John Butlerhas a gourmand's appreciation of fast food
For me it all began in the US, with the Arbecue. For the uninitiated, Arby's is a chain of budget fast-food restaurants, and the Arbecue was, for a while, its marquee sandwich. The Arbecue was a roast-beef mountain that managed to be both disgusting and tasty and was, therefore, disgustingly tasty, like most fast food. A friend summed up the seeming contradiction when he described the Arbecue as the most horrible sandwich he ever ate seven times. I, too, was compelled to return to Arby's and further consummate my relationship with this strangely alluring sandwich. More than once, in fact.
In the intervening years a pattern has appeared in my eating habits. I consider my diet to be reasonably healthy. I eat well for the most part, but my past is studded with trips to fast-food restaurants, for some of the best meals I have ever eaten. My relationship with fast food is not hugely different from the way some people relate to slow food. According to www.slowfood.com, the slow-food movement is "a non-profit, eco-gastronomic member-supported organisation that was founded in 1989 to counteract fast food and fast life, the disappearance of local food traditions and people's dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how our food choices affect the rest of the world".
Just like the slow-food people, I don't get to eat my chosen food as often as I would like, and thanks (partly) to their efforts I have noticed people's dwindling interest in fast food. When it comes to the last line of that slow-food manifesto, and the way the production of some fast food has a detrimental effect on the rest of the world, I'd like to say that I'm not encouraging people to eat at the indefensible multinational burger factories. With the notable exception of my brief, torrid love affair with the Arbecue, I'm talking about small, local producers of fast food: the diamonds in the rough.
I'm a reasonably healthy person, and on the issue of food and health I think I have been adequately educated. I've seen Super Size Me. I've read Fast Food Nation. I saw Jamie's School Dinners. And I have watched the footage of sugar-crazed kids in northern England beating each other up for Turkey Twizzlers. I get it. And yet, and yet . . . I refuse to be guilty about the fact that I sometimes like to eat fast, because nothing makes me more annoyed than the concept of a guilty pleasure.
As with food, people talk about listening to a particular song as a guilty pleasure, but this is nonsense. If you like something, you like it. If you don't, you don't. If, in defiance of your brain, your body chooses a kebab over sashimi or an organic apple, then so be it. To paraphrase a line from Withnail and I, if you are embarrassed to admit that you enjoy listening to Maneater by Hall & Oates while eating a burger from Rick's of Dame Street, it's society's crime, not yours.
Life is essentially the accumulation of experience, and I'm not about to rewrite my personal history. As I have yet to earn the kind of money I deserve, my experience of food has been limited to that of the low- to medium- budget food shop. I once ate at Thornton's (when someone else was kind enough to pay), and I greatly enjoyed the 12-course degustation menu, but it pales in comparison with my brother's barbecued hamburgers. These are deservedly notorious in gastronomic circles, because he employs a proprietary technology that allows the cheese to be contained within the patty itself. I'm finding it hard to describe it in exact terms without giving the whole thing away, but think of figs and Fig Rolls.
I feel I must also mention a breakfast burrito I recently enjoyed. Upon trying it, I found hash browns hidden inside, seams of crunch that offset the warm softness of the beans and rice. It was a triumphant experience, rendered complete by fresh tomato salsa that exuded the perfect degree of piquancy.
Yeah, I just wrote that, and why shouldn't I? I have a gourmand's appreciation of fast food, and I'm not about to let a lack of cash stop me from describing what I eat in the same florid manner as the restaurant critics. In theory I'm all for dinner at an insanely chic restaurant, but I feel there are enough cheerleaders for the grilled breast of pigeon, elderberry jelly, bonbon of pumpkin and celery sauce at Restaurant Patrick Guilbaud and not quite enough for the sausage roll.
When you're a counter-revolutionary like I am, it's hard to pick the best, because there's so much more to choose from in my world than in the world of haute cuisine. Also, there is a decidedly American emphasis here, because Americans have nailed the local fast-food experience. In California, In-N-Out Burger has taken ordering to the next level, with a "secret" unprinted menu that its patrons pass around in the style of ancient folklore. If you order your fries "animal style" at In-N-Out, for example, you get them with melted cheese, grilled onions and pickles. I have yet to discover the secret handshake.
Then there is the taco stand. In fact it's not even a stand. It's a cart that an old Mexican lady wheels along the street in Los Angeles. When she puts up a red parasol, it signifies that then, and only then, is she serving her famous jerk-chicken tacos. An ethnically diverse queue instantly forms around the block. And these tacos are like an angel crying upon the tongue. Words now fail me. AA Gill couldn't describe them. They defy logocentric discourse.
• John Butler blogs at http://lozenge.wordpress.com