Drive-Thru Dreams - Adam Chandler Page 0,59

began to spread about a secret, unofficial sandwich so ridiculous that no corporate innovation team could realistically have conjured it into being on its own.

At the time, the Ohio-born chain had been working to shake its trademark image as a roast-beef company. And so the company began posting tantalizing promotional photos of the chain’s array of meaty offerings around its stores. It was summer, and around the country Arby’s customers were standing in line, perhaps transfixed by sunstroke, but also transfixed by one image: a poster that featured corned beef layered atop chicken tenders atop ham atop bacon atop turkey atop roast beef atop steak … you get the picture. So did the customers. By the time they arrived at the counter to order, enticed diners would ask for a sandwich version of the picture they had seen. The resulting creation came to be known as Meat Mountain, whose wretched topography has since become a viral legend:

Two chicken tenders

1.5 oz. of roast turkey

1.5 oz. of ham

1 slice of Swiss cheese

1.5 oz. of corned beef

1.5 oz. brisket

1.5 oz. of Angus steak

1 slice of cheddar cheese

1.5 oz. roast beef

3 half strips of bacon

Today, the Meat Mountain still lives on, as many fabled creations do, as a $10 secret menu item. Like taco giveaways, secret menu items, which are often schemed up by customers themselves, are yet another manifestation of the cult of belonging that fast food inspires. Depending on the chain, these publicly classified artifacts range from relatively generic to extremely strange. For example, Burger King’s unofficial Suicide Burger (four patties, four slices of cheese, and sauce) is not terribly different from the Quad Cheese at Krystal or the Meat Cube at Wendy’s. In-N-Out Burger assumes the mantle of having not only one of the best fast-food burgers, but also one of the most extensive and worst-kept secret menus in fast food. Like the others, In-N-Out has a 4x4 burger, but also the unofficial options of mustard-grilled burgers, well-done fries, whole grilled onions, and, famously, burgers and fries served “animal-style” (covered with cheese, special sauce, pickles, and grilled onions).

Elsewhere, a down-low favorite among Hardee’s—and Lipitor—devotees is the Harold, a mix of biscuits, gravy, eggs, hash browns, and shredded cheese, while at Chick-fil-A, they will happily blend a slice of its blueberry cheesecake into a vanilla milkshake if asked nicely. Perhaps the best sub-rosa offering of them all is Fatburger’s Hypocrite, which is a veggie burger topped with bacon. Then there’s Long John Silver’s, whose secret item is free upon request: fried crumbs, also known as crunchies, krums, or crispies, which are simply collected bread chaff from its fried fish and shrimp.

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But in the now-century-long history of fast food, one fan-driven creation story supersedes all others. It combines the zeal felt for Jack in the Box tacos with the spiritual character of the Filet-O-Fish and the disparate, communal longing for Arby’s Meat Mountain, then stipples it with the artificial alchemy of Doritos flavoring and the greatness of a rare human spirit. It is the story of Todd Mills and the Doritos Locos Taco.

Todd Mills’s stint in the air force had not been uneventful. He had trained bomb-sniffing dogs and served as a security escort for Bill Clinton when he took trips home to Arkansas during his presidency. After a bomb went off at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, Mills and his dog Henry were the first on the scene to investigate and make sure no other bombs had been planted. But in 2002, he was thirty, living in Arkansas, and still hadn’t used his G.I. Bill benefits yet. His wife, Ginger, convinced him to finally go to school, where he studied business writing and information technology and set himself on a new career path. A relentlessly good-natured guy, Mills made friends with his professors. “It really bugged me sometimes how friendly he was,” Ginger said. “We’d go to a gas station, he’d run in for a Dr Pepper and stay in there for an hour. And I’ll have to go in after him and say, ‘Hey, are you coming?’ He’s like, ‘Oh, I just made this friend.’”

“No airs about him at all,” his best friend and air force buddy Jimmy added. “The most easygoing, gregarious person. Always had a laugh for everybody. I’ll never forget that, he was like that with any stranger. If he was here right now, you’d be on the floor.” Ginger tells the story about Todd going to a Photoshop conference and befriending a fellow conventioneer, who