I googled the ingredients in an attempt to not look like a moron, but totally failed to see "rice" in the list of ingredients (which I just noticed after just double checking), so now I just look like a monumental moron.
I don't understand why Bud Light exists, ordinary Budweiser is light enough surely. Then you have stuff like Coors which is practically non-alcoholic.
Also while I can be a beer snob at times, I certainly don't hate Budweiser et al as much as people in general seem to. Budweiser in particular is pretty pleasant for a lager; I'd certainly take it over Fosters or Carling or what have you.
In general though if I want a light or refreshing beer I'd go for a weissbier or something like Corona with a good chunk of lime in it. Really love a Desperados on a hot summer day.
>>451028 Heineken recently released Silver, effectively a lighter, less bitter Heineken in an attractive slimline can. It's very easy to drink, in the same way it's easy to drink a 50/50 mix of fizzy water and piss quality lager.
I've never really liked all the snobbery around alcoholic drinks. I still appreciate all the wanky new IPAs, I like a good stout, and generally enjoy a variety of booze. Yet there's absolutely nothing wrong with watery light beers, either. Quite the opposite, they are specifically brewed to be inoffensive to the palette.
It's a bit like people who make a point to say that McDonalds tastes bad. I can believe that people might not like it for many reasons, or not want to go to them for many reasons, but the entire point of fast food chains is to be as broadly appealing as possible. Why be a cunt about something that's just plain?
>>451065 Some people are worthless twats. This is because they are emotionally insecure, but that's no excuse. They're just wankers.
Although if you want a beer that poseur dickheads would turn down, John Smith's Extra Smooth is the only right answer. That's delicious and always will be.
Funnily enough, that was the beer of choice between me and an old mate of mine when we knew we were going to kill a few hours at some tedious BYOB event. Drinking them brings back many warm memories.
>>451065 >who make a point to say that McDonalds tastes bad
To people who grew up with good food, it IS bad tasting. My family is Italian and they would not touch that frozen, preservative filled junk in a hundred years. Why? Because they have grown up with an appreciation of good ingredients. Apparently pointing this out is 'snobbery' but I would rather live a snob for 200 years than be subject to the dishwater that most Brits would mistake for flavour.
>>451072 >To people who grew up with good food, it IS bad tasting.
Mama Mia! You're just an Italian with a stick up his arse. You just wanted to take a shot at the Brits since you as a people have achieved nothing of note since the Medici's developed double entry bookkeeping.
McDonald's is bad when you're in the mood for good food, but it's good when you're hungry. The hungrier you are, the better food tastes. The lower your expectations are, the easier they can be surpassed. You're just picking a fight, and if you continue to do so I will continue to relay to you reasons why your country is bad.
I grew up with home-cooked food as well, but my mother still took me out every now and again for fast food as a kid. Maybe it's changed over the years, but my memories of the taste of McDonald's are the burgers being mostly like warm bread with a bit of sesame seed, some mild "umami" flavours from the meat, and a sweet/tangy sauce. The chips are typical French fries. Not groundbreaking, but not horrible, either.
So I'll reiterate, I don't think McDonald's tastes bad. It's just exactly what it's formulated to be: inoffensive. "Inoffensive" appeals to a fairly broad range of people who just want something quick and predictable.
Maybe in an ideal world, all McDonald's would be replaced with lovely family-owned cafes run by people with a genuine love of cooking, but right now we have (perhaps been forced to create?) a whole market of people that value familiarity and convenience. I don't eat there, but I'd still never look down on anyone for eating there, nor go out of my way to say it's shit when I know why it exists and that others enjoy it.
A comparable thing for me is that I've always disliked crisps. Loud rustling packets, the way your fingers get covered in flavouring and oil, not much to them nutritionally. I've never felt the need to call it bad food, though, because I've eaten them and I know its function is just as an easy snack.
