Return of the Mac?
McDonald's restaurants. That’s what they call themselves, but they don’t really fit the dictionary definition of a restaurant, do they? “A place where meals are prepared and served to customers ”, says the Cambridge Dictionary. Well, it’s questionable whether anything is prepared on the site. For a start, the fries arrive at the franchises pre-chipped, pre-coated in sodium acid pyrophosphate (to stop them greying, apparently), partially cooked and flash frozen. They get dumped in hot oil on the premises, but that's hardly “preparation”. Then there’s the question of “serving”. If getting your purchase handed to you on a plastic tray while you stand waiting at the counter before finding your own sticky table at which to consume your sodium-acid-pyrophosphate-coated (but deliciously golden-looking) fries, and then clearing away your own rubbish and tray counts as “service”, then I guess they are a restaurant. That’s also assuming you consider what they sell to be “food”. Love them