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hi everybody welcome back to english
topics my name is alicia and today i'm
joined again by
hi i'm davey welcome back baby and today
we are going to be talking about
famous american fast food restaurants so
i hope you're hungry i'm slightly hungry
let's discuss some things that maybe
people outside the u.s
haven't heard of before maybe you have i
don't know
i'm gonna start with one probably the
most obvious one today i chose it
i chose taco bell as my first one
because
i have a strong affinity i have a strong
connection to taco bell
because uh when i was a high school
student
it was like the cheapest thing
you could get in terms of fast food
restaurants they had a deal where
it was like three tacos for a dollar or
something like that
something extremely cheap because the
idea of
of the food there is just it's just a
taco shell
with like some questionable meat like
substance and a sprinkle of
questionable cheese everything is
questionable at taco bell
and then everything yeah it used to be
their slogan i think everything's
questionable at taco bell
sting yeah and then they went for a run
for the border right has a better ring
to it aha
run for the border of your digestive
system
so anyway i chose taco bell because it
was everything
high school me and my high school
friends everything we loved it was
cheap and it was cheesy and it was meaty
and you could eat a bunch of them
and there was spicy sauce for the people
who decided to be stupid and just try to
like
i don't know wanted to make it as spicy
as possible and your body could still
take all those calories then
right right and now if i eat if i even
look
at a gordito supreme i gained 15 pounds
yeah i couldn't do it i couldn't do it
anymore mm-hmm
so taco bell i chose taco bell for today
because there's a special place in my
heart for
the the the special food you can find at
taco bell i understand
mm-hmm all of mine are in the same sort
of category yeah
i kind of i don't really like fast food
and i've never really eaten a lot of it
but there are
few fast food places that i really have
a soft spot for
okay and so my first one is one of those
and it's sonic
and this is a regional one this is not
all across the country
it's um pretty limited to the south to
the southern states and then i think
maybe a few other
states maybe there's one in arizona or
somewhere i don't know
but where i grew up uh i grew up in a
sonic state
we had sonic and it's a drive-in it's an
old-style drive-in where you drive up
and park your car
and reach out and push the button and
then give your order and they'll come
out and bring you your food
and some of them they would even come
out on roller skates like the old school
you know 50 zera kind of diners but most
of them they just come out and sneakers
um but you go and get like a milkshake
and a burger
and uh when i go home when i when i go
to my hometown and visit my family i'll
oftentimes pop into sonic
and get a hamburger because i have a
soft spot for them
they're good yeah i think a lot of the a
lot of the stuff we're going to talk
about today has like a strong nostalgia
factor about it for sure but drive-ins
are rare
they are i mean drive-ins were rare 20
years ago
they are rare so i wonder how many
sonics have converted to just being a
plain old
fast food i don't know i mean most of
the sonics in my hometown there's
i can think of four or five or six and
uh i think they're all still drive-ins
wow i'm pretty sure
oh but i will say one this really drove
me nuts when i moved away from my
hometown when i was 18
i moved across the country i moved to
washington state and i don't think
there's
any sonics in washington state but they
would have tv commercials
and it drove me nuts because i would see
the commercials and i wanted to go to
sonic i couldn't go to sonic
ah but i like sonic i see i see
that's a problem that's a dilemma here's
a problem how many times does the
panasonic burger sonic dilemma
all right great all right let's move on
to another one that was actually also
a drive-through yes a w a and w
yeah a and w um depending on the
location you went to it was some of them
were drive-throughs or rather
not drive throughs drive ups drive
through drive in that's it
sorry drive-ins oh my gosh drive-ins
yeah
so you would as you said drive your car
up there and then you would order and
somebody would bring it out to the car
but the thing that was most famous
arguably about a and w was a
w's root beer float oh delicious yep
yep she's like yeah root beer though is
one of those things that people either
love or they hate i understand that in
the uk
root beer is like a flavor of toothpaste
so people really don't like it i think a
lot of people outside of
north america the us in particular don't
like root beer i think so
it's delicious i love root beer so if
you don't know a root beer float is root
beer it's a it's a sweet
um a sweet how would you even describe
the flavor
but a bit bitter there's a little
bitterness and carbonated
it's a soda it's like a it's a sweet
carbonated
soda with a little bit of bitterness but
a root beer float
is that soda with vanilla ice cream put
inside so it's
it's a dessert it's a treat and a w's
perhaps
most famous item on their menu is the
root beer float
of course you can make your own root
beer float at home however you like
um but this this one's kind of their
their item their their must-get item i
think so a
w has a special place for me for that
three beer flip yep
and a key feature the drive-in so the
drive-in as opposed to the drive through
drive through you drive through you
place your order
you get your food into your car and you
drive away
to drive in you park your car they bring
you your food and then you sit in your
car and eat it
i guess you could drive away you could
drive away i suppose
though some of them i think they the the
really old-fashioned ones you could
they'd put a tray
on the window oh yeah
yep yep and the wait staff would be like
on roller skates
the old ones great all right next one
yeah my next one is also
uh another nostalgic one from my
hometown
in uh tennessee which was crystal
uh crystal i'm pretty sure is the same
as white castle
um but in some parts of the us it's
white castle but where i grew up
we had crystal and so they're famous for
being really cheap but they'll give
little sliders
small little steamed hamburgers or
steamed buns
that are quite small i mean you can eat
three or four or five maybe three of
them is the same size as one
hamburger at sonic or burger king or
something like that
um so it's good if you just want a
nibble you know if your
you and your friend drive through sonic
or excuse me a crystal
uh drive-through and you don't want a
