Wendy's, Myer Centre Food Court

I had a Wendy's shake'n'dog combo for lunch today. For me, Wendy's has always been more about the milkshakes and hotdogs rather than the ice cream. Shun me if you will but Wendy's retains a certain magical high school nostalgia - more so than Hungry Jacks or McDonalds or KFC. In many ways, Wendy's represented the pinnacle of adolescent achievement. Because the outlets were less accessible you had have the means to get yourself there (a car and a certain amount of freedom) and once there you had to be able to afford to buy your meal (implying a high school job of sort) and the outlets were usually located by the beach or near cinemas (which often meant babes and dates).

Today's meal was my old stand-by of chocolate thick shake and a hotdog with butter, BBQ sauce, mustard and cheese.



Thick and cold and sweet and chocolatey the thick shake was just as I remembered it. Because I can hoover down a milkshake in 30 seconds I always order a thick shake. It might be smaller but it takes much longer to knock back and means you've usually got something to drink with the dry nub of roll at the end of the hotdog.

And this is probably the great flaw of the Wendy's hotdog - the final nub. The fourth to last and third to last bites are invariably the best. There's still some dog left and all the buttery/cheesy/saucy goodness has oozed down to the bottom to create a mouthful of ultimate flavour. The second to last bite probably still has some residual flavour ooze and is ok. But the last bite - just a disappointingly dry heel of bread. I mean, look how far the dog is poking out of the bun. No wonder the flavour doesn't reach the bottom.



Having said all that, Wendy's probably still do the best hotdogs available in Adelaide (but I'm happy to be corrected). I'm not sure whether that's an indictment on Adelaide's hotdog scene (does Adelaide even have a hotdog scene?) or my own tastes. Regardless, Wendy's will always take me back to those halcyon high school days of hot cars, hot babes and hotdogs.

Hungry Jacks, City Cross Arcade

Like a moth to the flame, occasionally I get suckered in by fast food gimmicks. I've read for years about sliders in the US and was therefore fascinated by the new range of Hungry Jacks mini burgers. These burgers are NOT sliders - they are simply small burgers.

I try not to eat much in the way of junk food and ordered both the rodeo mini and the cheese burger mini (or that's how I'm trying to rationalise to myself) so I didn't have to return.

The meal arrived in under 5 minutes in kind of kitsch retro packaging.



I ate the rodeo burger first. I'm not sure what Hungry Jacks marketing thinks about the average consumers intelligence but for some reason lots of sweet BBQ sauce is supposed to evoke images of cattle rustling cowboys - hence rodeo. Used sparingly, I can handle commercial BBQ sauce - but a deft touch was not used here - the sauce overwhelmed everything. The burger patty was the usual dry hockey puck and the bun was the cloying the spun sugar/duck feather doona standard but the cheese helped give the burger some fatty flavour. Surprisingly, the onion rings actually stayed crunchy (does anyone remember the disastrous KFC nacho burger?) which saved the burger. 



Up next - cheese burger mini. Sadly, the cheese wasn't melted and there was no pickle. The burger really needed something sharp to cut through the sugary tomato sauce and provide some extra texture and flavour. 



Fortunately I like to stuff my cheese burger with fries - this is a bit of a hangover from my high school days. 



The chips provided the extra salt and crunch the burger needed.

Anyway - the service was fairly prompt and the price of $4.95 for burger mini, chips and a drink is cheap for lunch by anyone's standards. The burger wasn't great but that's not what you expect from Hungry Jacks - you get a fatty, salty, sugar bomb that satisfies rather than nourishes.