I ate at Carl's Jr for the first time and found the chain desperately needs a new personality
I went to the Carl's Jr. restaurant in Los Angeles International Airport before a flight to New York.
The grey, the spaceship-like design was more dystopian than appetizing.
The guy behind the counter joked with me that each photo would cost $5.
The last guy he said that to didn't understand that he was joking, he said. The guy freaked out, deleted all the pictures he'd taken, and left. "We gotta have a sense of humor around here," he told me.
I have a sense of humor, but also a sense of hunger.
Carl's Jr. was one of the first chains to jump on the Beyond bandwagon, but since this was my first visit, I decided to go with a beef Famous Star combo, with cheese.
Ta-da! Nothing says "please like me" like oddly intense all-caps poetic text on the wall.
It was time to find out if, as the wall text claimed, flavor dreams really did come true here.
I mean calm down, wall, it's just a burger and fries.
I started with the Famous Star with cheese, which is the flagship burger at Carl's Jr.
My first thought was that it tastes like a milder Whopper.
It was a pretty wet burger with crisp veggies and fairly juicy meat.
The burger wasn't bad by any means. There just weren't any distinguishing features at all.
The fries were crispy and delicious.
They're what I wished In-N-Out's fries were: plain and satisfying.
Just perfect with a bit of ketchup.
But as much as I like a good fry, burgers need to work harder to impress me.
And munching on this one wasn't at all the sweaty, sensual experience promised in the chain's "slutburger" ads.
And it tasted so average.
I found myself reaching for the fries more than for the burger.
Their skin-on, fried-from-frozen taste reminded me of Wendy's fries. But these were better: crispier, and no strange metallic taste. Just potato.
I kept on trying to discern some distinguishing feature, taste, or texture.
But really, this was the most middle-of-the-road burger I'd tasted.
Nothing was rotten, bland, or bad-tasting. It was all just ... okay.
At the end of my meal, I still had no answer to my dramatic question: what is Carl's Jr.'s thing?
It used to be sexy ladies eating burgers, but those aren't even on their menu, or at least they weren't when I went.
I was fairly sure that, barring the call of duty, I probably wouldn't return. Ever since it dumped its burger munching mistresses, Carl's Jr. hasn't really found a new personality. And it desperately needs one.
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