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April 30, 2006
And They Gave Me The Double-Double-Double-Double
The Raw-Fish-and-In-N-Out Diet
Enjoyed a delightful week in San Francisco. The work parts went well, the non-work parts were a blast (and might even earn their very own post), and it appears I shall be returning to C@L relatively unscathed. I feel like I did especially well with the food on this mission. Between office colleagues with the hook-up on good places as well as some friendly locals who produced some top-notch recommendations (tip of the cap in your direction, good Mr. Snikes!), I ate especially well this past week.
Of particular note in that last statement is acknowledgement that said eating well included three (3) straight days of sushi. I mean, I’m down with sushi, and I’m especially down with sushi when it’s high-end (and we had some pretty high-end raw fish), but I usually wouldn’t eat it three (3) days in a row. Not unless I was balancing it with significant rations of cooked meats, melted cheeses, and, of course, empty carbs.
Well well well. Wasn’t I in luck.
Let me start by saying that I didn’t know there was an In-N-Out in San Francisco. Wasn’t even on my radar. And, as I haven’t been to Southern California in almost two years (and shame on me for that), I’ve been in something of an In-N-Out drought of late. So when a coworker asked me if I was interested in an In-N-Out field trip for lunch on Thursday, it took my brain about 7 milliseconds to go from “I didn’t even know that was possible” to “I’ll pay for the cab; we should leave immediately.”
I shan’t bore you with the details of the In-N-Out mission, other than to say that I found the service at the San Francisco location to be among the speediest of any In-N-Out at which I’ve ever dined. The burger (double-double, animal style) was outstanding, and the fries were, as expected, a bit average. The entirely trip was delightfully efficient; end-to-end we were there and back, full of delicious cheeseburgers and goodwill, in under an hour. Life was pretty good.
So forgive me, dear reader, when I admit that, AHEM, I may have arranged a return trip for lunch on Friday. My reasoning (and by “reasoning” I mean “rationalization”) was as follows:
(1) I had eaten sushi three times in three days at this point. That’s really healthy. Way healthy. Had I eaten another healthy meal at that point, the imbalance might have thrown my delicate constitution into a tailspin from which I might have never recovered.
(2) As noted, I hadn’t had In-N-Out in close to two years. So I was WAY behind on my annual allotment. Dangerously behind.
(3) Since the fries tended toward the mediocre, I would make a point of not finishing them. Yes. This is a very carefully managed diet I’m on here.
(4) I didn’t have my camera on me on the first trip; my collection of Food Porn was embarrassingly incomplete without some shots of In-N-Out. Anything in the name of art!
So yeah. Went back to In-N-Out. Ate another double-double (animal style). But I kind of felt slightly ashamed of myself (like when I would order two (2) sandwiches at Lenny’s back in NYC, there comma I said it), despite the unassailable justification(s) offered above.
Or, at least, I was feeling slightly ashamed of myself until I looked up from my double-double to see the exact same coworker who had accompanied me the day before also waiting on line. (You might remember said coworker from such posts as “That Last FTE Stole My Thunder”). Yup. I wasn’t the only one who treated himself to a return trip to In-N-Out. This at least offered me a slight chance at innocence by association, though mostly it made me feel like I had run into a coworker at an adult bookstore (which, I think, says a lot about current cultural attitudes towards delicious-but-unhealthy foods). We exchanged guilty pleasantries; we both knew that we were crossing a line here. But hey, at least I wasn’t the only one. So it wasn’t so bad.
Also, the sushi in San Francisco was delicious.
Posted by thatkid at April 30, 2006 4:48 PM under
ThatKid
Comments
Try the fries animal style, it balances out their suckiness by adding cheese/onions/pickles. And can you really go wrong by adding cheese/onions/pickles to anything? Doubt it.
Posted by: Jonathan at April 30, 2006 10:21 PM
This is an excellent idea.
I saw a dude with a plate of fries with cheese and other goodnesses piled atop them, and suspected something like this might be possible.
Someone needs to publish the definitive guide to ordering at In-N-Out. Internet? Internet? This is right up your alley, no?
Posted by: thatkid at May 1, 2006 6:23 PM
I like the color definition in the photos. The meat looks REALLY juicy. And the mayo, well, yeah, it looks like it is everywhere.
Posted by: The PA at May 2, 2006 8:51 AM
According to a well placed source at Us Weekly, Matt Dillon was spotted ordering a Jimmy T at Lenny's a few weeks ago.
Inquiring minds ...
Posted by: snikes at May 2, 2006 11:18 AM
You mean the same Matt Dillon who often frequented T&R Pizza (voted by Brad Glory as the worst pizza on the Upper Left Side...http://www.thatkidinthecorner.com/mt/thatkid/archives/2005/12/which_day_of_ch.html ) and who was inexplicably in front of me in the line for the Information Desk at the St. Agnes Branch this past summer?
Nice to see the Jimmy T getting props: a simple classic that deserves, no, demands respect.
Posted by: thatkid at May 2, 2006 11:05 PM
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