On a particularly budget-tight day toward the end of my #EmptyPantryChallenge, my husband, our friend, and I decided to patronize the Wendy's in our neighborhood. I might have been a bit more excited about the idea, except the handful of times I've used their drive through in the past, I've noticed that several employees in the kitchen have beautifully manicured, painted nails. Those of you who haven't worked in food service, (and some who have, probably) may not understand why this is gross; aren't manicured nails better than dirty hands?
Perhaps. But nails with polish have no place in an industrial kitchen. It can and will eventually flake off, spreading bacteria, not to mention the prospect of ingesting a stranger's nail polish is pretty gross to me anyway, and I've witnessed the discovery of someone's fake nail on a plate that's been served twice too many times. Still, it's probably the most commonly overlooked food safety regulation, and if I eliminated establishments based solely on that I would have a depressingly short list of options. I may, however, start a ranking system in future reviews, bonus points added if all visible food handling staff have bare nails.
Most of the time, I actually really like Wendy's. The menu is reasonably varied yet limited enough that the quality doesn't usually suffer (I'm looking at you, Jack In The Box), and the prices make it an easy choice when my budget is tight and I don't have the option of home cooking. This review is of the particular location, which is consistently lackluster in its service and quality.
The first omen of the experience to come was the soda machine. I generally really enjoy the sleek, fancy LED display soda distributors that allow you to select several flavors of a wide variety of sodas. However, when I selected the Dr Pepper option and began to fill my cup, I noticed that it was spraying a dark, sludgy black liquid to the right of my cup as it filled the cup. It may have been soda syrup, but not only does a leak like that affect the delicate soda-water-to-syrup ratio, it was also much darker and thicker in appearance than most soda syrups. I also discovered a large, growing puddle of a similar liquid on the floor at the base of the machine.
We received our food, and I immediately noticed that I had received normal nuggets instead of the spicy ones I had ordered. This has happened before, and it's an easy mistake to make, however when I brought my nuggets up to the counter to ask for spicy ones, the staff rolled their eyes and said it would have to be a wait while they fried up a fresh batch. It was apparent that they had run out of spicy nuggets and had decided to give me normal nuggets, hoping I would just eat them and they wouldn't have to make a new batch of the spicy. This was allthemore apparent when i returned to my table and my friend pointed out that his spicy nuggets were cold, dry, and tasted like they'd been cooked much earlier in the day- the end of the batch. I'll point out it was about 7:30 in the evening, not right before closing or something, so even in all fairness this was lazy.
They fried up some fresh spicy nuggets, which I shared with my friend, and then he decided to go order some of the new "Baconator" fries.
We should have quit while we were behind.
The fries were cold, the cheese unmelted, the bacon... unnervingly limp, like scraps of greasy fabric laid over a mound of perfectly in tact, rubbery American cheese shreds.
I give this location a 2/10, as my husband had no complaints about his burger.
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