So, my heating bills are going up, and the fast-food joints are responding with cheap hamburgers? That's one of the silliest pieces of economic analysis I've ever seen. Things go in cycles, and people got tired of not getting what they mostly expected at the drive-thru: cheap food, fast. Now that they're getting back to the cheap, would it be too much to ask that they work on the fast a little bit?
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One of my first jobs in high school was at the first local McDonald's on East 30. There was no indoor seating, no indoors for customers at all in fact -- just an awning and a couple windows for walk-up business, and drive-through was years away. The burgers were 10 cents then 12, and the hourly wage was 85 cents (up from my previous clerk/delivery position which paid 65 cents).
The burgers and fries tasted pretty good back then, way before everybody started changing to "healthier" ingredients.
These days, I'm having trouble finding any fast food burger that doesn't taste like cardboard in the middle, and the french fry oil is so healthy that the fries lose any flavor and tenderness they may have as soon as they start to cool. (Fries are the worst victims of the push for healthier recipes, which don't seem to have given fast food any better reputation.)
So now, instead of spending less than a buck for a meal, it's easy to spend six bucks getting fast food, not enjoy the flavor all that much, and go home kinda hungry.
Just talking about this makes me crave a plateload of Powers or Coney Island.
My current favorite hamburger is Hardee's Thickburger, and I highly recommend the coneys at The Stand at Bobick's golf place on Bluffton Road. For good fries, you almost have to leave the fast-food venues. I like the Rib Room's.