the recently regenerated smogoff / firebot sequel has been populated in its early days by many tier ranking threads. as a collection of mostly 16-25 yo mostly men who mostly are lazy degenerates, it seemed inevitable that we would have one rating and organizing what we all have in common: fast food. perfectly fine thread to post, but i was not intending to participate. i am past the need to justify my preferences in mass produced TastySlop to people on the internet, especially given my recent departure from the fast food eating community. i had made the decision to quit cold turkey, jettisoning my drive-thru habit in an attempt to get healthier and live a cleaner life. losing weight, feeling good, and im now at college besides, serving my mandatory door-closed quarantine, after which i will be enjoying the dining hall selections with not even the option of mumbling into a speakerbox and exchanging currency for cancer through various windows. doing so was from a past life, one with nights spent alone driving around listening to music through my car's shitty speakers, memorizing the roads, perfecting my orders, talking to my friends on discord, getting fat, ranking chains in heated debates, finding the cop spots thinking about my future, a time both depressing and formative. but one ive left behind, and with it my need to rank, for the better.
or so i thought. then i saw this absolute dog shit:
and realized that id been drawn, by the demons in my head, back into the game for one last job.
the above ranking is done by a user who internet meme types call "reviewbrah". i wasnt familiar with his work, and during my boredom i clicked on his review of a fellow youtuber's tier list. given that i had only seen compliments -- leaving aside the ironic appreciation people take from his self-presentation -- of his reviewing and rating work, i had high expectations for his list. what i saw shocked me. a veritable hurricane of vomit. a cascading waterfall of wretchedness. one of the worst tier lists i have ever seen.
my points of disagreement will become clear in my list. there are some commonsense questions of what to value from a fast food restaurant; below i will attempt to address how much each factor went into the ratings.
- price: brought in when necessary using a know-it-when-you-see-it criteria. you should obviously expect more from a shake shake meal than a mcdonalds dollar menu setup, and some deals are too good not to mention. but i am also not doing a strict "best rating for the price" sort of metric. food quality predominates.
-versatility: it is more a plus than a requirement. everyone pretty much has their gotos in the fast food lane, and thats p much the correct way to do it, but if a place is only good for one item then it can be hit, and a chain without a standout item can be pushed up by a strong diversity of options
- consistency: not a primary factor, but if a particular chain is super variable then it will be noted.
-dessert / breakfast: neither count, save for natural-companion milkshakes. but no breakfast and no spoon ice cream.
basically im rating these on the strength of a main order, with possible influences from the factors above.
without further ado, onto the list, alphabetical within a given tier:
F-Tier (awful, heinous, actively offended by the suggestion of eating here)
LITTLE CAESARS:
imagine watching the person you love most get shot. now imagine that happened in a back alley in a grim and grimy city as part of an alternate universe where that person had been driven to madness by a series of cruel experiments by their employer (a faceless megacorp taking over the globe), and as part of this decline had become personally vicious to you, hurtful in ways you couldnt conceive of your closest loved one ever being, before publicly saying they despised you, never wanted to see you again, and running away into a cold rainy night, and you having to recover, through a slow and painful process, over a period of three years, then, one night, being told that the person you once loved was still out there, that they needed your help, and being summoned to the alley where you saw them, homeless, strung out withdrawing from heroin and alcohol, face gaunt and pained, but - but! - they smiled when they saw you, said, "hey [user], im so sorry, can you help me?" and you, against your better instincts, saying "yes", reaching out a hand, and then bang, out of nowhere, they get shot and left to bleed out on the filthy cardboard box in which theyd been living. then imagine someone picking up that cardboard box, soaked through with dirt rainwater oil and blood, carrying it into a restaurant, and baking it into the crust of a pizza, which they sold for five dollars. that's little caesars.
E-Tier (pretty bad, i do not want to eat here even if there are not really any other options)
BURGER KING:
i think all of us in the community can recognize that burger king has fallen from its heyday in the mid two thousands. burger king also recognizes this, which is why their advertisements and offerings have taken on an air of increasing desperation. there was like three months where they offered more and more nuggets for a lower and lower price -- ten for 1.49 anyone? or the ads where they get random people to deliver ringing endorsements like "it's not bad", or "i didnt want to kill myself while eating it", or "it sure tastes like food". the menu is weak: burgers are not good, chicken is mid, fries are flavorless. wherever you can find a burger king you should be able to find a better restaurant.
