Steve Braunias is on a mission to eat at each of the 55 food joints on Lincoln Rd in West Auckland. • Episode 42 (and food joint 55): McDonald’s
The man who ate Lincoln Rd has eaten Lincoln Rd. The year-long quest, to enter into the consciousness and subconsciousness of Auckland life by eating at every single one of the 55 food joints on the golden three-kilometre strip of Lincoln Rd out west, has come to an end. It finished on late Sunday afternoon and the choice was deliberate. The journey ended at the top, at the kingdom of fast food franchises, at the shining citadel of the way we eat now - yeah, I went to McDonald's.
And it was good. Of course it was good; it was McDonald's, that happy place with the happy meals, Disneyland with Ronald instead of Donald, and fries with that. It never disappoints. It always appeals. Generations of children and adults, immigrants and tangata whenua, all races and creeds, have approached McDonald's with joy in their hearts. We know what to expect. The salt and the fat and the thin meat is in our DNA - some say new research actually shows traces of McDonald's in the nucleic acid double helix that creates the human race.
I took my daughter Minka and her friend Zahra. The two year five's were at home. And so was everyone else; the elderly couple who bent over their tax forms, the dad in a Bulls singlet with his arm over his small son's shoulders, the Liston College 1st XV with the legend IN CHRIST WE LOVE on the back of their shirts, the heavily pregnant lady soon to give birth to another customer. We were one big McDonald's family.
Steve took his daughter Minka, centre, and her friend Zahra to McDonald's. Photo / Supplied
The Lincoln Rd franchise has a good play area, nice red stools, and a little bit of effort has gone into putting up Xmas decorations. A bit more of an effort wouldn't hurt. Ronald! It's Christmas!
And yet I wondered whether something funereal was in order - a picture of a Big Mac framed in black, say, as a mark of respect to Jim Delligatti, who invented the Big Mac in 1967, and died last week. A mighty McTotara has fallen. He was 98! O the secret of a long life is not that secret. Just eat a lot of Big Macs.
Earlier this year, when the man who ate Lincoln Rd was in his infancy and the series had just began, a PR trout who works for McDonald's got in touch and offered five $20 Create Your Own Taste burger vouchers. Yes, please, I said; when they arrived, I asked for another $100 of vouchers for the general menu. Always ask for more.
They've been burning a hole in a manila folder marked LINCOLN RD ever since. I grabbed a bunch on Sunday and ran up a bill of close to $50 on a crisp snack wrap, two medium fries, 10 McNuggets, 10 chicken McBites, a fish burger, a Serious Angus burger from the Create Your Own range, Coke, Pump, chocolate shake, and apple pie. I don't know what the girls ordered, nah just jokes.
The gluttons wolfed their food, said in dreamy voices that it was delicious, and scurried off to play. The man who ate Lincoln Rd is a sophisticated diner. I lingered. I tasted. I ended up with most of the Serious Angus burger dripping onto my shirt.
It's a good burger, no doubt about it; the beetroot adds a touch of class, and the crunchy bacon is a stroke of genius. But there are three strokes of genius at Carl's Jnr, which does a Bacon Three Ways burger. Fact: they do better burgers than McDonald's. Fact: so do Burger King. Fact: neither Carl's Jnr or Burger King are McDonald's. There's just something about the place. It's home, I suppose; we don't criticise where we live.
The McNuggets were excellent - and KFC just have to live with that. They ought to hang their heads in shame that McDonald's snuck in and came up with a better chicken dish; KFC knows its chicken, but they dropped the ball on that one, at a cost of countless billions of dollars.
Things don't stand still in fast food. You have to adapt, or die. You have to come up with new ideas all the time. It helps if they're good ideas. Chicken McBites are a newish item on the McDonald's menu and I reckon they're rubbish. Their only virtue is the price, 10 for $2.50. Otherwise, they're small, tasteless, and dry. They don't hand a candle to Burger King's awesome invention, chicken fries.
All that was left to eat - the last meal, the final foodstuff the man who ate Lincoln Rd stuffed himself with - was apple pie. It's one of the best and sweetest smells in all of modern food. It's the smell of apple and sugar and paradise and angels. It doesn't taste great but the smell was so good I can forgive that.
Steve's journey on Lincoln Rd has come to an end. Photo / Michael Craig
A summer breeze ruffled the trees and shrubs across the road; a low sun glowed on the blue Waitakere Ranges; my whole year on Lincoln Rd flashed in front of my eyes. There was a lot of various kinds of chicken in that flash and also a lot of pleasure - and now a deep and probably inconsolable sadness that it's over, finished.
I'll gather my thoughts and write about the journey at stupendous length in the Weekend Herald tomorrow. For the meantime the man who ate Lincoln Rd says farewell. There will be no more weekly episodes. This is the way it ends: with a Macca, the original heart attacker. One last rating. McDonald's: 10/10.
