Cheap, healthy, small

That pretty much sums up the In-N-Out buns. Those burgers are not merely a matter of recharging one’s battery, though one of these joints might have been quite crucial to my friend’s survival on his way from coast to coast, as it was the only oasis between miles of burnt brown hills and deserts after he crossed the state line into The Golden Bear. His uncle always compares other burgers to In-N-Out’s, so when his dad visited the area, the man shrugged “well, I guess I should try it”. His friend, who later came here for conference, felt the same obligation as the other non-Californian conference attenders checked out lunch at In-N-Out. By hook or by crook, this chain gets the reputation of conjuring up a regional specialty that everyone should have while staying in California. After living here for a year, I obliged. It was a sunny day driving back and forth between Milpitas and Berkeley, when I had zero gourmet craving and a simple need to eat a basic lunch. That’s a debatably good time for fast food. Don’t know if most people don’t get cravings, but In-N-Out was […]

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Pret A Manger – Ready to Eat

– Guest post by Paul Simeon – This name may sound foreign to you, unless you happened to see it in the UK, New York, DC, or Hong Kong. It’s a British chain, with a French name, that’s slowly coming to America (and elsewhere). The private company has decided not to franchise, so it’s not spreading as fast as other fast food places, but they’ll slowly populate the States; Chicago is next this Fall. Pret, as it is called by many, is like the ready-to-eat sections, as the name suggests, of cafes and food shops. They have a myriad of salads and sandwiches on the shelf that you can grab and take to the cashier. It’s about as fast as fast food can be. They have soups, fruit, baguettes, sushi, wraps, smoothies, yogurt, etc. They make everything in the kitchen each day and give the unsold items to charity at the end of the day. The other thing one should say when describing this place in such a quick manner is that they stress that everything they sell is natural — no artificial preservatives, flavors, […]

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