Wednesday, February 25, 2009

General Scene - Part 2

Fast Food

There is an interestingly varied fast food environment here in Anchorage. The American standards are all here: McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, Arby's, Taco Bells, Carl's Jr's (largely a west coast chain). All these places are almost exactly like they are everywhere else in the US. As it's nod to the locality, McDonald's has a special Alaskan burger, call the McKinley burger, which is distinguished by being stupidly huge. I don't know a single person who has successfully eaten one. But there you go. I actually wish we had one or two more chains up here. West Coast standards In-N-Out Burgers and Sonic would both be welcome additions. To those who would argue the sensibility of a drive-in place, you don't know Alaskans. Temperatures well below 0F would not be a bar to commerce at such a place here.

In addition, there are also a lot of local places that fit into the same mold. Being small outfits, usually family -run, they are of course much less polished than the big chains. And like the big chains, these places exploit different niches of the fast food landscape. Our favorite of the burger genre is Arctic Roadrunner - good food, great atmosphere, reasonable prices. Our favorite fast food of the Mexican genre is Taco King - same as above. In the sadly underexploited Greek genre, Zorba's is the best of the bunch I have found. Study of the local places is very rewarding here - there is a huge variety and all of it is worth trying out!

1 comment:

Laurie Constantino said...

the lucky wishbone for fried chicken is classic old anchorage fast food - big cop hangout - good food