For me, lunch is an especially complicated meal. I am sure I could blame my undiagnosed ADHD or executive dysfunction or one of the other numerous things wrong with me, but really it’s that I am indecisive and prone to screwing around until I’m too hungry to actually decide what I might like to eat. It does not help that, in our era of fast-casual supremacy, it feels like I have basically two options if I want to leave my house and get out for lunch: a bowl or a sandwich.
Living in the soulless Dallas suburbs, most of those bowls and sandwiches available in the lunchtime hours are sold by fast-casual chains, the kind of establishments that give private equity investors wet dreams thanks to their sky-high margins, low labor costs, and simplistic, trend-driven menus. You can find these fast-casual chains everywhere you look, but especially in the strip malls that are at practically every intersection. A Mediterranean bowl place. A Mexican bowl place. A place that toasts the sandwiches. A place that does not. Rinse, repeat.
There is a reason for this mundanity, and it’s because we have to eat lunch every goddamn day. Most of us don’t have the mental capacity to find a different interesting, locally owned place to eat five days a week, and so we concede to the routine of the bowl. We seek comfort in the familiarity of the same sandwich as everything else around us spirals out of control. We just want to eat the damn slop bowl and go on with our lives. Some might believe that a food writer should be above this, but I am not.
Recently, I found my life flashing before my eyes as I went in pursuit of one of these eminently uninteresting lunches. Hangry after a nail appointment and tired of fighting traffic, I pointed my GPS toward Bread Zeppelin, a Texas-born chain known for hollowing the center out of a loaf of bread and shoving a bunch of chopped up veggies and meats inside. I’ve been on a chicken Caesar wrap kick lately — an appropriately bland choice evidencing my extreme bout of executive dysfunction — and heard they had a good one.
As I sat in the turn lane waiting to make a left, I was admittedly excited about this stupid stuffed loaf of bread until I actually made the turn, and noticed a white Tesla barreling toward my driver’s side door. This is it, I thought. I guess I’m going to go out trying to buy a shitty sandwich. Fortunately, the Tesla’s inner robot (or its driver, whatever) stopped it before it could slam into me, and I accelerated into the parking lot unscathed by everything but the adrenaline coursing through my veins. I was a little shaky as I walked inside, still in pursuit of my sandwich.
I ordered and plunked down my $14 and waited while the nice gal wrapped up my loaf full of romaine, chicken chunks, and Parmesan into a paper bag. I promptly walked back to my car, which was very nearly the scene of a crime. Whether I was stress-eating or just starving, I greedily scarfed that loaf of bread like it was my actual last meal. It was fine. After polishing off the last few bites, I thought that this was absolutely not a sandwich worth dying for. It probably wasn’t even worth leaving my house for.
This is a fate we’ve come to accept in the Strip Mall Fast Casual Slop Establishment. We know walking into Chipotle that the meat will be bland, the rice will be weirdly gummy or chewy, and that we will pay $14 for the privilege of eating both. There is a nearly universal understanding when you eat at Panera Bread, you’re not there for the bread. You’re there because it’s there, you need lunch, and you already ate at the fried-chicken place next door yesterday. The Strip Mall Fast Casual Slop Establishment knows that you don’t need it to be great, you just need it to be there, and so it does not try. It simply exists.
My observation is not a new one. We have long known that the slop bowl sucks. We know it is a construct, divorced from any meaningful context and watered down enough for any old idiot to love. But that doesn’t mean that I can’t still be stricken by the bleakness of it all. And I think there’s value in that realization. It’s the same sort of thing as when I realize I’ve been scrolling on my phone for too long, consuming slop of a different kind, and physically throw it across the room. I didn’t throw my sandwich across the room, but mentally I did decide that I’m breaking up with this kind of easy-yet-terrible meal.
I would like to say that I have made some grandiose personal commitment to only eat lunch at cool local cafes, but I know that’s not going to happen. I just want to commit to making myself seek better, and stop ceding my appetite to those who really don’t even give a shit about sating it, even in moments of extreme inconvenience or rage-y hanger. Whether this means making a deliberate choice to grab take-out I’m really excited about or just making my own fucking sandwich with actually-good ingredients, that’s got to be better than mindlessly continuing to participate in the slop economy.
Free members of Ravenous only get access to two stories a month. But for just $7/month, you get unlimited access to all our reporting and culture writing. What are you waiting for?
🐦⬛ Bird Droppings
- In "AI is cooking our brains" news, the lady who used to run Yahoo! was excited to tell the New York Times about outsourcing compliments for her child to Dazzle, her company's new AI assistant. Somehow this is 3 billion times bleaker than those ugly AI restaurant photos.
- At Civil Eats, Lisa Held writes about the impact of ICE raids on workers across the food industry, from meatpacking and agriculture to restaurants.
- Ipsos takes a look at why Crumbl Cookies, Pepsi, and other food brands are showing up in your...shower? Who asked for this?
