Comida Chatarra

It’s almost impossible for me to say anything good about the United States during the Trump years. It’s a terrible country filled with terrible humans. I’m very much an American, lord knows, but the fact mostly fills me with shame that I am product of this racist, misogynist, genocidal nation leading the globe in environmental destruction. So, when in Spanish class here in Chile, I was asked to say something about my nation, I talked about how terrible the food is. Now, American food is like everything else in America–if you are wealthy, you can access everything great about the world. But you really have to wealthy or know some niche place (oh hey, I know this one BBQ place off this backroad that is open 8 hours a week….) or be integrated into immigrant communities to have a solid food culture, whereas in Mexico, you just have to walk outside to the nearest taco stand, where everyone else is eating. The average, daily food culture in the United States is kinda grim and for dumb reasons. Plus now that our official government policy is ethnic cleansing, even the immigrant transformation of American food is under attack.

Take all of this and understand one thing–American food has actually never been better than it is today. Early visitors to the United States from Europe consistently talked about how Americans ate nothing but red meat and overly sweet desserts, washed down with way too much whiskey. And your grandma or whatever might have been a great cook (mine was, in the German style), but the overall food culture of early 20th century America wasn’t any great shakes either and the horrors of cookbooks of that era give you a sense of it.

Well, my Spanish teacher told me that the Chileans have a term for terrible, trash food–comida chatarra. It’s not that Chileans have some great cuisine. In fact, they have a refreshing lack of food nationalism–ask any Chilean and they will tell you that the best Chilean restaurants are Peruvian. I like Peruvian food fine, but it’s not some great cuisine in itself. The fact that Latin American food below Mexico (below Oaxaca really, the food in Chiapas is significantly worse than the rest of Mexico) is so mediocre to terrible is an interesting phenomena. And I mean, Chile has the climate of California and the wine to prove it, so it’s not always an environmental thing like you might connect this to in, say, Bolivia.

In any case, this is a long prelude to something I mentioned in comments to some post a month or so ago that I think deserves a Sunday discussion. Back in May, I was in rural Oklahoma, driving back to OKC to get to the airport. I was visiting my brother and had floated north to see some graves for my series here. I was a touch late and I was very hungry. So I said, OK, I am going to stop at the next exit with any food and see what happens. Now, understand that unless I am on the road, I never eat fast food. It’s not an ideological objection per se, I just don’t see the point. Why eat at McDonald’s when you can eat somewhere else nearly as fast, nearly as cheap, and way better? I might stop at Wendy’s once a year. I haven’t been to a Burger King or Taco Bell in years. I think the last time I was at a Taco Bell in fact, it was 2017, which I remember because I was coming off a hike and needed food bad. I have finally learned my lesson about the constant disappointment with living that I feel after eating Subway. Etc.

In any case, the closest restaurant was….Pizza Hut. Now, I can tell you the last time I ate at a Pizza Hut. It was 2008 or 2009 and I was driving from Albuquerque to Austin and was staying the night somewhere in west Texas after visiting Carlsbad Caverns National Park and that is what was open. And my to-be-wife was annoyed because I got the thin crust instead of the thick crust; one of the things you learn about someone as you move toward marriage is what kind of pizza crust they prefer. For the record, I also prefer thick, so maybe I was trying to be healthier or something, I don’t remember.

Well, it was the lunchtime buffet. I thought two things. First, I really am in a big hurry so this saves me some time and second, how bad can pizza be?

My friends………why does this exist? This was probably the worst meal I’ve had, period, in at least a decade or more. I cannot imagine a worse one. You can make pizza cheaply and badly and it is far, far superior to this. Everything was awful. The meat-like substances, the cheesesque cheese, the bad vegetables, the sauce, the horrifically awful crust. What the fuck is this shit?

I do not understand. Like, it really flabbergasts me. Why would you sell a product this horrible? I get that in small-town Oklahoma, a couple hours east of Oklahoma City, your audience is not, er, too discerning. But even so, I am just deeply confused by the sheer existence of food this bad. It makes McDonald’s look like Don Julio’s in Buenos Aires. It makes Taco Bell seem like Casa Oaxaca across from Santo Domingo Church in Oaxaca. Shit, it makes Domino’s look like the most brilliant Tuscan trattoria that exists.

Can someone explain what is going on here? That Pizza Hut originated in Wichita might explain some of it.

Comida chatarra, indeed.