Food for Thought: Fixing our Favorite Restaurants

Last week, I promised the next post would be fun—today’s post ... all fun.

The premise is simple. How could we improve our favorite restaurants by adding an item to the menu? If you’ll allow me, I have ten suggestions to consider.

1.     Chipotle - Loaded Nachos

Chipotle should take a page from Taco Bell’s playbook and ask, given the ingredients we already have under the roof, how else could we arrange them together?

I’m of the personal opinion that the Chipotle chip is perhaps the best item on the menu. Add meat, veggies, and queso to a plate of those chips, and you’ve got an incredible meal.

2.     Chick-fil-A - Chicken and Waffles

Chick-fil-A already boasts one of the better breakfast lineups in fast food. They’ve mastered the art of pairing chicken with its best conversation partners, but they’re missing this classic combination.

The great thing about chicken and waffles is that one isn’t limited by social pressures to restrict the meal to the breakfast timeframe. Maybe they go bite-size. Perhaps they make it into a waffle sandwich. Maybe you choose maple syrup or stick with Chick-fil-A sauce. Either way, sign me up.

3.     McDonald’s - McRib McNuggets

The McRib (R.I.P.) was the alt-menu item McDonald’s needed. Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy the Filet-O-Fish as much as the next guy, but churned-up rib meat re-molded into a cartoonish rib-shaped patty held a special place. Presentation aside, it tasted great.

But it was incredibly messy. You could not, for example, eat that sandwich while driving a car and hope to spare your clothing from its unforgiving drips.

What if you could instead have these joyful flavors in smaller bites ready for dipping?

4.     Wendy’s - Sloppy Joe Sandwiches

Let’s applaud the efficiency of the Wendy’s menu. For a fast food joint, they’ve added the feel of home cooking by providing their signature chili.

Here’s the efficiency: they repurpose leftover beef patties for the chili. Brilliant restauranteering!

So, here’s my suggestion: take that burger meat, mince it up even finer, add two more spices, and you’ve got a Sloppy Joe.

5.     Cookout - Pizza Rolls

Cookout is the king of cheap food indulgence. You can assemble a strong variety of fried fatty foods on the same “tray” for only a few dollars. The menu feels like a siren song for my teenage self.

I love mixing genres when I go to Cookout. One of the highlights is the ability to pair a quesadilla with standard-fare American cuisine.

What if we stepped in another direction and, in addition to Tex-Mex, we added knock-off Italian? The pizza roll screams to be added to that greasy styrofoam lineup.

6.     Five Guys - Burger Sauce.

Five Guys feels like today’s classic burger joint—a burger restaurant for burger purists. No fluff. No bells. No whistles. Just high-quality ground beef and overflowing French fries.

What’s missing?

The quintessential ingredient that we literally invented to complement the burger. It’s right there in the name: Burger Sauce. This should be a 15-second strategy meeting by the marketing team. Easy decision.

7.     Subway - Grilled Cheese Sandwich

Hear me out. I know we recognize Subway as a “sub sandwich” restaurant, but they’ve dabbled with wraps, salads, flatbread pizzas, and soup.

What feels more natural yet is missing is the basic yet satisfying grilled cheese on sliced loaf bread. Yes, the customer can still customize it down the line (within reason).

And, if I’m honest, perhaps at the root of my suggestion is for Subway to incorporate a Panini Press as a much-needed alternative to the microwave toaster on the back wall.

8.     Bojangles – More Comfort Foods 

This one is probably the most emotional for me.

Bojangles is my comfort place. It rarely lets me down. It holds great memories throughout the years. I’m always down for Bo Time. But, I must confess they have stopped short. There are some notable gaps for a restaurant that boasts a menu of comfort foods.

I recommend a few more carby sides (dressing, black-eyed peas), doubling their greens (collards), and providing not an alternative to the biscuit—that would be sacrilege—but a complement, in cornbread.

9.     Starbucks - Soft Serve Ice Cream Lattes. 

From observation, most Starbucks orders seem to be cold and highly sweetened drinks. It is also quite common for many of these drinks to be majority milk by volume, not coffee. So, let’s consider an additional medium for intake.

What if Starbs fitted their stores with soft-serve ice cream machines, poured in some sweet latte mix, and then delivered a new way to experience caffeination?

You can’t tell me you wouldn’t try it. 

10.  Waffle House with a Benihana twist.

This one is a bonus. I’m not proposing a menu item change. I’m proposing a structural change to the restaurant to enhance the overall experience.

I’m a big fan of Waffle House. It’s a staple in most communities and consistently delivers an average to above-average hot breakfast.

In my own life, I’m a Blackstone man and always enjoy comparing notes with others who cook on the big blacktop. What if we turned the grill at Waffle House around to see it up close and personal? Even better, what if each table had a griddle and short-order cook to wow us while they prepped our eggs and bacon?!

Think about your own experience at a Japanese steak house. The food is terrific, but you’re really there for the show.

Wa-Ho, give the people what they want.