Tag: restaurant

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Why do people get take-out fast food, then sit and eat it in their car in the parking lot, idling with the AC on?

Update: It’s weird how this became normal for me during the 2020 Covid shutdown. I always figured, if you’re going to eat right there anyway, why not just eat at the restaurant? (Assuming the tables aren’t full, of course.)

But in 2020? First you couldn’t eat at the restaurant at all. Then you couldn’t eat inside the restaurant, but could eat outside. Though depending on the weather, you might not want to. Eventually you could eat inside, but had to make a risk calculation as to whether it was a good idea or not. Drive-through and park became an easy way to keep separate airspaces.

At least by the time that hit I was driving a plug-in hybrid, so I didn’t need to idle the gas motor.

Of course there are also plenty of other reasons I just hadn’t thought of at the time: private conversations, for instance, or a sleeping baby in the car seat who you don’t want to wake up early.

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Incredible Cafe

With a name like that, it had better be!

Updates

I’ve since learned that there’s a local chain called Fantastic Cafe, which is almost certainly where they got this name. A few doors down there’s a Mediterranean restaurant run by the same family called Chicken Maison, which brings to mind another local Mediterranean chain called Chicken Dijon.

In 2011, Incredible Cafe became Four Brothers Burger Grill as Five Guys Burgers gained popularity. A few years later, with the explosion of chicken fast food, it became Top Tenders. I’m not sure it’s still run by the same people as Chicken Maison, but I wouldn’t be surprised!

As of October 2024, Chicken Dijon and Top Tenders are still around, Fantastic Cafe has expanded a bit, and Chicken Maison has expanded even more. Both Maison and Dijon were among our go-to spots for a while, though the kid prefers Dijon these days.

And we still haven’t gotten around to trying Poulet du Jour, another family-owned Mediterranean fast food spot in the area, which seems to have been around at least as long as Maison, if not as long as Dijon.