Nows and Forevers

I’ve been a vegetarian on and off for the past 37 years. Mostly on, but recently off. But I’m still bemused by the fact that fast-food restaurants, after years of ignoring vegetarians, are still trying to find the magic key to cater to them.

The latest is Burger King, which in Asia launched what it calls the Real Cheeseburger: 20 slices of American cheese with sesame-seed buns on either side. Probably no chance of it coming to the United States, thankfully.

I’m old enough to remember when the best vegetarians could do at a fast-food restaurant was order a McDonald’s or Burger King cheeseburger and wonder whether the server would understand.

Usually, it would go like this:

“I”d like a cheeseburger, without the meat, please,” I’d say.

“A what,” would be the response 99 times out of 100. “Without the meat?”

Then they’d be a silence and sometimes a flurry at the register, as the server would ask someone else if A, this customer wasn’t full of [REDACTED] or B, how to ring it up.

Now it’s different. McDonald’s doesn’t really have a solid vegetarian option, although it has tested them. Burger King has the Impossible Burger, which isn’t bad but if you care about being a vegetarian, you gotta wonder whether it’s being grilled the same place as the meat.

Which of course, it probably is.