MEAT MONARCH?

SquareOne Food

by Chris Hammond

Gaudy, miserable and architecturally grotesque the initial aesthetics of Burger King leave a lot to be desired - and this is just the outside. Inside it’s busy, fully booked if you will and there’s a queue for service stretching right back to the door. And it’s whilst waiting that it grimly dawns on you that everyone round about has a very visible problem. Obese, scruffy, delinquent, psychotic even; it’s the advert for the human race mankind’s marketing department pulled. Someone has also trundled in an impressive amount of dog pooh. It snakes along the floor like a disgusting snail trail, whilst gormless minions of the corporate culinary colossus look at it with expressions of bemusement.


As the queue slowly dissipates and ordering is but moments away gag reflexes are tested further when you move uncomfortably close to the bald acne riddled cranium of the customer straight in front of you. Though horrified, curiosity takes over and shuffling closer to him you listen in as he orders: “Can I have a double whopper, no lettuce, no sauce, no nothing”. One can only assume he would later dispose of the buns and lather his visage in the grease of the congealing monstrosity handed over to him in an effort to cultivate his not unimpressive collection of swelling pussy plukes.


Whist the act of ordering might be traumatic, the eating process could bring a grown man to tears. The dining area looks like an open plan airport canteen. Huddled bodies sit in silence picking over their meals whilst a rather proper looking older lady prowls the ghastly linoleum floor with a clip board and hint of menace. The food is lukewarm, almost certainly cooked an hour ago and visibly as stimulating as Vanessa Feltz in a thong. It does contain meat however and it appears to have been flame grilled as advertised – but what type of meat? Racoon? Worse still is the cheese, lathered on like some sort of florescent paint it clings to the burger in a cloying sickly embrace.


Trying to wash away the stagnant taste with your drink is pointless, because the cup you receive at the counter is no more than a container for ice cubes. As you watch the flaccid asbo-collecting clientèle gorge on the plastic masquerading as food misanthropy descends. If hell were a restaurant it wouldn’t look too dissimilar to this; though something tells me anything flame grilled there would be a damn site more appetising.