[Sca-cooks] Re:American Iron Chef & another question

[Volker Bach]

Seton1355 at aol.com schrieb:
>
> --
> [ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ]
> yes, but these countries *used* to have their own cultures.  French bistros
> where one could get a simple sandwich, English pubs and fish & chips shops
> for instance. The locals would go to these places.  With Micky-D's the forced
> upon choice is a *hamburger* not local cuisine.  Europe is ape-ing the not so
> appealing aspects of American culture.
>
> OK... a related question.  Since the hot dog is  the *All-American* food
> (more so than hamburgers way back when, when fast food chains got started,
> how come Mickey-D's didn;t hawk the hot dog and instead picked up on the
> hamburger?

Well, the original business concept of theirs was
assembly-line prosduction of one kind of food -
the hamburger. Also, hamburgers were at the time
traditionally served at restaurants (of sorts),
hot dogs at stalls and carts. Thus, serving hot
dogs at a restaurant would have made customers ask
themselves what the point was, and would have
complicated the production process no end,
requiring two kinds of bun, two kinds of oven etc.

As to their success in Europe - being at the
receiving end of it I can venture the guess that
what is so popular is the concept of a
'convenience food restaurant' rather than the food
it serves. We have hot dogs (had them for a long
time, in fact) along with lots of other home-grown
fast foods (the German traditional variety is
sausage with a slice of bread and mustard), but
they are traditionally had at stalls or in
cramped, tiny booths with a few standing tables.
Mc-D's offers quick service (usually quicker than
at the stalls, because at their volume everything
can be kept ready), clean, comfortable seating
space and reasonable prices - which is what people
want.

And BTW; the choice isn't really 'forced upon' any
of us. Where I work I have the choice of getting,
at around the same price and trouble, German
sausage (bah!), Danish hot dogs (with relish,
ketchup, mustard, pickles and roast onions - very
good), hamburger (not bad), pizza, Chinese
takeaway, and Doner Kebap, which (NOT hamburger!)
is Germany's favorite convenience food.

Giano