*crispy waffle*

I'm not a fan of Frank Bruni, the NYT's current restaurant critic, as I made clear in a previous post. However, with his latest column, I have to say I have come around on him (a bit). He finally puts his pompousness and snobbery aside to write about sampling as much drive-thru food as possible on a cross-country road trip from New York to California. It was one of those articles that made me a little misty with American homesickness (let's just say drive-thru is not a phrase that happens too much in Europe). I'm also psyched by his reference (and praise) of one of my favorite drive-thru establishments: Culver's, straight outta Wisconsin, where I grew up. How could you not love a place that actually, shamelessly, calls their burgers "Butter Burgers"? And, he even references Culver's frozen custard (my personal favorite is Kopp's, which is only in metro Milwaukee, but close enough). Frozen custard is one of those weird Wisconsin anomolies that I rarely see outside of the Dairy State borders, but needs to be more prevalent: it's basically a creamier, fattier version of soft serve, but the word soft serve does not do frozen custard justice. Okay I have to stop talking about this right now before I start getting really homesick.

Anyway, props to Frank Bruni for eating way more grease than I could ever possibly consume in nine days.

NYTimes: Life in the Fast Food Lane

Other links:
Wikipedia: Frozen custard
Kopp's Frozen Custard
Culver's Frozen Custard and ButterBurgers

posted by sheryl | 12:43 PM |