JIMMY JOHNS
the worst of the sandwich places, not least because of its visible pretensions and smug self-satisfaction about the erroneous premise that it is somehow better than subway. limp and dry, not a ton going on, annoying to order at, expensive, irritating ads. shut da fuck up.
PANDA EXPRESS:
i have not had a ~ton~ of panda express, but the concept enough -- american chinese food routed through american car- and mall culture -- should do enough to show why it's an e-tier option. very offputting smells and vibes abound at a panda express; please try to patronize a real chinese restaurant if you can.
PAPA JOHNS:
it's simply not good pizza. im not a pizza snob per se, but i do like to think i have a slightly refined palate, and papa johns is the one on this list (besides, of course, the above little caesers) that makes me go ehhhhhhhhh prolly not. no good alternative options, a founder who loves saying the n-word, really no redeeming qualities here.
WHITE CASTLE:
proves better than anything the depravity of life on long island. my parents are from there, and when we visit sometimes insist on picking up a "sack" of these, which are without fail grey, limp, and inedible. the need to consume in quantity gives a visit to white castle the unpleasant air of an animal feeding and really drives home the depressingness lurking behind even the best fast food transactions. eat! gorge! shovel! consume!
D-Tier (not bad, maybe even pretty good at times)
ARBYS
much maligned, but only by people who are lazy. arbys decided to seek out a market niche of "something different", and while their food isnt exactly amazing it is good, and unique, enough to be viable. you want roast beef? you want a uh fast food chicken cordon blu sandwich? you want some other unholy meat thing? find it at arbys. while the lack of a standout item and the fact that it isnt really that good keeps it from a higher tier, the diversity and the not-actually-that-bad-if-at-gunpoint qualities keep it from any below.
DQ
dq's food is good enough to justify going there for a blizzard. which is what it needs to be! if blizzards were factored in it would be higher; they are not so it is not. but like the chicken tenders here are ok enough.
KFC
not flashy, a real 9 to 5, lunchpail fast food item. chicken is good (c-tier level) but a little sus at times (which moves it down to here). a highlight is the mac and cheese -- get an extra crispy chicken meal and mix the extra crumbs into the mac and cheese for some heat.
PIZZA HUT
the most workmanlike of the pizza options, the hut's options are usable. feels like it was a bigger thing in the 90s? doesnt feel like it should be your main pizza place, support your local italian-americans, but in certain circumstances it seems mighty attractive indeed. like: i was in 6th grade (i think) at a wrestling tournament in a place called Coal Township, PA, and if you know anything about the labor-capital balance, general cultural imprint, or recent economic / environmental fortunes of the coal industry you can conjure a p good idea of what my dad and i were dealing with for dinner options. pizza hut was the only recognizable restaurant, and we had it, and it was good. i hope the denizens of coal township are doing ok and are treating / being treated by the pizza hut with mutual respect.
SONIC
this one pains me. i wish this could be higher. i spent many a night racing to the sonic before it closed at midnight, trying to improve my time (34 minutes was, i think, the record), listening to podcasts and new albums on the way. good memories. but when and why i was racing was the important part: the half-priced shakes and drinks from 8 to midnight. with those gone, the menu does not have enough to support a higher ranking -- the shakes taste better when theyre much cheaper. the boneless wings are prolly your best bet, i dont hate the hot dogs, maybe steer clear of the burgs. if you're a slushie fan, or the deal comes back, or you love the drive in thing, move this up a tier.
SUBWAY
it's something of a meme to suggest subway is inedible, but i feel like we've all decided collectively to lie about it in an attempt to seem "cool". you're not cool homie, and youve eaten subway after soccer practice just like everyone else. it's not, like, good, but you can get what you want and it will taste like a reasonable facsimile of the real sandwich. if you have complaints about the bread to meat ratio, try a flatbread, which are better balanced and easier to eat besides. in high school i had a friend who worked at subway and we took the opportunity to create absolutely demonic sandwiches that he would ring up as a six-inch ham. anyway theyre ubiquitous for a reason, fuck you for being too cool.
