What I Wouldn't Give for a Hamburger

Reading Ron Coleman's blogging about KFC, reminds me of something I learned in Bucharest.

I was talking to a software developer who'd just come back from a conference in Atlanta. The guy -- who said he'd written the first internet casino -- had taken his wife and daughter along so they could see America. Their verdict? It was interesting, but the food was all weird. If you've eaten the Romanian idea of normal -- say, slanina -- you'll know how subjective this sort of thing is. It's the New Yorker who comes back from to Rome and complains, "It's okay, but there's no good pizza."

He said, "The only normal food we could find was McDonalds and KFC."

These, like pizza and potatoes, are no longer "American fast food," they're world cuisine.

Back when we were grad students in the same lab, I remember Ian Duncan's telling me how surprised he'd been to learn that MacDonalds wasn't a Canadian company.