The first thing you need to know about the Walnut Place Wendy’s is that I don’t fit on a plane. I’m a unit, not absolute but certainly large enough to occupy more than a single seat. Nothing in the euphemistically named economy class is built for me and the guy next to me smelled like throat. I shifted from one uncomfortable position to another until I finally realised that the whole concept of sleep was a prank. ABSOLUTE LUCIDITY elevated me to a trancended state and this new state of being required nourishment. Il’krit, the being of cosmic energy who was now driving me, demanded we go to a Wendy’s.
The Décor.
Australian fast food chains were designed by disgraced MKULTRA scientists to beat the human forebrain into submission. Pursuant to this dark cause, the walls are a shifting kaleidoscope of food imagery and slogans that would make your local fascist jealous. Copyrighted fonts, humans market-researched to be inoffensively attractive, and extreme close ups of impossibly perfect versions of the garbage you’re about to eat rile your lizard brain into a feed or fuck frenzy. The lunch rush will provide the forward thinking man with both.
By comparison, the Walnut Cove Wendy’s is an exercise in surreal minimalism. The experience stunned this diner with a case of agoraphobia, I was a cave dweller stepping outside and thinking the great blue up would eat me and my simple kin. The entire place felt like the generic “soda” version of a fast food restaurant you’d see in a sitcom. The only area with visible branding was the service counter and it made the whole thing feel like the Wendy’s was only here for a few days until things turned around.
If you put on the glasses from They Live in here, the entire place would look the same. Perfect! Nobody was going to fuck me so I settled for eating.
The Process.
The first thing I noticed was that my server’s name was Ariel. Yes, just like The Little Mermaid if that movie were about a chunky latino who would probably get upet with me for the comparison. He was nice enough not to point out the ancient energy being steering me about by the ears and took my order.
The cost it ended up costing was more than the sign and till said it would. It was 9.46, so I got out two American 5 FREEDOMBUX. He said 10 dollars something and I looked at him like we were both retarded. It turns out the tax is added at the very end, like a fun surprise only awful and stupid.
A clawing sensation in my stomach can only mean one thing: I’m embarassing myself socially or I ate too many claws. I gazed at Ariel like we were both retarded but he gazed back at me like only I was retarded. Like when someone pulls another draw 2 in Uno, I had to accept that I was a double retard and handed him a twenty while muttering about numbers being harder than shapes.
The Food.
I came to this mad capitalist fiefdom to do two things: observe a wedding and eat crimes. I’d already purchased aerosol cheese but, high on freedom and sinister cheese alchemy, I was mad with lust for more. I wanted a burger. I got a Dave.
I’m unfamiliar with the greater Wendy’s lore so I have no idea who Dave is. Is he Wendy’s father? Lover? Victim? Or some combination of the three? I had no idea and the only other reference to him I could find were on the vaguely described Wendy’s Soda so I remain ignorant to this day.
I got the biggest quantity of Dave possible, the triple, thanked Ariel, and wandered to my table with fries and a small bucket of coke. The largest beverage size in Australia is the smallest here. You’re vile pig-monsters but you grill a good Dave.
The burgers are square but the buns are round. This discordant theming continued with the meat itself: it smelled awful but tasted fine. The odour was not something I was expecting either in presence or familiarity. It reminded me of the feral kids who coudn’t wipe their arses properly. A shit but not-quite-shit stink of a parent who wipes their child with their own lavender body spray. Lavender, asshole, and Dave all wound together to taste like bland beef. Almost an accomplishment.
The fries weren’t peeled, probably in some naive attempt to appear like more than twigs of fat and sodium, but were otherwise fair fare. Coke is coke. Acidic black hatred successfully peddled to us via marketing voodoo and the fundamental human need to self-destruct.
I ignored the uncanny smell of neglected 11 year old butthole and wolfed down my Triple Dave and upsized sides. I forgot the experience the second I’d finished it.
Most places peddle their wares around some kind of identity marker. Special sauce. 11 herbs and spices. Wombat meat. The Wendy’s of Walnut Point doesn’t have any of this. There’s meat, lettuce, tomato, and sauce. The burgers are square but until this place’s sinful geometrists work out how to bind flavour to physical shape, it’s just a novelty that one won’t notice. I’m eating at Wendy’s, I hate myself and summon a countering survival instinct by engaging in horrifying self-mutilating behaviours, I’m only noticing your burger shape because I’m smell checking it for skidmarks.
I left feeling like garbage and enjoyed the experience immensely.
Overall
The modern human experience is one of overwhelming sensory stimulus and it is a kindness that Wendy’s in Walnut Lakes eschews this for the screaming nihilism of empty spaces and featureless latino service balls. The food is the kind of stuff you’d find perfectly laid out under a videogame barrel. It has [FLAVOUR], [TEXTURE], and the faint scent of lower socioeconomic tragedy. If you are after food, I wouldn’t recommend it. But if you want an experience that will palate clense your Zen, resetting you to a screaming primate driven by sensation so you can pursue the joys of evolution over again, the Walnut Bush Wendy’s gets my highest recommendation.
I give it: ♧ out of £
By Hungry Gabe
