http://slyoyster.com

Even with the recession and some fast food chains doing well, Arby’s is clearly the one joint falling behind.

Perhaps most significantly, the meat of the business isn’t particularly good. On Friday, I stopped into an Arby’s for the first time this millennium. It was clean, and I noticed an array of products beyond the bare-bones menu I recall from my Midwestern youth. Moneybox may be a food snob, but he is a nondiscriminating connoisseur of street food and greasy fare who still makes the occasional run for the border at Taco Bell. (Don’t tell Mrs. Moneybox.) But even I had difficulty completing the reporting for this assignment. Forget about salads and vegetables. As I scoured the menu—the gyro, the french dip, the patty melt—I had difficulty identifying anything that had gone through less processing than uranium. A few bites of a roast beef sandwich slathered with goopy cheddar sauce, and I was done. On the food chain, the thinly sliced beef is about as far from Boar’s Head deli meat as Boar’s Head oven-roasted ham is from the vaunted jamón Iberico.

Well, okay, it probably is the roast beef.  But the restaurant doesn’t even have anything else to offer customers aside from it’s namesake sandwich.  Not a good business decision.

Shocking! Fast food, chain restaurant food and other snack food is sooo vile for your inner organs and blood. This “Good Morning America” bit on what happens to your insides when you eat crap is kind of gross in a truthy sort of way.

The thing is, though, you can feel it afterwards in how lethargic and disgusting your body feels, but to see it. Christ, to see it makes me regret my Independence Day weekend.

Fancy Fast Food takes the craptastic meals you find at your average fast food joint and reworks them into fine dining dishes using no other ingredients.  This is actually fairly ingenius and demonstrates some really, really fantastic cooking skills. 

There are plenty of before and after pictures and recipes so that if you feel so inclined you can replicate this at home. 

These photographs show extreme makeovers of actual fast food items purchased at popular fast food restaurants. No additional ingredients have been added except for an occasional simple garnish

It’s basically fast food plastic surgery.  Sure, the Spicy Chicken Sushi looks great, but it’s still Popeyes chicken.  Which, um, is essentially their tagline: “Yeah, it’s still bad for you — but see how good it can look!”

From Oprah Winfrey of all people.   I have a hard time computing that.  But whatevs.  Grab your coupon.

You won’t be shocked, if like me you think McDonald’s tastes like salty cardboard.  If I have to eat fast food, then I try to make it something that will taste good.  There’s plenty of options here in Portland to not have to eat at McDonald’s or Burger King and thank good for that.  Still, it’d be nice to have an In-N-Out Burger up here.

Consumers rate regional food chains above national fast-food chains in overall customer experience, according to a recent survey by Sandelman & Associates, a San Clemente, Calif., market research and consumer-trends firm.

In a survey of 94,000 users last year, In-N-Out Burger of Irvine, Calif., was the top winner in overall customer satisfaction, which takes into account, among other things, quality of food and service, cleanliness and value for the money, in the 2008 Quick-Track Awards of Excellence.

“It’s probably easier to maintain the highest standards if you’re only operating in a couple of states,” says Paul Clarke, vice president of sales and marketing at Sandelman & Associates. “So, customers recognize the difference.”

Indeed, consumers appear to be “trading down” from high-end restaurants and frequenting lower-priced restaurants more than they used to. Sales are predicted to pick up in quick-service restaurants by 0.4% this year, while full-service restaurant sales are expected to decline by 2.5%, according to the National Restaurant Association.

My test for whether or not a fast food place is worth the extra time and money is if they use fresh cut potatoes for their french fries.