Nicky's Drive Through

Great burgers and  hand cut fries good prices

Dude, no.  Not long ago, I pulled into the drive-thru lane and ordered four hot dogs, a large coke and a large vanilla shake  (I'm a fat ass).  I gave my wife's hard-earned money to the lady at the little window and had over four dollars in change coming.  Well, I got four dollars in change--nickels, to be precise.  Whatever, money's money, you know?  All my boy cares about is money--I could give him fifty rolls of pennies and he'd still hand me a fatty in return.  So I'm cool with all that.  

Five minutes pass.  My stomach rumbles.  I start thinking about my hot dogs.  This leads me to thinking about the best hot dog I ever had, which was a Ball Park Frank I made myself in sixth grade.  Dude . . . sixth grade wasn't a good time for me.  Sixth grade was the year I discovered Woman, but it would be another twelve years before I got one drunk enough to discover me.  Ah, well, it's a hard-knock life.  Anyway, after another five minutes, the little window rolled open, almost like a door on a bus, and, expecting my chow, I began to put my hand towards it.  Yet what came out of the window was not food, but a human head.  I gathered from our "conversation" that she was the manager of the joint; whatever her title, she talked at me for three hundred seconds about how bad her day had been and how lazy her workers, at least two of whom she brought into this world, were.  I tried to think about other things, and but this was difficult, as water (from her mouth) keep stimulating me back into reality.  She went away for a moment, and I thought, "Wow, my breath smelled like that when I smoked?  If only I knew that, I would have quit years before I did."

Sometime later in the day I received my food--although I don't really want to call it "food" or anything else that could be considered a half-rhyme or eye-rhyme with "good."  The edibles just didn't deserve such a relationship.  You see, the dogs were rubbery and not merely tasteless, which I can handle.  No, they were rubbery and tasted like a very stretchy mouthpiece.  The coke was warm and flat, and tasted suspiciously like my old enemy, Diet Mr. Pibb; the shake had the consistency of Dickensian gruel and was also warm, perhaps the comfy temperature of amniotic fluid.

Again, I am a monolingual, spoiled fat American pig, and when hungry, I'll eat even the most repellant of substances, provided they were purchased at a fast food restaurant; but I finished only twenty-five percent of my hot dogs and less than two fluid ounces (sorry, I'm down with the English system) of each beverage as I drove through the Beverly neighborhood before returning to the scene of the crime in order to demand my money back.  I pulled into the parking lot and immediately lost my nerve--social anxiety, you know--and settled for littering.  I let the bag and the two drinks fall from the side of my car not facing the restaurant (with its windows, the workers inside could see everything) and then waited there for maybe three minutes, just to dissociate myself from the trash.  ("It was here when I got here," I could have easily claimed.)    

Ten bucks down the drain.

You may very well have a different experience.  I hope you do.  But every time I drive by, I give this restaurant one hell of a dirty look.

I do like this restaurant. They have very good gumbo soup, but you must take it home and add your own seafood. Their Italian beef is good. They have nice milkshakes too. I like their drive thru mainly because I never wait long.