Arby's: An Adventure In Grossness

One thing that I learned early on in Girlfriend and I's relationship is that Girlfriend loves Arby's. Not to a scary degree or anything; she doesn't have a roast-beef sandwich tattoo (that I'm aware of anyway), but still. The girl loves her Arby's and I'm honestly okay with this. We all have our weird, fast food cravings and, being as how I've carried on torrid, emotionally-damaging affairs with, at various times, Whataburger, In-N-Out, Taco Bell and, for one shameful summer, Chik-Fil-A, I've clearly no room to talk.

This, of course, doesn't change the fact that Arby's is, according to a Government-sponsored scientific survey that involved beakers and at least one microscope, totally gross. Again, I'm not bad-talking people that eat there; I've put away a few Beef N' Cheddars in my day and I'm also well acquainted with the concept of "Horsey Sauce." However, with that being said, there's no denying that Arby's is and always will be one of the nastier fast food establishments in our great nation. The meat is grey, people! GREY!!!

Anyhoo, I bring this up because, for a long time, Girlfriend has been unable to get her Arby's fix due to the fact that we live in the 5 Burroughs where there are no Arby's to be found and, also, we don't have a car to take us to a place (New Jersey) where the Arby's are plentiful. Understandably, this has made Girlfriend damn despondent. Not helping matters, she's been subjected repeatedly to the Arby's commercials that run in our area, despite the fact that we are an Arby's-less community. It's tantamount to torture (if you have a small, watered-down concept of torture, granted), and there's been absolutely nothing that we could do about it.

Until now.

Yes, the day has come: Arby's has come to town, it's arms open and ready to embrace us all with it's slightly-skanky good(ish)ness. Specifically, the new Arby's is located in the Manhattan Mall and yesterday, Girlfriend and I went to check it out.

The Manhattan Mall, if you've never been before, is the pretty much like any other mall you'd find in the rest of the country, which is to say that it's packed with teenagers and it chokes to death a little piece of your soul for every twenty minutes that you spend within it's walls. Oh, but I kid the large conglomeration of retail establishments! As far as malls go, I've certainly seen worse; it appeared as if someone had at least made an attempt to mop up at some point in the recent past and I wasn't at any point afraid of being mugged by roving gangs of thugs, which is more than I can say for some of the malls in Arlington and Austin. We didn't really spend a lot of time amongst the actual stores, but I can personally attest that The Body Shop was free of dead or dying hobos and that the escalators to the various levels quite ably went about their duties of conveying people up and down.

All in all, a decent enough mall. But that's not why we were there. We headed straight for the Food Court.

I'll tell you right now that our Arby's experience last night was a decidedly mixed bag. So basically the norm for a trip to Arby's. Let me break it down for you:

The Arby's at the Manhattan Mall - An Overview

The Store It's Self - It, like any other food outlet in a mall, was a smaller version of the normal-sized Arby's outlet and it was reasonably clean and shiny. When it comes to food places in malls, I'm usually just happy if there's not a puddle of pee where I have to stand to place my order.

The Service - It appeared that we were being helped by the store's manager and it also appeared as if he'd learned English only a few minutes before we stepped up to the counter. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, nor am I wishing to get into a discussion on the immigration policies of our country. I'm just telling you how it was.

The Beef N' Cheddars - The quintessential Arby's experience. By that, I mean that they were the perfect balance of tasty and disgusting that's so germane to an Arby's meal. Plus, cheese sauce, which makes everything, including tax audits and bullet wounds, better.

The Potato Cakes - At some point, Arby's has stopped using actual potatoes in their Potato Cakes and started using low-quality cardboard instead. Liberal doses of ketchup and Horsey Sauce were required to choke this unholy triangles down, and even then neither of us could finish our orders.

The Curly Fries - (Yes, we got both forms of potato on the menu; don't judge, Mr. or Mrs. I'm-So-Perfect) As always, Arby's has some top quality Curly Fries. Spicy and greasy, not-too-crisp and not-too-soggy, sweetness and love, the moon and the stars... these are the reason that fast food was invented and so it shall forever be.

The Soda - It was just your average Pepsi.

Overall Grade: C- (major points off for the Potato Cakes, which really were butt-nasty)

Conclusion - After downing all the above food, both Girlfriend and I felt like absolute crap for the next hour or so. Maybe it's because we don't really eat a lot of fast food anymore, or maybe it's just that the food it's self sucked but, for whatever reason, the both of us were hurtin' in the gut region. Not that this will stop us from going back, of course. When the craving calls, you can't just let it go to the machine.

We'll be back, Arby's. Oh yes, we will be back. For the Curly Fries, if for nothing else.