The spirit of entrepreneurship can create some of the strangest eateries imaginable. For example,a local chain in my area is called Amigos. It's been a moderate success for a number of years but I guess someone decided that the market for Americanized Mexican fast food was only so big so Amigos decided to team up with A&W Root Beer to make a hybrid collection of Mexican/hamburger joints. Trouble is, A&W may know a thing or two about root beer but their hamburgers taste like motor oil. It must have been decided that the theory was sound even if the menu was uneven so as soon as A&W got the boot Amigos went shopping for new partners. Their latest alliance has given the world the triumverate of Amigos, Kings Restaurant and Winchell's Donuts.
Amigos still serves Mexican food with tater-tot side dishes, Kings is yet another burger emporium and Winchell's Donuts serves, well, doughnuts. This means you could order up a burrito, a cheeseburger and a doughnut all at the same time, regardless of how unappetizing that sounds. The signs outside the restaurants are as top-heavy as the menus with Amigos, Kings and Winchell's listed in descending order with the final name being so low it's practically resting in the parking lot. For some reason Winchell's has an apostrophe in it's name but the other two do not.
This review isn't so much about the three way restaurant love-in or the greasy goodness that is the Crisp Meat Burrito. Instead, it concerns a particular A/K/W restaurant. Before this restaurant set up shop there was an unusual amount of public opposition to it's opening. Meetings were attended, committees were formed and flyers were distributed. Some people in town felt the ambiance of the park the A/K/W was going to be catty-corner from and the historical setting of the older shops in the area would be destroyed by a multi-purpose fast food restaurant. If the people who expended so much energy opposing a taco stand had bothered to worry about cleaning out the head shops and other assorted junk that was cluttering up the "historical setting" of the neighborhood I might have actually bothered to pay attention to their complaints.
The complaints did have an effect on the restaurant, however, causing the A/K/W designers to attempt to be as unobtrusive as possible by building a ridiculously tiny building. The restaurant is little more than a kitchen with a window on one side to fling the prepared food out of. In theory the restaurant is a drive-thru only experience but with a few cement patio tables out front so diners can go park their cars somewhere, hike back with their orders, and enjoy their meal while watching other people drive around the building to order food. Ignoring the fact that nobody ever sits on those stone benches outside of restaurants, someone forgot that the pillar for a billboard is lodged in the middle of this picnic area. Birds must come from miles around to perch upon and poop from the billboard. Bird droppings have covered the table area in a thick carpeting of defecation. Needless to say nobody eats out there and looking at that site while waiting to place your order is enough to make you lose your appetite. I haven't noticed whether or not the birds enjoy relieving themselves on the three part sign but the billboard is such an assault on the senses it's hard to notice anything else. With all the signage going on it's surprising how subtle the markings for the turn-off to A/K/W are. The most obvious marking is the strange site of a residential style mail box along the curb with the AMIGOS affixed to the area reserved for the family name using sticky, reflective gold letters.
I normally don't eat at this place since you can't swing a cat without hitting an Amigos in this town so my cheap taco needs can be fulfilled elsewhere. But I still love the idea of that A/K/W restaurant. What is going through the minds of the people that work in that toy house of a store? How many people are going to decide they not only want a Danish and a side of French fries but they want to eat both items while driving their car? I don't know, but I'm glad the Amigos Kings Winchell's free for all restaurant exists to satisfy that niche.
If you have a dining establishment you would like to recommend, drop me a line at gleep9@hotmail.com. Once you've order up half a dozen glazed doughnuts and a taco salad head on back to either the Pop Culture or Main page.