Things That Aren’t Around Anymore: Restaurant Edition

Have you ever taken a drive on a lazy day and realized how many establishments are now gone, only to be replaced by bigger businesses or worse, nothing. These “ghost” businesses survive only in our memories. Years pass and you think nothing of it; people come and go as do employees. Then one day you drive by and the restaurant is gone. The doors are closed, the sign outside that once held the daily special is now empty, and the sounds of children laughing is a haunted echo of the past.

Remembering your first trip to a restaurant was important in your life. Remember the feeling of ordering for yourself for the first time? The styrofoam containers, the big, fat paper straws, the excellent customer service, and the awesome toys that came with your kids meal. How about the long forgotten menu items that once were delicious and now you must try, and fail, at making them at home?

Today, we honor restaurants and the foods that aren’t around anymore in the second installment of the series called “Things That Aren’t Around Anymore: Restaurant Edition”. You might also like to read Things That Aren’t Around Anymore: Food Edition and More Foods Not Around Anymore.

DQ Breeze (Dairy Queen)

Basically a DQ Blizzard with yogurt in place of the ice cream. This seems “healthy” until you realize that you were putting heapings of your favorite candy into it.

Frito Burrito (Taco Bell)

The Frito Burrito is a chili cheese burrito with Fritos corn chips added to the mix. They only survived about six months at certain locations, but they were great. You can now get a hybrid of it at Sonic called the Fritos Chili Cheese Wrap.

Arby’s Polar Swirl (Arby’s)

This was a cross between Wendy’s Frosty and Dairy Queen’s Blizzard. It was a great treat and gave Arby’s a dessert instead of having a Jamocha shake as a substitute as a dessert at that time. You can now get it at Wendy’s as the Twisted Frosty.

Onion McNuggets (McDonald’s)

The Onion Mcnuggets sounds worse than it was. INtroduced in the late 1970’s and ending in the early 1980’s, this product was a portable version of the onion ring. Small bite sized pieces of onions in a crispy shell. Doesn’t sound too bad now, does it?

Fried Apple and Cherry Pies (McDonald’s)

I know. I know. They still make the pies. Currently they are baking them. Remember when they were fried? They had the hot center and the warm, crispy outer shell. The current pies are good, but we miss the fried version from the 1960’s to the 1990’s. Thirty years of unhealthy goodness.

Napkins (All Stores)

How about letting us have more than one dang napkin per person. You used to be able to take as many as you needed. Some people kept the remaining to put in their glove compartment and I think fast food restaurants got pissed. Now it’s one and done. Bastards.

Dessert Pizza (Pizza Hut)

With choices such as Apple, Cherry, and Blueberry, the dessert pizza from Pizza Hut was an awesome finish to a great meal. The pizza was layered with pie dessert filling and then topped with an oatmeal/brown sugar combination and swirls of cream cheese icing.

Meatloaf Specialty Sandwich (Burger King)

This sandwich went hand in hand with the table service they were trying out in 1992. The burger was a meatloaf patty served on a specialty bun with ketchup and onions. It lasted about as long as the table service theme, about a month.

Superbar (Wendy’s)

Pretty innovative for 1979-1980, this glorified salad bar featured salad items, italian items like spaghetti, and mexican food. The tag line “Create your own meal” was meant to give the customer full control of what they wanted to eat, but it failed and was only around a short time. Wished this would have stuck around a little longer. Maybe not, salad bars are usually filled with snot nosed kids and people who sneeze.

Fried Pickles (Sonic)

Sonic’s Fried Pickles had done very good in terms of sales when they were first released to the public. People will eat anything that is deep fried and fast food chains know this. So why did Sonic pull the item from the menu? Who knows, but Sheetz has recently added it to their deep fried menu along with Mozza Sticks and fried macaroni and cheese triangles.