Desperate to grab lunch fast in order to hit the road for a weekend away and beat the leaving Dublin traffic, I stopped at Nutgrove with the intent of going to Eddie Rockets... which is now closed - you live and learn, I saw the McDonalds and thought "fuck it, might as well go for my bi-monthly big mac" ... it was like a dream of a McDonalds... the kind of McDonalds that you see in ads but are sure doesn't really exist anywhere... it wasn't empty but there was no queue... I ordered... the food came almost immediately ... and even more shocking it wasn't luke-warm heat lamp temperature - my burger was hot.... and yet the lettuce wasn't partially cooked... it was like... like... a decent actual burger.
'What a fluke" I thought. they must have just happened to make it seconds before I ordered. But then a thing happened to me which hasn't happened in living memory.... the chips were hot as well. Feeling a little overawed I took in my surroundings and realised the furniture wasn't made solely of plastic and nailed to the floor. The seats had some soft furnishing which dampened those high-pitched tones of petulant childhood that is in every, single McDonalds, even when there are no actual children present... or maybe all the kids were, as I was, humbled by this dining experience that they could only speak in hushed tones...
I mean it had to be a fluke, it just had to be, there's no way it can be like that all the time... even the toilets were clean. I must be psychologically damaged that I feel just a little bit cheated out of the plastic chair/cardboard burger experience I've come to expect from McDonalds! read more