I'm with Italian-family lad here. McDonald's is shit and anyone who eats there should be chastised for being the huge-telly-viewers that they are. Just how low does someone's self-esteem need to be, or how naive do they need to be to favour what is essentially salted cardboard over some nutritious actual food. May they burn in hell for eternity!
I'd wager that McDonald's density (M) can be used as a metric for the wellbeing of a society (S). As M increases, S decreases, although I wouldn't say M causes the decrease in S.
>Maybe in an ideal world, all McDonald's would be replaced with lovely family-owned cafes run by people with a genuine love of cooking
I bloody hope not. I used to travel a lot for work, often with gruelling schedules and often quite far from the beaten track. When it's an ungodly hour, you're dead on your feet, you aren't sure what country you're in and you just need some sustenance, McDonald's is a glowing refuge of safety. It'll definitely be at least vaguely edible, you definitely won't get the shits, the bogs will definitely be clean and you definitely won't risk fucking up your schedule because of slow service.
McDonald's is never particularly good, but it's also never completely terrible. They offer an iron-clad guarantee of complete mediocrity. That's a greatly under-appreciated virtue and it's only possible because of the quasi-fascistic nature of multinational franchising.
It's noteworthy that professional chefs tend to eat total shit a lot of the time. When you're physically and mentally knackered, the merits of good food are completely wasted - you just want fuel at minimal effort.
There's a difference between "tasty" and "good". Michelin are never going to give McDonald's a star, Jay Rayner is never going to wax lyrical about it, but the experience of eating a Big Mac can (in the right context) be every bit as enjoyable as a gourmet meal. Conversely, I think a fourteen-course tasting menu from The Fat Duck would be an absolute ordeal if I was forced to eat it in my car with a stinking hangover.
>>451090 In Rayner's 2003 review of McDonald's he said he "quite liked the berry and yogurt crunch. The yogurt was sharp and there was real fruit in the berry mixture."
I wonder if foodies would be fooled if you took a Maccies burger and cut it into really small vertical sections, then presented it on a slate with a smear of ketchup next to it, and called it a "deconstructed American grill" or something like that. I feel like they would almost certainly give it more credit than it deserves in that context.
It's probably a testament to my culturally impoverished upbringing but to me a Maccies or a Burger King or whatever still feels like a bit of a treat. You'd have to ask your mum to take you for one specially as a bribe when she dragged you around doing the big shop after school, instead of being able to go out with your mates; or you'd get to take a couple of the lads to Maccies and then see a film for your birthday. It's a treat I have, in my less proud moments, given myself upwards of three nights a week, as an adult, but nevertheless, it's a treat.
It doesn't really matter that it tastes like shit. There's a decadence about just eating shit.
That's exactly the kind of thing I was getting at, yes. Sometimes predictability trumps overall quality, and once I twigged that I finally understood why people eat there.
Just out of curiosity, do you feel the same way about drinks?
My girlfriend has great taste and I can definitely appreciate her choice of food and wine. At the same time, there are some moments in life when nothing beats a greasy-spoon egg and chips with a strong mug of tea, or a burger and a tall glass of weak-as-piss beer. I could happily polish off a few bottles of Budweiser on a sunny afternoon.
Service management lad here. The quality of a product or a service is highly subjective and varies in its perception from person to person. A lot of people value predictability of service and products, often preferably at a low price point, because they will reasonably know what they'll get each time. Then again, with other products, the perception of quality lies precisely in the fact of predictability. And then to other consumers/customers, they will see decisive marks of quality in individualised and bespoke service as well as in the variation of meals or products offered. Many people probably won't keep going to a high-end restaurant for long if they never have any specials. Then again, other customers going to the same restaurant will precisely value the consistency of that place's standards, and not so much the fact that they have a new fusion-cooking experimental dish every other week.
In a very general way, the more a customer pays for a product or service, the more they'll expect to get some sort of preferential treatment or (high-quality) variety. In essence though, as with everything, know your customers, so you can tailor your service or product to them.
