Place: Long John Silvers/A&W
Lunch: Fish-chicken combo with cheese curds, scrunchies, Coney dog, A&W Root Beer
The longstanding Long John Silver's near the office closed about a month and a half ago for a renovation to add the A&W brand to the mix. Clearly the renovations were largely to the kitchen as the front dining room is EXACTLY THE SAME. The side dining room (yes, there's separate dining rooms, always has been) has an A&W theme now, but that's just wallpaper and lamps.
Long John Silver's is a hit-or-miss proposition. Whereas most fast food fish chains fry to order, LJS doesn't. Their fish and chicken is just fine if you get it freshly fried, but I've had some outright disgusting experiences with most locations with fried foods that were obviously sitting for hours. In fact, this location is the exception. They have a solid crew who are good-to-perfect on their timing. They are a well-oiled machine.
Or were a well-oiled machine.
They're kind of confused right now.
There used to be like five girls working here. Now there's more like 72 people behind the counter. And the woman who has been taking my order for so long she can recite it from memory looks completely lost at the cash register now.
The cash registers, the same old yellow-stained dated Panasonic models they've always had, have a whole new layout of buttons for crap to accommodate the A&W menu. And she's not used to finding stuff on there. It doesn't help that some items sound the same, which is how the "orange float" vs "orange freeze" debate started between her and the drink maker. Or how a chili dog is called a "coney dog" on the menu board, but a "chili & cheese dog" on the cash register.
This worked much better when they only had like five menu items.
It doesn't help that Long John Silver's is the official fast food restaurant of the elderly, and everybody in here who isn't me is over 70. They don't know what to make of the new menu, so the order line is even slower.
So I spent about ten minutes in line, and another ten waiting for food, which was delivered to my table. The fish and chicken weren't as hot as normal and not fried as long (therefore not as crispy), but not terrible either. The chili dog and cheese curds were good. And the A&W root beer was great, even if they didn't have their own draft barrel thingie like the other A&W in town. It was just on the Pepsi tap, but signs indicated it's still made in-house with cane sugar anyway.
There's a whole new variety of sauces you can have too. This includes a new tartar sauce, a sweet chili sauce, a Baja spicy sauce, Ranch, and cocktail sauce. I tried all of the new ones. I'll be fine not trying the chili or Baja sauce again. Dipping your LJS chicken in ranch sauce is a whole new level of cool. Works for the curds too.
So anyway, it's nice to have A&W on tap on this side of town finally.
And a decent chili dog.
