Tucsonans can only dream of upscale chain restaurants. We don’t play in the same league as Phoenix and Las Vegas. No Bucca de Beppos for us. No Cheesecake Factory, no Carrabba’s, no Emeril’s New Orleans Fish House, no Maggiano’s Little Italy . . . we don’t even have a Ruth’s Chris Steak House.
But by gum we got us an In-N-Out Burger! It opened near a shopping mall last year, and for Tucson, it was a Big Deal. Local news covered the opening like it was a Hollywood premiere, then followed up with stories about the crowds who continued to show up day after day.
Crowds and lines aren’t my scene, so I stayed away and eventually forgot it was there. Until today, hungry from missing lunch, driving one street over from the mall, when I remembered In-N-Out. It was two in the afternoon, long past lunch time, and the place has been there for a year now. How bad could it be?
Bad. It was mobbed. Old people, young people, people on foot, people in cars. People queued up outside to join a standing-room-only throng inside, and forget about getting anywhere near the soda dispensers! But I gutted it out, and twenty minutes later fought my way back outside, burger (but no drink) in hand. Jesus. I can’t imagine what lunch time’s like at In-N-Out.
I must say, In-N-Out burgers are good . . . great, even, compared to what you get at the other burger chains . . . but are they stand-in-line-like-you’re-waiting-to-get-on-a-ride-at-freaking-Disneyland good?
Get a grip, Tucson people! It’s a hamburger joint! Haven’t you got anything better to do at two in the afternoon?
Tucsonans. What a bunch of yokels. We don’t deserve good restaurants.