C-Tier (solid rotation options)
DOMINOES
you are probably eating dominoes wrong. you should not be treating dominoes like a pizza mainstay attempting to go toe-to-toe with real pizza places. it will lose. instead treat it like a restaurant that has pizza on the side. the real best items are the pasta (honestly quite good) and the cheesy bread (fucking delicious). the wings are probably ok-not-great as well. the pasta and the cheesy bread i would eat sober; the pizza is a drunk food. and oh is it a drunk food. my word how the garlic butter becomes the elixir of life when you're in an altered state. any drunk or otherwise chemically changed brainvibe makes the cheesy bread and the pizza, which are downright soaked in the garlic butter stuff, taste like a full-body orgasm. which makes me think we should nationalize dominoes and run it out of the us postal service. quality, low cost, efficient drunk pizza as a near-universal service for all americans? now that would be social democracy.
FIVE GUYS
it is what you expect. good burger, solid range of toppings, heaping (or so they make it seem) portion of fries. it's not like a groundbreaking meal, but i rlly do like the cajun fries in particular, and am always satisfied with the burgers and hot dogs. :thumbsup:
HARDEES / CARLS JR
i have only had this as Hardees, so apologies if there are major menu differences between the iterations -- i think theyre mostly the same though. i think the challenge of rating hardees is that it appeals only to a particular state of mind. if you are ready and willing to do violence to your body, just fucking try to destroy it, hardees hits as fuck. the monster thickburger is exactly what it seems to be: a slab of beef, bacon, cheese, and bun. wretched, but delicious. i have a true story, but i fear it's too internet red pill / jordan peterson / insane idiot masculinity-seeming to be taken seriously. ok if youre at this point it's prolly a safe space. basically i had to eat a monster thickburger to reset my degeneracy equilibrium after having a bad reaction to a soy coffee my girlfriend made me drink from "her" coffeeshop in her college town. this is not a "beef masculine good, soy woman bad" thing, more a low culture over yuppie culture thing. my stomach is of the streets, and of self-hatred.
MCDONALDS
sort of the platonic form of a fast food restaurant, mcdonalds could be no other place but the solid rotation tier. as everyone knows, the fries are a highlight. the burgers are ok, not a huge fan of them, but viable, and the chicken is also p good (sweet and sour sauce hits). the dollar plus tax sodas were a mainstay of my life back when i drank that shit. essentially you're not going to get your doors blown off by mcdonalds, but you will get a usable meal.
POTBELLY
a sort of more upmarket (i think?) sandwich chain. it's what a subway improvement should be: simple, not spectacular, with slight upgrades at the key positions. not going to belabor the point here. p ok.
SHAKE SHACK
like five guys, p good. i would say the burgers and the fries are slightly worse with the tradeoff of, as the name implies, better shakes. prolly a little expensive but it's too good to be in d-tier.
B-Tier (now weve got something going)
CHICK FIL A
thankfully the three-year run where you had to conceal chick fil a consumption from gay friends has ended because it's p fucking good. the simple menu makes it just a question of what shape your chicken is coming in; that chicken will inevitably taste good. the fries, too. and both provide a strong basis for the true miracle: chick fil a sauce. that shit tastes like the physical equivalent of looking at eva green's face. for this reason i recommend the sandwiches without the lettuce, cheese, etc on it: just go with what works, the original, or the nugs if you hate bread. large sodas too, although ignore the lack of refills and the weird friendliness employees are forced to perform on penalty of death. these came to the northeast within the past decade and people still, some eight years after their introduction, go fucking nutty for them. a lack of diversity of items, while in some ways a strength, keeps it from climbing higher though.
CHIPOTLE
as chick fil a is to homophobes chipotle is to white people: they like it a little too much. doesnt mean it isnt good though. basically you can get a heap of rice, veggies, guac, meat etc in a bowl / wrapped in carbs and so on (why am i explaining chipotle). point is, it's good: meats are spicy, salsas have flavor, and so on. not like good good enough to move up, but good.
MOES
where im from, the primary competitor with chipotle in the fast casual burrito market. in high school which you preferred was something of a marker of class-via-behavior: the lacrosse and hockey types were chipotle partisans, while the football player CTE set aggressively favored moes. as a wrestler / lacrosse player i was sort of torn between two lovers here, and did like both, but eventually decided i liked chipotle better on the strict burrito / burrito bowl comparison. but -- and this is a big "but" -- moes has stacks, which hit like a sack full of bowling balls falling down a hill. the crispyness mixed with all the fillings, the spiciness of the jalapeno, mmmmmm. it's the item to get, in your reviewer's humble opinion. again not mindblowing enough to move it up a tier, but good for cert.