whole meal you can just get you know one
little slider and it's good good for
a snack and they also had they had like
spicy chicken sandwich sliders that i
loved
sounds good and there was one really
close to my high school and so sometimes
after school i would go to crystal get
some sliders
crystal yeah i have no idea but when you
said white castle it's this i'm pretty
sure it's
i think it might be the same company the
menu is the same okay but i haven't been
to that many white castles ah
yeah we didn't have a white castle in my
town when i was growing up and so i
didn't really
i didn't really go to that one but there
was a really famous movie about
a couple guys trying to get sliders at
white castle
harold and co what was it harold and
kumar go to white castle yeah that was
it it was just a story about a couple
guys who
in the middle of the night decided to go
to white castle to try to get sliders
yep
as unhealthy as they are for you that
movie is testament
to how good they are yeah they're tasty
yep yep it's just one of those little
craving foods
all right good i'll go to my next one i
don't know if you could really call this
a fast
food place but it's sort of one of those
locations that
i liked to visit from time to time and
it made me feel like i was making a
somewhat healthy choice i guess
the place is called jamba juice jamba
juice doesn't really do
burgers or fries or any anything fried
at all
actually this is a place that does
smoothies smoothies and i think maybe
they did milkshakes as well or like
frozen yogurts
everything was drinks really um so you
could
sort of make your own smoothie you could
put the fruit you liked or maybe yogurt
you liked or
a vitamin or something like that you
could put it all in a blender and the
staff would make it for you and you'd
walk out with a styrofoam cup
hilariously
you get this big styrofoam cup to enjoy
your jamba juice in
but jamba juices i think they kind of
pitch it as a
sort of healthy option but they're just
these
massive smoothies that you can i don't
know
uses like a breakfast replacement if you
like um so they tended to be a little
more popular among
um among people who were perhaps more
health-conscious
um so they were trying to i think market
themselves as
being a bit more um i don't know
friendly to the body than some of the
other chains yeah better for you than
a crystal burger for sure what's your
last one my last one again
on the nostalgia train is dix which is
local it's a local fast food place in
seattle
so i lived in seattle for a number of
years it's kind of my second hometown i
lived there
for more than 10 years and there is a
local chain
fast food chain called dick stix burgers
and they are
delicious and um i think a couple of
them might be drive-ins actually but the
one that i always went to in the
neighborhood where i lived was not a
drive-in
um you would go in but they're
phenomenally cheap
and the way that they're so cheap is
everything's small like small burgers so
you can actually get a couple of them
you could eat a couple and then
that's kind of equal to one hamburger
they're bigger than sliders
small fries milkshakes but they charge
you
they would charge you for ketchup and
mustard they charge you five cents a
nickel for a little paper cup full of
ketchup and mustard and the burgers were
like a dollar
ten or something like that wow that's
really cheap very cheap and again if you
weren't starving if you just wanted kind
of a quick bite in the afternoon
a quick you know artery clogging bite
you could go in and get like a dicks
burger
and they didn't they didn't have sets
you know you go into fast food places
now and everything's
a combo combo combo they didn't do
combos they had
burgers fries sodas and milkshakes and
that was
it and you would just say i want one of
that and one of those and one of those i
see so it's like a build your own combo
sort of thing
that sounds good very good very good
they're very delicious and they were
open really late too you could go at you
know midnight or one in the morning
get a burger yeah i feel like the burger
the burger concept has really evolved
over time so something like that and
then there's been this very like
traditional everybody knows mcdonald's
and burger king
then i think maybe 10 years ago or so
what was popular was in and out burger
oh yeah
right because in and out had had a very
limited number of burgers available on
the menu
but then there was supposedly like the
secret mix there is a secret menu right
you had to know like you had to ask for
something special if you wanted to get
it from the secret menu
but that was supposed to be a really
good burger chain and now there's one
which i haven't been to uh five guys
oh yeah i don't know anything about five
guys but i've heard that it's really
really good
yeah i think i went to one a few years
ago i don't remember where
um so it seems like burgers
burg the the brand of burger seems to
continue evolving so there's like these
places that offer small burgers that
offer like build your own burgers
though i feel burritos burritos and
mexican food um
are are quickly like maybe
i should actually i shouldn't say this
because i don't really know like
what the current situation in the u.s is
now but i feel like there are a lot of
um
a lot more burrito places that are doing
similar things that burger places were
in the past by that i mean like making
your own
so now there's like um like what's it
called like taco del sol i think in the
states
there's chipotle as well um so it's like
these places where you go
taco del mar that's it that's it that's
it so they're like these places that are
kind of introducing you know more
options than just
taco bell and burger king right but that
are kind of branching out too well what
do you actually like
right but i don't know i don't know
where the opponent is with that well
i don't know either but i'm hungry now
i'm hungry now too actually
anyway well i can't get any of those no
no that sounds good time to go home and
make some sliders i guess
sounds good all right so those are a few
famous american fast food chains or
famous perhaps north american fast food
chain
if there are other fast food chains that
you know of in the u.s that you really
liked or you really hated let us know in
the comments
if there's a fast food chain from your
country too that you think
is interesting that people should know
about let us know about that too
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for other stuff like culture points and
maybe some other discussions about maybe
u.s culture as well thanks very much for
watching us this time and we'll see you
again
soon bye-bye
i thought that was a stop there's a
sound okay
[Music]
you