McDonald’s doesn’t need their Crispy Chicken Sandwich

The chicken sandwich wars rage on. Everybody and their mother has a decent chicken sandwich now. It’s basically money in the bank, right? Just slap a patty on some buns with mayo and pickles, and you’re set. Why wouldn’t you do it? You’ve gotta keep up with the Joneses, right?

What do you do when you are the Joneses?

McDonald’s has never been much for a “follower” in the fast food industry. They aren’t even really trendsetters – McDonald’s just does whatever it wants to and enjoys its comfortable space as the leader of the Big Three, as the biggest fast food restaurant franchise in the world, and lets the rest of them scramble for scraps. 

But some trends are just too big to ignore. Even Coca-Cola had to bend to the rise of diet soda in the 60s, with the introduction of Tab and eventually Diet Coke. Chick-fil-A is slowly rising to make the Big Three a Big Four, and the Chicken Sandwich Wars are fundamentally a response to that. If you don’t have a good chicken sandwich, you’re being left in the dust. Everybody is getting on board the train. So what took McDonalds so long?

And you know what – should they have taken even longer with their Crispy Chicken Sandwich?

Olivo Taco is world famous for a reason

The best food is always local food. The more local, the better. No pizza from any big chain can compare to a simple pie cooked by somebody who owns a house in your town. A hamburger will always taste better if it is cooked by somebody who has kids who go to a school in the area. And tacos, the epitome of delicious simplicity, always taste better when served out of a local truck. This is the sentiment that convinced us to try Olivo Taco, the local chain of taco trucks that you can’t help but notice driving around Rockford.

Nobody named Olivo actually owns these taco trucks – the owners are brothers Mahmud and Said Zatar, who have their silly-looking faces plastered prominently on every single truck. They’re serious eye-catchers, and when you’re driving down the street and see one of them, they do a good job at asking you “wouldn’t you like a taco?”  Well of course we’d like a taco, dear Zatar brothers, we’d love one. We’d really, really love one.

The Beef-A-Roo Experience: A Beef-A-Roo from me to you

So, just to get it out of the way, we live in Illinois now!

Yep, we moved out of the Minneapolis area and are now living in Chicagoland. It’s been a long time coming for us, but we couldn’t be happier in our new home. And the best thing about having a new home – at least to us – is all the cool new stuff in the area!

We wanted our first article after the move to be something local, not even just a fast food joint that we didn’t have in Minneapolis, but something altogether local. And it doesn’t get more local than Beef-A-Roo, the chain that has only seven locations only in Rockford, Illinois. We were enticed by Beef-A-Roo as we were looking up local restaurants because it has one of the silliest names we had ever heard. A Beef-A-Roo? What the hell is a Beef-A-Roo? Like a kiss-a-roo? From me to you? We don’t get it.

But our Illinois friends loved this place. They said it was the best. And who are we to ignore our friends about this? So we decided that the very first place we’d eat a meal at in Illinois was out at Beef-A-Roo. It truly would be a Beef-A-Roo from me to you.

We can’t stop saying “a Beef-A-Roo from me to you,” by the way. Every time we pass it, we say it. It’s getting annoying.