Tucsonans can only dream of upscale chain restaurants.\u00a0 We don’t play in the same league as Phoenix\u00a0and Las Vegas.\u00a0 No Bucca de Beppos for us.\u00a0 No Cheesecake Factory, no Carrabba’s, no Emeril’s New Orleans Fish House, no Maggiano’s Little Italy . . . we\u00a0don’t even have a Ruth’s Chris\u00a0Steak House.<\/p>\n
But by gum we got us an In-N-Out Burger!\u00a0 It opened near a shopping mall\u00a0last year, and for Tucson, it was a Big Deal.\u00a0 Local news covered the opening like it was a Hollywood premiere,\u00a0then followed up with stories about\u00a0the crowds who continued to show up day after day.<\/p>\n
Crowds and lines aren’t\u00a0my scene, so I stayed away and eventually forgot it\u00a0was there.\u00a0\u00a0Until today, hungry from missing lunch,\u00a0driving one street over from the mall,\u00a0when I remembered\u00a0In-N-Out.\u00a0 It was\u00a0two in the afternoon, long past lunch time, and the place has been there for a year now.\u00a0 How bad could it be?<\/p>\n
Bad.\u00a0 It was mobbed.\u00a0 Old people, young people, people on foot, people in cars.\u00a0 People queued up\u00a0outside to join a standing-room-only throng inside, and forget about getting anywhere near the soda dispensers!\u00a0 But I gutted it out, and twenty minutes later fought my way back outside, burger (but no drink)\u00a0in hand.\u00a0 Jesus.\u00a0 I can’t imagine what lunch time’s like at In-N-Out.<\/p>\n
I must say, In-N-Out burgers are good . . . great, even, compared to what you get at\u00a0the other burger chains\u00a0. . . but are they stand-in-line-like-you’re-waiting-to-get-on-a-ride-at-freaking-Disneyland good?<\/p>\n
Get a grip, Tucson people!\u00a0 It’s a hamburger joint!\u00a0 Haven’t you got anything better to do at two in the afternoon?<\/p>\n
Tucsonans.\u00a0 What a bunch of yokels.\u00a0 We don’t deserve good restaurants.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tucsonans can only dream of upscale chain restaurants.\u00a0 We don’t play in the same league as Phoenix\u00a0and Las Vegas.\u00a0 No Bucca de Beppos for us.\u00a0 No Cheesecake Factory, no Carrabba’s, no Emeril’s New Orleans Fish House, no Maggiano’s Little Italy . . . we\u00a0don’t even have a Ruth’s Chris\u00a0Steak House. But by gum we got […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-consumerism","category-culture"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}