Retch

Yum! Brands! I! Think! I! Hate! You!

*cough* *cough* *hurl*

Like many of our customers, I grew up with the brands. My family loved a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken. I took dates to Pizza Hut. When I was in college, every Sunday, I used to go and chow down on six or seven tacos, maybe eight (at Taco Bell).

I like food. I enjoy it. I may be braver than some when it comes to eating, but I've always lived by the idea of "Try everything once, if you don't like it, at least you can say so out of conviction." (I have a respected friend that says "Try everything twice. Maybe the first time it was made lousy")

I've eaten a lot of food that might not look so palatable to my peers (I'm still working on how to convince my fianceé to eat fish or other seafood), and I think the only times I can remember having a hard time enjoying it is lutefisk, and the eye-stalks on some fully-fried shrimp. (The former, being a horror nobody should eat, the latter wouldn't have been a problem if I'd ever found that famous brain-off switch and didn't think about it as much)

I'm not much of a world-traveler, only been to Canadia once and Mexico a couple times. My trip to Canada was not that remarkable (It was circa 1990, and at the ripe age of 13, not that adventurous), but I had a really awesome meal in Mexico where the locals (It was a church trip where we were helping them out), thanked us by making us food. I was 15, but clever enough to know this was the real stuff (and their generosity may have put a pinch on their usual budgets)

I want to eat pho in Vietnam. I want to try a single piece of nigiri in Japan from a master. I want to know what real goulash tastes like. I want to taste from a real plate of sausages somewhere in northern Europe. I want somebody to take pity on me and explain why kimchi is what it is.

I do not want to work in my life saving up for getting to see these real experiences and then show up to "Woo! 59c chilito! With a side of fried chicken!"

Call me a snob and I'll call you a liar. I don't want to be a tourist. When/if I get to see more of the world, I want the real thing, I don't want "And our parent company Pepsico made us put Doritos in everything because it keeps the profit margins running across the business lines!"