TACO BELL
taco bell is sort of a litmus test for whether you're a fast food degen. if find yourself frequently pulling up to a t-bell late at night, developing strong opinions on the menu or menu changes, theorizing new and exciting combinations that could be potential taco bell orders, you have probably slipped into the wonderful darkness. reaching this state means learning that of course you're going to get absolutely abominable burrito wraps sometimes. of course you're going to endure a look of scorn as you ask for diablo sauce indicating you are cultured in the ways of the bell. of course youre going to have to endure the personal and from-others shame of eating food of unknowable origin. guess what? tell whomever is saying that to fuck off, for there is glory in surrender to a higher cause, a higher calling. if they arent right with their god there is nothing you can do.
A-Tier (the real heat)
POPEYES
popeyes quite simply makes a wonderful food, fried chicken, better and more consistently than actual chefs can. gourmet chefs will tell you this. the technique has been honed to be delicious and repeatable. you dont need a side, though the mac and cheese and the biscuits both hit. just get an appropriate quantity of fried chicken and go to town. i lived in boston for a month and the popeyes by fenway park was having a special where you could get three pieces of chicken and a biscuit for four dollars, and if i had lived there longer i prolly wouldve been 350 pounds eating there three meals a day. highly, highly recommend.
WENDYS
the fast food of choice for the real connoisseur. there is a certain class of people, and i include myself among them, whose eyes would light up in recognition at the words "four for four" delivered in a wistful tone, because what is being references are the halcyon days where you could go to wendys and get a sandwich, four nuggets, small fries and a drink for four dollars plus tax. absolutely fucking unbelievable. just the best. that this deal no longer exists (at least since ive been) is a defeat for the human species. although, to be fair, its successor was also p good for the money -- wendys just delivers the hits. the standard burgers are the best in the drive-thru genre, the chicken sandwiches are like good for real, the soda is crisp, the fries are salty and hot, though im usually a chicken nugget side man myself... even supposedly meme options like the baconator are effective at annihilating the ego in the style of hardees. i understand this isnt within the scope of the original rules, but at one point they had a promotion where you could get a frosty for fifty cents. for four dollars you could feed a family with frosties. unbeaten.
S-Tier (as yet theoretical)
this is my list in image form:
some arent there while i couldnt rank in-and-out or jack in the box (dont exist where im from).
you can make yours here: https://tiermaker.com/create/fast-food
or so i thought. then i saw this absolute dog shit:
and realized that id been drawn, by the demons in my head, back into the game for one last job.
the above ranking is done by a user who internet meme types call "reviewbrah". i wasnt familiar with his work, and during my boredom i clicked on his review of a fellow youtuber's tier list. given that i had only seen compliments -- leaving aside the ironic appreciation people take from his self-presentation -- of his reviewing and rating work, i had high expectations for his list. what i saw shocked me. a veritable hurricane of vomit. a cascading waterfall of wretchedness. one of the worst tier lists i have ever seen.
my points of disagreement will become clear in my list. there are some commonsense questions of what to value from a fast food restaurant; below i will attempt to address how much each factor went into the ratings.
- price: brought in when necessary using a know-it-when-you-see-it criteria. you should obviously expect more from a shake shake meal than a mcdonalds dollar menu setup, and some deals are too good not to mention. but i am also not doing a strict "best rating for the price" sort of metric. food quality predominates.
-versatility: it is more a plus than a requirement. everyone pretty much has their gotos in the fast food lane, and thats p much the correct way to do it, but if a place is only good for one item then it can be hit, and a chain without a standout item can be pushed up by a strong diversity of options
- consistency: not a primary factor, but if a particular chain is super variable then it will be noted.
