to each other and my older brother, for whatever reason (maybe because he was a jerk), thought McDondald's had the best hamburgers and fries and Burger Chef had the best shakes, so that's what we'd have to get - McDonald's burgers & fries and Burger Chef shakes. Back then, fast food was higher quality than it is today, so the burgers, no matter where, were real beef - no shipped in ready-made patties of pink slime for us! I remember it all smelling and tasting great, much, much better than it does today. You have to go to an old style diner to get similar burgers today. Try K's in Troy, OH, or The Spot in Sidney, or Kewpie Burger in Lima, OH or Crabill's in Urbana, OH, all of which are longtime burger joints who still do it like they used to. People today don't realize what gluttons they are, back then you'd usually eat just one regular hamburger, maybe two if you were an adult male, and if you got a soda, a large was 16 ounces at most. The McDonald's is still in the same location on Wilmington Pike, though they're on like their fifth building by now, but the Burger Chef is long gone, though it's still a restaurant (a La Rosa's Pizza or Frisch's Big Boy, I think). Like everyone says, Hardee's sucks. I remember their cartoon cowboy commercials when they first hit town in the early 70's. They disappeared after about ten years but then they showed up again, like a bad penny. They occasionally offer a version of the Super Shef, I think, in deference to their Burger Chef superiors, but it's been a few years since the last time. Burger King is probably as close as you can get to the old Burger Chef hamburger today (from a fast food chain), because they're also flame broiled, but Burger King burgers taste charred, like a bad cookout at your sleazy uncle's house, and are drowned in foul mustard. McDonald's is just plain nasty these days, not only do my guts ache when I eat there but my soul aches, too. Makes ya feel unclean just being there. I recently read Donald Fagen's semi-memoir Eminent Hipsters (he's one half of Steely Dan), and in it he mentions that when his father lost his job in the mid-60's his dad attended Fast Food university in Indianapolis and opened a Burger Chef franchise in Dayton, where they relocated for a while. That's what got me reminiscing about Burger Chef. Another thing that was better back then were the signs - huge, wonderful neon monstrosities that you could see from outer space. McDonald's had its arches, but I always thought the Burger Chef sign was a much better design. Seeing them both side-by-side it was like "fast food Vegas."
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