Beit Betek, Abha. January 2017
[from FB post: October 26, 2013]
Invited to dinner by colleagues last night (non American). "What would you like to eat?" "Anything is OK" "OK how about KFC?" "Ummmm.... sure if you want" It still AMAZES me that people overseas think Americans LIVE ON fast food and we don't eat any "proper" food. So I had my first KFC in about a decade. Oh...in case you don't know, it hasn't changed. HAHAHAHA
[November 1, 2014]
Since most conflicts originate in economic issues disguised as either political or religious issues, I would just like to say that most problems in Yemen would disappear if people of the world discovered how fantastic Yemeni food is. Yemenis would open restaurants all over the world and get rich and, well... I think everyone would be a lot happier
Americans are victims of their own cultural and business exports. US fast food franchises are literally ubiquitous worldwide. For the majority of the world, who do not travel, that projects the image that this is the food we, Americans, actually sustain ourselves with. I realize there are some people in the USA who consume far too much fast food; however, the percentage of people who actually live on it would be extremely small. Twice in my life I ate a lot of fast food (once on a long bus journey and once during a renovation when I was kitchen-less). Both times, I became ill.
On the occasion of being invited by my boss and office mate for dinner in the early days in Abha (with a few of the other teachers), we were obliged to accept the invitation and equally obliged to say "you all can pick the place, we are new". It was my idiot office mate who made the choice (this was an early insight into what five years of sitting across from him would be like). My boss, who had lived in Michigan for a decade, never spoke up - maybe he just didn't care? I also add that it was sadly reflective of the lack of "restaurants" in Abha in those days. Whatever the case, we all sat down to KFC somewhat amazed that sitting in a noisy, hard-seated fast food restaurant was our "invite".
What we all came to learn later was that there were a few incredibly delicious Yemeni restaurants in town that served "fast food" as well (in terms of speed). Those places not only made good cheap food, but also made money. It was all about volume - "get 'em in, get 'em fed, get 'em out", and those restaurants were popular! The food was just as "fast" as fast food except it was actually home cooked and mostly made to order. The taste was off the chart. Why had my office mate and Dean not invited us to one of those places? Apparently, they were terribly afraid we wouldn't like anything "local". Why on earth did we travel abroad then??
For me, almost as ironic as the perception of "fast food" being Americans' staple food was the concept of "fast" itself. These days, traditional fast food is anything but fast - in the US and abroad. Perhaps we should be grateful more care and time is being put into the food? There are other foods that are NOT fast food like Yemeni food or Singaporean hawker center food [see: Rex Food Stall] that are prepared at lightening speed, yet freshly made each time.
If fast food is no longer fast, not exceptionally convenient, and no longer cheap - what is the point of it?