Half the problem is that everything is so cheap in the US. I know prices are relative, but it’s still ridiculously cheap for the natives. The other half of the problem is that everything is just too accessible.
The local town of Athens (like every town you drive through) has a McDonald's, Burger King, Sonic Burger, Kroger’s supermarket, Walmart, Arby’s, Ponderosa, Damon’s and countless others. Food outlets are as ubiquitous as pubs in the States.
The main industry of Athens seemed evenly split between restaurateurs and teaching/cleaning at the Ohio State University. If you were studying anything culinary at Uni, you’d be like a pig in muck.
Now, everyone around the world is familiar with McDonald's and Burger King, and other fast-food chains of their ilk. They’re exactly the same in the US, although you get your food FAST and it doesn’t cost the earth. I estimated it’s about £1.50 for a Happy Meal over there.
Anyway, beyond the McDonald's of this world, there were one or two food outlets that seemed designed for incredibly lazy people… with eating disorders.
Sonic Burger was the most amusing example. It was essentially a McDonald's (without a drive-thru) combined with a Little Chef. You parked up outside, walked in, sat down at a small table and grabbed a menu. After a few minutes, you’d made your choices and began absently looking around for the waitress. By now, you’d become accustomed to omnipresent staff, ready to pounce on anyone stepping through their door, so it was unusual to find no staff in the area.Other diners sat around, tucking into their food and chatting, perfectly happy and content. Maybe there’s been an emergency in the kitchens, or we’ve just stumbled on the only US restaurant for 100 miles with service that’s actually worse than in the UK!
The minutes pass and you get itchy. You suspect Sonic Burger must be a buffet-style arrangement, but a quick glance around quashes that idea. Just what is going on?
But then, you spot it, bolted to the side of your table’s booth. A telephone! You hesitantly pick up the receiver and a chirpy voice says, “Welcome to Sonic Burger, can I take your order, please?” It’s like phoning for a pizza from inside the pizzeria.
You rattle off everyone’s order, then begin to notice the person you’re speaking to is in faint stereo. Leaning back, you can just about make out a teenaged girl standing 10 metres away… on the other phone!
Anyway, eventually the food comes and is surprisingly more filling than you were expecting. Try and imagine your typical McDonald’s Happy Meal… but with taste. I know it’s hard. So, a tentative thumbs-up for Sonic Burger… but the phone thing just seems crazy! I mean, the waitress comes out to deliver your food, so can’t she come out to take the order?
The other amusing restaurant was Ponderosa. Again, it’s nothing particularly “alien” to look at through a Brit’s eyes. It’s a gloomy, brick-walled restaurant with a colour scheme of crème and brown. You go in and are met at a large counter by staff, who ask you what you’d like to order from a large menu stuck on the wall behind them.You can have any item for such-and-such a price… but it’s marginally more expensive if you decide to have it “with buffet”. You’d be mad to ignore the buffet option, so you take that option and head through to sit down.
A waitress then came over and gave us free drinks. Good so far! After a few minutes “settling in”, you realize you can actually go and get whatever you want from the buffet. So up you get and are free to pile-up your plate with whatever takes your fancy: a variety of meats, dips, bread, vegetables and salads.
Back at your table, you snack your way through this mountain of food, with nobody stopping you if you go back for seconds. Or thirds.
When you’re stuffed full, the meal you initially ordered to get in (in my case, grilled chicken) arrives! Of course, by that stage, you’re full already just with the buffet! But, hey, you’ve paid for it, so you force it down.
But you begin to think… I could have ordered the cheapest thing on their menu (say, $2 with buffet) and then pigged out on the buffet. Why pay $8 for the grilled chicken? There was chicken on the buffet! I’ll remember for next time.
Oh, and a word of warning: in places like Ponderosa, where you seat yourself and get your own meals from the buffet, the waiting staff have only one way to impress customers enough so they’ll leave a tip: drink refills.
Literally the second I put down my Diet Pepsi, a waitress swooped in and refilled it. We’re talking nanoseconds, no lie. She must have been watching me! It’s all a bit unnerving. This refilling happened again five minutes later, despite the fact I actually didn’t want a third glass!
The trick is to leave some liquid in your glass until you’re about ready to go… then gulp it down and just run out! I half-suspect that if I turned around I might see a red-faced waitress running after me with her jug of Pepsi sloshing all over the place! The waiters are very, very keen to earn their tips in America.
The supermarkets were similar to the ones in the UK, particularly one branch called Kroger’s, which was pretty much identical to a Tesco’s.
Of course, the granddaddy of supermarkets in America is Walmart, who now actually own the UK’s ASDA. The bizarre thing about Walmart is the variety of stuff you can buy in there; everything from clothes to electrical goods. The prices were also quite bizarre, with Levi jeans at $24/£12 and a 52” HD widescreen television for $1000/£500 (not a well-known make, but… look at that price!)
Part 4: A Road Trip To Buffalo, NY
Part 2: Wildlife & Weather
Part 1: Coming To America
