A case for McDonald's
Over the holidays I read Kim Foster’s memoir, The Meth Lunches. Kim is a food writer living in Las Vegas who writes about “people and the intersection of food and mental illness, family separation, poverty, addiction, trauma and incarceration.”1 Heavy for a holiday. But she also writes about friendship, connection and food in the most refreshingly educational way. The book begins during the pandemic with Kim feeding her meth-addicted handyman lunch on their back patio. It was a steamed pork bun, or something equally effortful and flavourful that made me want to pull up a chair and share in the conversation. This relationship cracked open a larger understanding of who he was, where he came from, and what it meant to live as an addict in Los Vegas. This led to a community fridge in her front garden providing food for anyone who needed it. In the process she met, fed, fostered and adopted children who were born addicted and afflicted by poverty and drug use in her community. Kim didn’t just tell someone’s story, she became the story.
Kim is the kind of home cook who makes her own charcuterie. She and her husband once hosted a Filipino Kamayan feast for the neighbourhood one New Year. They’ve cooked out of a food truck at Burning Man and make a Yakitori free-for-all every Thanksgiving. Kim is also the person who slurps soda from a straw in the parking lot of McDonald’s. She is so likeable.
McDonald’s plays a big role in this book. It’s where families bring their foster kids to play while the parents chat with their case worker. It’s where biological parents of the foster kids come to have a visit with their children with the foster parents looking on.
Chapter four opens with this scene -
“This is the most dismal McDonald’s I’ve been in for a while. But this McDonald’s serves its community. It exists for everyone, democratically - junkies sliding through their heroin highs and lows over coffee, the Boulder Highway prostitutes taking a bathroom break, neighbourhood moms from the nearby weeklies (apartments paid by the week) taking their kids there for dinner.”
McDonald’s makes cheap, unhealthy food. We all know that. And we know that the globalization of McDonald’s has replaced local flavours with its homogenous menu. Big Macs taste the same, everywhere you go. Then there’s the environmental impact of transporting food and the complicated impact of genetically modified ingredients, like tomatoes grown to match the size of a burger bun.
But if you’re like Kim and her husband, waiting for the parents of their foster children to turn up to negotiate an adoption, McDonald’s was a community necessity. And all the while the kids played, oblivious in Playland, stopping only for a sip of juice and a french fry. This place has a purpose.
McDonald’s was my favourite place when I was little. At our location on Quinpool Road a statue of Ronald McDonald greeted you on the way in. The chairs swivelled, there was a mural of our city on the wall, and a strip of tables lined a long corridor on the way to the bathrooms just for the non-smokers. That’s where we sat, me with a plain burger, fries and an orange pop. If it was breakfast time, my dream come true, it would’ve been pancakes soaked in fake maple syrup, my little plastic knife slicing right through the styrofoam container. In high school we met at that Quinpool Road location after school dances. I always ordered a chocolate sundae with peanuts. I loved the way the sauce would harden around the edges as the soft ice cream melted. I’d eat it in the parking lot with my friends - bangs high, hair flowing and braces on my teeth. I was oblivious to the strangers who sat inside. We were middle class kids from the centre of the city, just one wedge of the community served in that restaurant.
The Quinpool Road McDonald’s was demolished last week to make room for a residential development. A new McDonald’s will take its place across the street, this time without a drive-thru, without the retro feel. I probably won’t step inside, I haven’t been inside the McDonald’s on Quinpool for years. But I understand why it’s there, and why our community needs it.
PS - I once spent the night - the whole night - on the streets of Florence with my mother-in-law Rose. It was McDonald’s that saved us. You can read about it here.
I didn’t think I would have an opportunity to share the recipe my boys found online for homemade Big Mac sauce, but here we are. I say homemade, but really it’s just a melange of condiments from the fridge: mayonnaise, mustard, relish, ketchup, stirred together with grated onion (essential) paprika, garlic salt and powder, vinegar, and of course, sugar. Here’s the link!
From the book flap of The Meth Lunches: Food and Longing in an American City (MacMillian, 2023)
Imagine a world filled with Kims. What a place it would be.
I love this - especially the parts about Rose. Aren't you lucky to have a mother-in-law like this (xox)