-dessert / breakfast: neither count, save for natural-companion milkshakes. but no breakfast and no spoon ice cream.
basically im rating these on the strength of a main order, with possible influences from the factors above.
without further ado, onto the list, alphabetical within a given tier:
F-Tier (awful, heinous, actively offended by the suggestion of eating here)
LITTLE CAESARS:
imagine watching the person you love most get shot. now imagine that happened in a back alley in a grim and grimy city as part of an alternate universe where that person had been driven to madness by a series of cruel experiments by their employer (a faceless megacorp taking over the globe), and as part of this decline had become personally vicious to you, hurtful in ways you couldnt conceive of your closest loved one ever being, before publicly saying they despised you, never wanted to see you again, and running away into a cold rainy night, and you having to recover, through a slow and painful process, over a period of three years, then, one night, being told that the person you once loved was still out there, that they needed your help, and being summoned to the alley where you saw them, homeless, strung out withdrawing from heroin and alcohol, face gaunt and pained, but - but! - they smiled when they saw you, said, "hey [user], im so sorry, can you help me?" and you, against your better instincts, saying "yes", reaching out a hand, and then bang, out of nowhere, they get shot and left to bleed out on the filthy cardboard box in which theyd been living. then imagine someone picking up that cardboard box, soaked through with dirt rainwater oil and blood, carrying it into a restaurant, and baking it into the crust of a pizza, which they sold for five dollars. that's little caesars.
E-Tier (pretty bad, i do not want to eat here even if there are not really any other options)
BURGER KING:
i think all of us in the community can recognize that burger king has fallen from its heyday in the mid two thousands. burger king also recognizes this, which is why their advertisements and offerings have taken on an air of increasing desperation. there was like three months where they offered more and more nuggets for a lower and lower price -- ten for 1.49 anyone? or the ads where they get random people to deliver ringing endorsements like "it's not bad", or "i didnt want to kill myself while eating it", or "it sure tastes like food". the menu is weak: burgers are not good, chicken is mid, fries are flavorless. wherever you can find a burger king you should be able to find a better restaurant.
JIMMY JOHNS
the worst of the sandwich places, not least because of its visible pretensions and smug self-satisfaction about the erroneous premise that it is somehow better than subway. limp and dry, not a ton going on, annoying to order at, expensive, irritating ads. shut da fuck up.
PANDA EXPRESS:
i have not had a ~ton~ of panda express, but the concept enough -- american chinese food routed through american car- and mall culture -- should do enough to show why it's an e-tier option. very offputting smells and vibes abound at a panda express; please try to patronize a real chinese restaurant if you can.
PAPA JOHNS:
it's simply not good pizza. im not a pizza snob per se, but i do like to think i have a slightly refined palate, and papa johns is the one on this list (besides, of course, the above little caesers) that makes me go ehhhhhhhhh prolly not. no good alternative options, a founder who loves saying the n-word, really no redeeming qualities here.
WHITE CASTLE:
proves better than anything the depravity of life on long island. my parents are from there, and when we visit sometimes insist on picking up a "sack" of these, which are without fail grey, limp, and inedible. the need to consume in quantity gives a visit to white castle the unpleasant air of an animal feeding and really drives home the depressingness lurking behind even the best fast food transactions. eat! gorge! shovel! consume!
D-Tier (not bad, maybe even pretty good at times)
ARBYS
much maligned, but only by people who are lazy. arbys decided to seek out a market niche of "something different", and while their food isnt exactly amazing it is good, and unique, enough to be viable. you want roast beef? you want a uh fast food chicken cordon blu sandwich? you want some other unholy meat thing? find it at arbys. while the lack of a standout item and the fact that it isnt really that good keeps it from a higher tier, the diversity and the not-actually-that-bad-if-at-gunpoint qualities keep it from any below.
DQ
dq's food is good enough to justify going there for a blizzard. which is what it needs to be! if blizzards were factored in it would be higher; they are not so it is not. but like the chicken tenders here are ok enough.
KFC
not flashy, a real 9 to 5, lunchpail fast food item. chicken is good (c-tier level) but a little sus at times (which moves it down to here). a highlight is the mac and cheese -- get an extra crispy chicken meal and mix the extra crumbs into the mac and cheese for some heat.
PIZZA HUT
the most workmanlike of the pizza options, the hut's options are usable. feels like it was a bigger thing in the 90s? doesnt feel like it should be your main pizza place, support your local italian-americans, but in certain circumstances it seems mighty attractive indeed. like: i was in 6th grade (i think) at a wrestling tournament in a place called Coal Township, PA, and if you know anything about the labor-capital balance, general cultural imprint, or recent economic / environmental fortunes of the coal industry you can conjure a p good idea of what my dad and i were dealing with for dinner options. pizza hut was the only recognizable restaurant, and we had it, and it was good. i hope the denizens of coal township are doing ok and are treating / being treated by the pizza hut with mutual respect.
