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A Times article on the popularity of “fast-casual” restaurants continues to cause some major head scratching. In straightforward expansionist news, the article reported that the Five Guys burger chain plan on opening 29 new local outlets in the next 8 years, and Hale and Hearty is busy putting the finishing touches on its 20,000 square foot Williamsburg production facility.
But the trend spotting that motivated the article remains dubious. Ostensibly about “fast-casual” restaurants – defined as a hybrid of places like McDonald’s and Applebee’s – the article implies that the latter has made its mark by “generally serving fresh food made on the spot.”
If boil-in-bag riblets qualify as fresh food, then sure, “made on the spot” is dead-on; Subway makes its own bread, too. As pointed out here Monday, the Times article quotes an enthusiastic Chipotle customer: “It’s fast, it’s healthy, and delicious – that’s all you need.” But antibiotic-free shredded pork in a burrito does not necessarily a healthier meal make. Moreover, the article makes no mention of nutrition at any of the restaurants it describes while simultaneously ordaining them bunch of “fresh food” based alternatives.
Using results from the “Top Food” category of (an obviously landmark) Zagat/Today Show survey, the article grouped Chipotle, Panera Bread, and Quizno’s in the “fast casual” category while somewhat inexplicably excluding Wendy’s and Chick-fil-A. (There’s currently only one NYC Chick-fil-A, at NYU’s Weinstein Food Court, a “fast-casual” sleeper cell lying in wait). Here it seems like the Times piece is a Business section article disguised as a food piece, down to a consultant-supplied sound byte: “Fast-casual dining is perfectly suited to the fast-paced environment of New York.”
There's been a strange reciprocity lately between chains and food writers: Serious Eats even issued an open call Monday for ideas on how to revitalize a foundering Starbucks, with Ed Levine suggesting that the chain “localize each branch in some way, with a local food.” While some comments on the story weren’t as constructive, New York remains a very chain restaurant-friendly town, where any neighborhood Pinkberry, Grom, or Yolato opening typically commands a larger word count (and a more critical “soft-serve”) than anything independently-owned. Is this a sign of the restaurant apocalypse?
Maybe, but in the meantime if you’re looking for lunch in midtown that’s less “fast-casual,” less Così, try Matthew Kenney’s Free Foods NYC, where food billed “made from scratch” actually is, and staff never has to resort to strategically written corporate playbooks to answer your food questions.
Top photograph "Fast Food Nation" from ~Raymond’s Flickr photostream; bottom photograph of a Pinkberry dessert from Youngna Park
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I could think of another word for a McDonalds/Applebee's hybrid... vomit-inducing?
Guess that's two words.
Is there a listing for fast-formal restaurants? Prom time is only a few months away and I want to make a good impression on my date.
Healthy? A burrito with cheese, any meat, salsa, is gonna be about 1000 calories!! Isn't that like a Big Mac meal and fries?
Ahhh...you say "boil-in-bag", they say "sous vide"
The phrase “casual dining” brings up images of these horrid chain places where they truck in the food from some central distribution point and you really can't tell once you get inside if you are in the chain restaurant's Midtown Manhattan location, their Paramus location, their Green Bay location, or their Sacramento location.
Wendy’s and Chick-fil-A are fast food.
Now perhaps a better designation on what a restaurant really is. I learned in Wisconsin what we would call a "restaurant" here they would call a "supper club" (sadly no floor shows) while something like a fast food place would be called a "restaurant".
Given the tradition here, "restaurant" is better used for places that aren't part of some big über chain.
As for dealing with a foundering Starbucks there are two options - turn it into a bank or a Duane Reade.
none of this shit is fast food in manhattan. At lunch, in wendy's or mcdonalds it's always a half hour wait on line before you get to the counter.
Wouldn't, let's say, Europa Cafe, Cosi, or Guy & Gelard be "fast casual"?
A chipotle burrito with pork, cheese, sour cream, mild tomato salsa, black beans, and lettuce has over 1100 calories. More alarming, it has 48 GRAMS OF FAT. Chipotle may be free of penicillin, but it is not healthy by any means. Chicken instead? That only takes off one (1) gram of fat-making it 47.
Speaking as a former Wisconsinite, nobody I've ever known there calls restaurants "supper clubs" and people definitely wouldn't refer to McDonald's as a restaurant.
But it's entirely possible your interaction w/WI people has been limited to senior citizens who don't own a TV and have no family left that would update them on the state of the world or take them out to a dinner that doesn't involve ketchup dispensers and salt packets.
Re: cuppacake
I was just retelling my experience in the Manitowoc-Two Rivers area with various relatives of a wide range of ages. Perhaps it was a local naming convention?
well these joints exist, whether we can comfortably pigeon hole them into a category called "fast-casual" is another subject altogether. Doesn't Cosi and Hale & Hearty fall into a complete different category than McDonald's? So if not "fast-casual"