Drive-Thru Dreams - Adam Chandler Page 0,41

part of why fast food has sustained its success across the decades is its adaptability. And so, more than just conforming to the native orthodoxies of a given country, fast-food chains also project their evolutions. In December 2015, Burger King began its takeover of Quick, the first-ever European hamburger chain, in an effort to expand its operations in France. What made this generally mundane news item into an international story was the detail that, in a nod to France’s booming Muslim population, about 10 percent of the four hundred or so acquired stores would keep their Quick branding and serve strictly halal fare.† One year earlier, as BK first opened its doors in India to court the country’s burgeoning middle class, the company unveiled a specialty menu that included six meat-free sandwiches with India’s massive beef-eschewing, vegetarian-heavy population in mind. And just as Taco Bell in India exclusively serves its tacos and burritos with potatoes, chicken, and beans instead of beef, Burger King India offers paneer and bean burgers and swaps out the beef in its trademark Whoppers and replaces it with patties made of veggies, chicken, and even mutton.

Of course, the world is complicated and not everything translates perfectly. A visitor craving a Whopper in Australia might be surprised to find that Burger King is called Hungry Jack’s because of a preexisting trademark there. A devotee of Church’s Chicken honey-butter biscuit would instead have to seek it out at a Texas Chicken, which is what the company calls its stores outside of the Americas to preempt a potential holy war. (Both Hungry Jack’s and Texas Chicken have nearly identical logos and signage to their parent companies.) Elsewhere, in Malaysia, religious authorities have compelled chains like A&W and Auntie Anne’s to reintroduce their hot dogs and pretzel dogs as coneys and franks and sausages to avoid confusion with actual dogs, which are decidedly not halal.* Similarly, root beer, which has been A&W’s calling card since 1919, is referred to as RB on menus in places like Malaysia and Indonesia to avoid any alcoholic connotation.

There’s poutine on plastic trays across Canada. Gazpacho at the McDonald’s outlets in Spain, and light, airy macarons across Western Europe. Your breakfast at an Ecuadorean Wendy’s could include sweet honey hotcakes or savory fried plantains and salchichas. Meanwhile, at Domino’s outposts in Nigeria, you can get a pizza topped with jollof rice, the West African staple. If you head south by southeast far enough, you might find yourself hungry for a Burger King hoagie made of boerewors, the classic South African sausage. From there, if you change course due east down Oceania way, try a locally beloved Georgie Pie at a McDonald’s in New Zealand or head to Australia for an English muffin with Vegemite. If a traditional porridge is what your heart truly seeks, A&W, KFC, and McDonald’s outposts across Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore have variations of bubur ayam. For a more portable snack, Popeyes outfits in Turkey boast sesame onion rings, which might pair nicely with a roast-veal foot-long from a Subway in neighboring Bulgaria.

From there, the possibilities for adventure are borderless. Some mind-blowing limited-time offerings have included the McZuri, a ground-veal burger with hash browns and mushroom sauce at Swiss McDonald’s locations, the fabled Birizza, a pizza and biryani mash-up that once starred at Pizza Huts in Sri Lanka and India, and Burger King New Zealand’s Full Meaty, a double hamburger with double cheese, a chicken patty, and six stripes of bacon for good measure. More enduring international fast-food items include Steak Loaders, cheeseburgers that are topped with Philly cheesesteaks, wrapped in tortillas, and live in Hardee’s outlets in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman, and Qatar. For a curious yin and yang of health and destruction, Wendy’s stores in the Republic of Georgia have salmon burgers and various iterations of the Double Down—that infamous sandwich made of two fried-chicken buns and bacon filling—at KFCs in South Korea. For a more understated selection, the pepperoni hot dogs at Dairy Queens in Cambodia or Laos might seem a way to go, while nothing may befit the spirit of Middle Eastern ostentatiousness better than Pizza Hut’s Crown Crust series, which are pizzas with crusts studded with various gauntlets such as mini-cheeseburgers, chicken fingers, alternating meatballs and cream-cheese balls, or hot dogs.

If these princely arrays of sodium-chaffed glory drive you to drink, you should do so at the hundreds of fast-food franchises across Europe and East Asia that serve beer. And for dessert, the sucrose is the limit.