SONIC
this one pains me. i wish this could be higher. i spent many a night racing to the sonic before it closed at midnight, trying to improve my time (34 minutes was, i think, the record), listening to podcasts and new albums on the way. good memories. but when and why i was racing was the important part: the half-priced shakes and drinks from 8 to midnight. with those gone, the menu does not have enough to support a higher ranking -- the shakes taste better when theyre much cheaper. the boneless wings are prolly your best bet, i dont hate the hot dogs, maybe steer clear of the burgs. if you're a slushie fan, or the deal comes back, or you love the drive in thing, move this up a tier.
SUBWAY
it's something of a meme to suggest subway is inedible, but i feel like we've all decided collectively to lie about it in an attempt to seem "cool". you're not cool homie, and youve eaten subway after soccer practice just like everyone else. it's not, like, good, but you can get what you want and it will taste like a reasonable facsimile of the real sandwich. if you have complaints about the bread to meat ratio, try a flatbread, which are better balanced and easier to eat besides. in high school i had a friend who worked at subway and we took the opportunity to create absolutely demonic sandwiches that he would ring up as a six-inch ham. anyway theyre ubiquitous for a reason, fuck you for being too cool.
C-Tier (solid rotation options)
DOMINOES
you are probably eating dominoes wrong. you should not be treating dominoes like a pizza mainstay attempting to go toe-to-toe with real pizza places. it will lose. instead treat it like a restaurant that has pizza on the side. the real best items are the pasta (honestly quite good) and the cheesy bread (fucking delicious). the wings are probably ok-not-great as well. the pasta and the cheesy bread i would eat sober; the pizza is a drunk food. and oh is it a drunk food. my word how the garlic butter becomes the elixir of life when you're in an altered state. any drunk or otherwise chemically changed brainvibe makes the cheesy bread and the pizza, which are downright soaked in the garlic butter stuff, taste like a full-body orgasm. which makes me think we should nationalize dominoes and run it out of the us postal service. quality, low cost, efficient drunk pizza as a near-universal service for all americans? now that would be social democracy.
FIVE GUYS
it is what you expect. good burger, solid range of toppings, heaping (or so they make it seem) portion of fries. it's not like a groundbreaking meal, but i rlly do like the cajun fries in particular, and am always satisfied with the burgers and hot dogs. :thumbsup:
HARDEES / CARLS JR
i have only had this as Hardees, so apologies if there are major menu differences between the iterations -- i think theyre mostly the same though. i think the challenge of rating hardees is that it appeals only to a particular state of mind. if you are ready and willing to do violence to your body, just fucking try to destroy it, hardees hits as fuck. the monster thickburger is exactly what it seems to be: a slab of beef, bacon, cheese, and bun. wretched, but delicious. i have a true story, but i fear it's too internet red pill / jordan peterson / insane idiot masculinity-seeming to be taken seriously. ok if youre at this point it's prolly a safe space. basically i had to eat a monster thickburger to reset my degeneracy equilibrium after having a bad reaction to a soy coffee my girlfriend made me drink from "her" coffeeshop in her college town. this is not a "beef masculine good, soy woman bad" thing, more a low culture over yuppie culture thing. my stomach is of the streets, and of self-hatred.
MCDONALDS
sort of the platonic form of a fast food restaurant, mcdonalds could be no other place but the solid rotation tier. as everyone knows, the fries are a highlight. the burgers are ok, not a huge fan of them, but viable, and the chicken is also p good (sweet and sour sauce hits). the dollar plus tax sodas were a mainstay of my life back when i drank that shit. essentially you're not going to get your doors blown off by mcdonalds, but you will get a usable meal.
POTBELLY
a sort of more upmarket (i think?) sandwich chain. it's what a subway improvement should be: simple, not spectacular, with slight upgrades at the key positions. not going to belabor the point here. p ok.
SHAKE SHACK
like five guys, p good. i would say the burgers and the fries are slightly worse with the tradeoff of, as the name implies, better shakes. prolly a little expensive but it's too good to be in d-tier.
