The Cheeseburger Trilogy, Part 3: Heavy Lies the Head That Wears the Burger King Crown

Every food writer has a dead grandma story

Jughead, issue no. 11, Derek Charm and Ryan North, January 2017.

McDonald’s: the gold standard. In terms of flavor, quality, and ethics, they aren’t the best – not by a long shot – but their product can’t be beat for reliable consistency, as comforting and familiar as catching up with an old friend. It’s like Coca-Cola: sure, there may be “better” colas out there, but sometimes (all of the time), only the Real Thing™ will do.

McDonald’s main rival, Burger King, is a pretender to the throne: the king in name only, a title self-appointed and illegitimate. Everybody knows that Burger King is the fall-back option, and they always turn up in situations where you’d really just prefer a McDonald’s.¹ The fries are too floury; they pour Pepsi rather than Coke; and the burgers are over-embellished with mealy tomatoes, astringent onions, sickly mayonnaise and a tiresome backyard barbecue flavor, all in attempts to disguise their also-ran inferiority.

Of course, my loyalty to McDonald’s is really about indoctrination. For many of us, McDonald’s are among the first fast food burgers we experience, and then, for the rest of our lives, the most common. Even though they aren’t great, we acquire the taste through sheer repetition. It helps that McDonald’s has always had better advertising, which in decades past was aimed squarely at children. (I think this is now illegal, but the damage is done.)

Mac Tonight still haunts my dreams.

Nowadays, I somehow think of McDonald’s as weirdly wholesome, family-friendly, and benign, whereas I think of Burger King as dirty and shameful: lawful good vs. chaotic evil. I think I have this image of Burger King mostly because of their positioning as a last-ditch, late-night drunken food offering here in London. Burger King has managed to procure a lot of primo rail station real estate, which means if you’ve had a big night out, Burger King is often the go-to filthmonger when you’re waiting to catch the last train home. And those past-midnight suburbia-bound train carriages absolutely reek of that unmistakeable “char-grilled” aroma² as dozens of inebriated zone-three-to-sixers chow down on whatever monstrous constructions of flabby bacon, barbecue sauce, and onion rings BK are pushing that month. As a young man, I was no exception. The post-pub train station Burger King was, for me, both reward and punishment for an evening of typically British “eating is cheating” binge drinking.

But Burger King wasn't always a regrettable booze-buffer or a disappointing “this will do” off-brand McDonald’s substitute. When I was a kid, it was my preferred fast food restaurant. The burgers were more substantial, and slathered with mayo, which I loved. Instead of chicken nuggets they had chicken tenders – basically just elongated nuggets, but with a crunchier and more peppery coating. Plus, you could get Mountain Dew there, perhaps the one PepsiCo product that bested its Coca-Cola equivalent, Mello Yello. Burger King Kids Meals had cooler toys than Happy Meals, and you got to wear a badass cardboard crown. You could literally eat like a king. They should have given out little sceptres as well.

But I think I mainly liked Burger King because I associated it with my Grandma Jeanne. Every now and then she would look after my brother and I, and as a treat, she would take us to Burger King. I don’t know why it was always there and not the Golden Arches – maybe it was her preference, or maybe (probably) it was my request – but it was always so exciting, not just to have something I liked better, but to have something a bit different. We were a McDonald’s family, so going to BK felt special, maybe even kind of naughty. I’m sure it helped that Grandma let me have full-sugar, caffeinated sodas, at least until my mom told her that was a no-no.³

I wish I could remember more about my Grandma from when I was a kid. She didn’t die when I was young, but thanks to corrupt doctors and America’s on-demand, privatised prescription drug industry, she became addicted to opioids in her later years, which irrevocably changed her personality before ultimately killing her. My memories of her are now clouded by her erratic behavior during this time, and the stress it caused my family, especially my mom. But when I was little, she was always warm and fun, always generous, always patient and kind and indulgent in that easy-going grandma way.

What did we actually talk about on those trips to Burger King? I just don't remember. I wish I could, so badly. But at least I remember I loved being there with her.

1. The non-presence of McDonald’s is felt most acutely when you’re waiting to board a train at breakfast time.

2. Counterpoint: Night buses always smell like McDonald’s fries.

3. If memory serves, the sodas resulted in at least one instance of insomnia, and a separate occurrence of fluorescent Mountain Dew vomit.