Monday, February 12, 2007
Chattanooga: The big meal
My first meal at the new Krystal in Chattanooga and I decided to dine inside. The dining room is rather smallish since they assume most folks will stay in their cars. Those who choose their cars will miss out on the flat screen TV and interactive video juke-box on the wall. The layout is a bit odd since they have to service a drive through, dining room, as well as the car hops. There's only 2 or 3 steps from the registers to the door and the dining room goes off to the side. Sadly, I didn't get any photos of the inside. Once I got inside, I was overwhelmed with hunger and made a bee-line to the register. Having intentionally not eaten since a light breakfast, I loaded up for lunch: First the Mac & Cheese bites. I was ordered by my friend Liisa to check them out. She simply had to know what they were and how they tasted. You see Liisa is stuck so far in burgatory they don't have any decent fast food places. She's in Michigan. They do however have Pasties which I have occasional cravings for. If you haven't heard of a Pasty/Pastie before, it's basically the original Hot Pocket. It's a hand held meat pie.  As Tiffany had previously said, the Milkquake was fantastic. I'm not a fan of strawberry like she is, so I went with Chocolate. Let me just say that even the biggest straw they have is almost useless in the face of this ultra thick shake. While you may get severe pucker-face cramping, you likely wont have to deal with brain freeze. It's simply impossible to gulp it down fast enough with a straw. And if you try to go topless you may wind up with a face full if whipped cream!  As you can see the grilled bacon and cheese (on the left) is a double decker. From the ground up (or top down?) it's toast, cheese, bacon, toast, cheese, toast. Or more specifically it's yum, yum, YUM, yum, yum yum. Warm, cheese, bacony, crispy, toasty. For a tiny sandwich it's really quite filling! I'm not sure I could handle the combo meal with three of them. Next up was the BLT. Of course there's the obvious problem in that I don't eat tomatos. The girl at the register didn't know how to "hold the T on the BLT" so I told her to just go with it and I'd pluck them off. Sadly, I completely overlooked the predictable addition of Mayo. I detest mayo. So, prior to eating the BLT, I had to preform surgery and scrap the tomatos and mayo off. Once that was done, though it was really quite good. Again the crispy bacon and the cool crisp lettuce. Yummy! Lastly was the Philly Cheese Steak. Apparently my order took longer to get to me because they have to cook the philly from scratch. It got to me super hot and super melty. It was good and messy, too. I was digging melted cheese out of the bottom of the box. (Haven't we all done that with our cheese Krystals?) So Philly Cheese Toaster gets two thumbs up for sure! Perhaps one of the best part of the toaster sandwiches, however, is the box they come in. It takes a second to figure it out, and its easier to see when the box isn't flat, but see if you can figure it out:   This was followed by a long, uncomfortable silence, followed by a lot of frantic typing and scrambling. Apparently someone "out there" had rebooted a computer, and cause havoc with the store's computers. I chuckled silently to myself as I heard the age old reply "It's a software problem." Those hardware guys always say that. Then again, us software guys always blame hardware. And those network weenies get blamed by everyone (of course that's because it's usually their fault in the first place). One interesting tidbit I did overhear was that they were discussing the next location to get the digital menus and drive ins and such. Now, without approval from Krystal HQ it is probably not appropriate for me to announce something like that here. (Jarrett and Jennifer, keep your eyes open!) As I was leaving the store, I ran into a gentleman, I assumed was a store manager. He'd been the one talking to the techno-crats inside most of the time, and people kept coming to him with questions. I introduced myself and he told me his name was Michael Jordan. (No, not THAT Michael Jordan.) I talked with Michael for a while about the new store and how things were going, and the menus and drive in and such. For me it was educational and a little exciting to hear how things work from the inside. Michael did tell me he wasn't the store manager, but I have forgotten exactly what his title is. He knows Tiffany, so perhaps she'll shed some light on it later (if she doesn't first slap me around for letting the cat out of the bag on the next high-tech Krystal). At this point my tummy was quite full, and my hotel room simply HAD to be ready so I drove off to my hotel room to unpack, relax, and digest. But I knew it wouldn't be long until I returned for round 2. But that's for tomorrow.  |