B-Tier (now weve got something going)
CHICK FIL A
thankfully the three-year run where you had to conceal chick fil a consumption from gay friends has ended because it's p fucking good. the simple menu makes it just a question of what shape your chicken is coming in; that chicken will inevitably taste good. the fries, too. and both provide a strong basis for the true miracle: chick fil a sauce. that shit tastes like the physical equivalent of looking at eva green's face. for this reason i recommend the sandwiches without the lettuce, cheese, etc on it: just go with what works, the original, or the nugs if you hate bread. large sodas too, although ignore the lack of refills and the weird friendliness employees are forced to perform on penalty of death. these came to the northeast within the past decade and people still, some eight years after their introduction, go fucking nutty for them. a lack of diversity of items, while in some ways a strength, keeps it from climbing higher though.
CHIPOTLE
as chick fil a is to homophobes chipotle is to white people: they like it a little too much. doesnt mean it isnt good though. basically you can get a heap of rice, veggies, guac, meat etc in a bowl / wrapped in carbs and so on (why am i explaining chipotle). point is, it's good: meats are spicy, salsas have flavor, and so on. not like good good enough to move up, but good.
MOES
where im from, the primary competitor with chipotle in the fast casual burrito market. in high school which you preferred was something of a marker of class-via-behavior: the lacrosse and hockey types were chipotle partisans, while the football player CTE set aggressively favored moes. as a wrestler / lacrosse player i was sort of torn between two lovers here, and did like both, but eventually decided i liked chipotle better on the strict burrito / burrito bowl comparison. but -- and this is a big "but" -- moes has stacks, which hit like a sack full of bowling balls falling down a hill. the crispyness mixed with all the fillings, the spiciness of the jalapeno, mmmmmm. it's the item to get, in your reviewer's humble opinion. again not mindblowing enough to move it up a tier, but good for cert.
TACO BELL
taco bell is sort of a litmus test for whether you're a fast food degen. if find yourself frequently pulling up to a t-bell late at night, developing strong opinions on the menu or menu changes, theorizing new and exciting combinations that could be potential taco bell orders, you have probably slipped into the wonderful darkness. reaching this state means learning that of course you're going to get absolutely abominable burrito wraps sometimes. of course you're going to endure a look of scorn as you ask for diablo sauce indicating you are cultured in the ways of the bell. of course youre going to have to endure the personal and from-others shame of eating food of unknowable origin. guess what? tell whomever is saying that to fuck off, for there is glory in surrender to a higher cause, a higher calling. if they arent right with their god there is nothing you can do.
A-Tier (the real heat)
POPEYES
popeyes quite simply makes a wonderful food, fried chicken, better and more consistently than actual chefs can. gourmet chefs will tell you this. the technique has been honed to be delicious and repeatable. you dont need a side, though the mac and cheese and the biscuits both hit. just get an appropriate quantity of fried chicken and go to town. i lived in boston for a month and the popeyes by fenway park was having a special where you could get three pieces of chicken and a biscuit for four dollars, and if i had lived there longer i prolly wouldve been 350 pounds eating there three meals a day. highly, highly recommend.
WENDYS
the fast food of choice for the real connoisseur. there is a certain class of people, and i include myself among them, whose eyes would light up in recognition at the words "four for four" delivered in a wistful tone, because what is being references are the halcyon days where you could go to wendys and get a sandwich, four nuggets, small fries and a drink for four dollars plus tax. absolutely fucking unbelievable. just the best. that this deal no longer exists (at least since ive been) is a defeat for the human species. although, to be fair, its successor was also p good for the money -- wendys just delivers the hits. the standard burgers are the best in the drive-thru genre, the chicken sandwiches are like good for real, the soda is crisp, the fries are salty and hot, though im usually a chicken nugget side man myself... even supposedly meme options like the baconator are effective at annihilating the ego in the style of hardees. i understand this isnt within the scope of the original rules, but at one point they had a promotion where you could get a frosty for fifty cents. for four dollars you could feed a family with frosties. unbeaten.
S-Tier (as yet theoretical)
this is my list in image form:
some arent there while i couldnt rank in-and-out or jack in the box (dont exist where im from).
you can make yours here: https://tiermaker.com/create/fast-food
