Fast Casual! Fastaurant! Slurm de luxe! Jacques en boite!

[substitute]

feedle alerts me to the existence of the JBX Grill, the attempt by Jack in the Box to enter the "upscale fast casual" world where people will spend $12.95 for 50 cents worth of Extrude-A-Fude™.

Not sure whether this is brilliant, or soon to be a hilarious failure like the Mac Tonight Supper Club.

Probably the former, since 99 44/100% of restaurants now serve whatever Sysco brings in the truck whether they charge ten or a hundred dollars for the experience.

But they have a fireplace!

Comments

[mr-flippant.livejournal.com]

I call auto bistro.

[mendel.livejournal.com]

Ok, I'll bite. What was the Mac Tonight Supper Club?

oh the shark he

[substitute.livejournal.com]

My icon is from the Mac Tonight ad campaign. In the 1980s, McDonalds decided to try to attract the "family evening out dining" crowd by calling themselves the Mac Tonight Supper Club. Their ads featured an ominous man shaped like a crescent moon who sang a filked-up version of "Mack the Knife" about going to get a big mac when the moon was out.

It didn't work.

My friend Dan did an insane video/performance art piece in which he dressed up in a lifesize papier-mâché Mac Tonight head and invaded various McDonalds with a video camera going and got thrown out, interspersed with bits from the commercials.

I found some other people chattering about this bizarre thing here.

Re: oh the shark he

[fimmtiu.livejournal.com]

To this day I can never actually remember the real lyrics to "Mack the Knife". It's always "it's a good time... for a great taste..."

Kee-rrist.

Re: oh the shark he

[mendel.livejournal.com]

Oh! I remember that now. I was young enough in the 1980s to remember the ads but not the pitch. :-)

Re: oh the shark he

[sachmet.livejournal.com]

Also they tried an actual diner, too, but sadly, they're gone now.

McDonald's Meatloaf had such a ring to it, too. I never went there, though.

Re: oh the shark he

[substitute.livejournal.com]

Ahh, the "diner". I noticed that 25 years after "50s diner retro chic", Dennys decided they were a diner too, thus closing some kind of awful patty melt-based circle.

Seriously oozing life over here

[eyeteeth.livejournal.com]

I would totally have gone to an eatery whose signature tune was a song about a serial killer. That is, if it had been someplace other than McDonald's.

[sachmet.livejournal.com]

cf. DQ Grill & Chill

[substitute.livejournal.com]

Apparently the fireplace is the thing that seals it and makes people pay that $12.