In the end he asked: Is there no McDonalds?
We had had one for about 5 years, but I had not considered it a restaurant. It's a different thing :) Right, it's just around the the corner from the train station, 2 minute walk.
I concluded that humans are very conservative when factoring “lunch risk”. The perceived cost of time, money, and disappointment if they don’t find food they like drives them to McDonalds where they know exactly what they are getting and the risk is zero.
A Swiss acquaintance of mine was the first to show me how this works first-hand. Lemongrass chicken? Congee? Pho? Let’s just get “a Mac”.
Counting locations I think compared to other kinds of restaurants their market share is small. Measured in turnover it might be a different story. Few people might enjoy their meal at a McDonald's for 30-60 minutes.
OTOH, I'm actually somewhat interested in visiting McDonald's once in foreign countries because their menus aren't consistent across the world but rather somewhat adapted to the local tastes.
Honestly I find this “I’m risking my safety unless it is a US chain” attitude both limiting and even a little ugly.
If your digestive system tends to have you issues when given unexpected inputs, as is the case for a lot of people, then this is just what you do to stay comfortable while away from home.
Yep totally missed that, making my comment a little off base. The rest of the thread was about traveling abroad but not the person I replied to.
I think you are investing too heavily in the 'poisoning' term. It wouldn't be per se, but it wouldn't help you if the next day you would feel extremely not good.
Locals have local gut bacteria and immune systems tuned to the local strains of pathogens. It's no revelation that if you travel far enough, there's going to be some level of incompatibility here.
> Honestly I find this “I’m risking my safety unless it is a US chain” attitude both limiting and even a little ugly.
No idea where you got this from, but I guess you assumed that I'm American and have a specific set of beliefs you observed in other Americans.
To be clear I'm not American and I don't prefer US chains. If I went to Saudi Arabia I would probably go to Hungry Bunny - even if only due to nostalgia.
But I still find it remarkable that McDonalds strikes such a chord with people, particularly people like my Swiss friend who is as cultured and sophisticated as they come. If we were choosing a film, he'd want to see the most difficult, obscure documentary. But choosing lunch - there's just something about the fear of a bad culinary experience that trumps all other concerns.
My kids were part of a group that recently hosted another school group from Europe. As they were leaving, we asked them about the experience. One of the kids said that it was comforting to find out that America also has McDonalds, and many other kids shook their head in agreement.
It's pretty impressive from a business and logistics perspective. Imagine delivering the exact same physical object, which is perishable and must be locally prepared, everywhere in the world. That's a different challenge than your cloud app's capacity.
Internationally there is quite some variation: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_availability_o...