Fast food is local food, says a journalist who painted McDonald’s around the world

A few years ago, Gary stood in McDonald’s in the Moroccan village during the Islamic St. Ramadan, when he had a moment of Eurek.

The New York writer and photojournalist noticed that the blend of fast food has a special item for the IFTAAR menu, a period when Muslims break daily posts during Ramadan.

“I saw this meal that included a lot of local sweets and exits and a soup of tingle and drinking with milk yogurt. And I just said to myself, like, ok, this is very localized,” he said As it happens Host Nil Köxal.

“I couldn’t find anything on the net on the net. And as a food journalist, I just said that it was possible that the largest restaurant chain did not documented it somewhere? And so I just took it to myself to start documenting it.”

That’s how he was born McatlasThe new self -delayed book is a photo of photographs that shows the ubiquitous locations of fast food chains and a menu item around the world, from a serene Japanese tea garden, to the drive only accessible only ski in Swedish mountains.

“I don’t have the exact number, but I was definitely on hundreds of McDonald’s in 55 countries and six continents,” he said. “A lot of walking is included when you travel so much. So fortunately, it balanced.”

Using a brand to tell a human story

He wants to clarify one thing: she did not finance his book, nor did she support McDonald’s corporation.

“As a journalist, you want to tell stories that are meaningful and relativized, right in the world or in the world there is no more relativized brand or McDonald’s restaurant,” he said.

The Americans, he says, make the wrong assumption that you saw them if you saw a McDonalds.

But in reality, he says McDonald’s provides various culinary cultures. In Canada there is McPoutine, McSpaghetti on the Philippines, Mcaloo Tikki in India and McBaguette in France, just to list them.

“I think many people say, yes, when I’m abroad, I want to try local food. Well, that’s the point of book, isn’t that local food,” he said.

“Without these very localized menu items – some of these rice dishes, macaroni dishes or what you have – around the world, [McDonald’s] They would not be able to survive and progress as they have. I mean, they are the biggest for a reason. “

‘Starbucking’ and other adventures on globerotting

Alex C. Park, a journalist based in California, who wrote extensively about the global fast food industry, Recently quarreled to New York Times That fast food is the best way to get really authentically local dining during your trip.

“Often, you know, when we somehow intentionally seek such an authentic experience, we end up in a place where we are somehow surrounded by people like ourselves,” the CBC Park told.

But in the Milky Queen or Team of Horton, he says, local people who live their daily life.

“There is no such element of performance. It’s a place to that country, however strange it may sound,” the park said.

There are other globetrotters who also understand the park -o approach – YouTubers traveling the world trying to make different items of McDonald’s Menuand travel Blogs that review KFC locations around the world.

One blogger going under the name of the winter documenting his Mission to visit all the Starbucks in the world – The search he calls Starbucking. He claims that he visited more than 15,000 in the United States and Canada and another 5,000 abroad.

Winter claims that the coffee chain is usually located where people live and work. So what is a better way to really see the place as it is?

Tourists, especially from the USA, Canada, have a fantasy about what life is like in other parts of the world that does not stick to reality, says the park.

“I think it’s too easy to start exotic people in foreign countries and somehow thinking they have different desires and desires from us,” he said.

“Not all o, like, everyday life in [another] The country is kind of exciting, fun and interesting and different and there for our parties. Sometimes it is Just kind of prosecuted and ordinary in a way that may be recognizable to us. “

Globalization costs

Although the park says that fast food can show us what we all have in common, it does not mean that everything is the sun and roses.

He is concerned about the global capitalism that creates monoculture, and the way in which the increase in global fast food affects local economies and environments.

Brazil, for example, has Become the world’s largest soybean manufacturerWith great environmental costs, all so that it can supply mass poultry, pork and beef in Europe and Asia.

“I certainly don’t mean to celebrate fast food,” he said.

Still, the park says that countless people in different countries he visited told him that eating in fast food chains makes them feel connected to the world, allowing them to Get out of the local cuisine that tourists seek from enthusiasm, but which is their daily and normal.

Because he, working on Mcatlas He took him to some truly unexpected – and even magical – places. One memory that stands out was his December trip to McSko, charged as the only skiing Thra in the world, at Lindsvall ski resort in Sweden.

“The snow was still fresh. It was like crushing on the ground, and you had to ski to the window,” he said. “I really love that one.”

There is McDonald’s located in a Japanese tea garden in Singapore.

“It will be the most peaceful McDonald’s meal that you will ever have in your life, you know, watching this koi pond with fish and turtles swimming while eating McSpicy sandwich.”

Asked about his experience of trying McPoutine, Canada, he hesitated.

“Let’s just say it’s adequate,” he said. “I don’t want to say anything that friends don’t like me north.”