SLOW Food

I am ashamed of myself. I go to McDonald's here occasionally.

I abhor McDonald's - for all the standard 'political' reasons (poor nutrition, worrying additives, penny-pinching employment practices, promoting deforestation in South America), and for a few slightly more personal ones too (the soul-squelching homogenization of the English High Street, the slow demise of more traditional junk food outlets like the fish & chip shop, the insidious kiddie-targeted advertising onslaught), and above all simply on grounds of taste (it is vile, bland food - give me Burger King any day! Alas, they don't have Burger King yet here in China.).

I have boycotted McDonald's in the UK and the US for years; and, given the plentiful fast food alternatives usually available in those countries, I have seldom or never wavered from that resolve. Here in China, however, McDonald's is rapidly becoming ubiquitous. Other Western-style fast-food outlets are just about non-existent (except for the occasional KFC, and the odd local McDonald's copycat operation). And so, because most Chinese food is so disappointing, I do from time to time - for cheapness and "convenience" - find myself falling back on the McDonald's option.

"Convenience" gets the inverted comma treatment because the Chinese haven't really got the hang of the fast food concept yet. This is a country of ditherers and lollygaggers. It's a national pastime. In particular, dithering over the menu for ages is one of the key pleasures of the dining experience for the Chinese, and they're not about to sacrifice that pleasure just because they're in a fast food joint - and there are 10 other people waiting in a line behind them. Yep, the main reason fast food doesn't work here is the customers. I am quite partial to KFC back home; but I've only ever attempted to buy some here 3 or 4 times. Attempted. On each occasion, the counter wasn't very busy, only 2 or 3 people were in line ahead of me. On each occasion, after about 5 minutes of waiting in vain for the person at the head of the line to finalise an order, I gave up and walked out. Every sinew of your being is silently shrieking: "It's a chicken shop. It's all chicken. Just order some friggin' chicken, for chrissakes!"

Last night, having starved all evening because of the sudden inconvenient demise of the favourite Chinese snack stall I had been planning to fuel up at, I found myself once again going through the McDonald's China ordeal. My local one (at the top of Dianmenwai) is possibly the worst in the entire city. It's so bad, I really try to avoid ever using it on grounds of saving myself from the aggravation, rather than any stand of principle against the company as a whole (a principle which I wretchedly abandon, with increasing frequency, at several of its other outlets here in Beijing). There's been a huge improvement in the service standards at most of the McD's I've been to here over the past 5 years. When I first arrived in China, things were shockingly bad: crawlingly slow, incompetent service; no English spoken, no familiarity with the menu. On one particularly memorable occasion up in Haidian a few years ago (at the branch on the corner of Chengfu Lu and Xueyuan Lu, much frequented by foreign students), it took me about 5 minutes to ascertain - via a painstaking process of elimination - that none of the burger products was available. Yes, I had caught them at the end of their big lunchtime rush, but - a McDonald's that's out of burgers ("Meiyou niurou!")??!! That should not be possible. These days, thank heavens, most of the staff in most of the branches speak at least a little bit of English; most of them can now manage at least a modicum of efficiency and briskness in the filling of your order. The Dianmenwai branch has been strangely by-passed by this revolution. The time-and-motion trainers have not yet come to call.

Last night, I was desperate. I'd been working all evening. I hadn't really eaten anything substantial all day. I was ravenous. I was impatient. I was foolhardy. I looked in at the Dianmenwai McDonald's at about 10pm. There were about 5 or 6 young Chinese ahead of me waiting to be served. Only 1 of the 4 serving points was open. After about 5 minutes, the first guy in the line was still discussing his order. I kid you not. The girl serving him wasn't doing anything to hurry him along. The shift manager wasn't considering the option of putting another server on (by now, another 2 or 3 people had joined the line behind me). I decided to go for a walk, to vent my frustration, to check out if anyone I knew was in Huxley's, my local 'dive' bar just around the corner. There was no-one I knew in the bar. I was still ravenous. I couldn't think of any other quick eats I could get in the neighbourhood. I went back to the dratted McD's. About another 4 or 5 minutes had elapsed. There was still just the one girl serving, but she had finally managed to deal with all the people who'd been waiting (well, I think the guy just getting served when I returned was the one who'd been immediately in front of me; I guess the people who'd been waiting behind me must also have given up and walked out). It still took them 3 minutes to make my burger. 3 minutes. There is no rush on. I am now the only person in the place. 3 minutes! I really don't know how they manage to do everything so slowly! Even when my burger was finally ready, the middle-aged lady doing the bagging up (they had a separate person for this?! the server couldn't do it herself??) was moving in ultra-slow-motion, taking a good 20 or 30 seconds fussily folding over the top of the bag three times and then placing the folded till receipt on top of that - one of the longest 30 seconds of my life, 30 seconds during which my empty stomach seemed to be bellowing furious profanities at the poor woman.

So, that's nearly 15 minutes in total to purchase a Big Mac - in a branch that's almost empty. I think whoever is supposed to be monitoring quality standards on the franchise here needs to look into this.