On a recent trip to Tokyo, I stopped at a suburban McDonald’s and spoke with a few older patrons. I was interested in their memories of the brand’s Japanese debut in 1971. Between sips of coffee, a man in his 70s told us that he remembered it vividly: It was around the time that Yukio Mishima, then the nation’s most celebrated writer and a champion of Japanese imperialism, committed suicide after a failed coup. One era was ending, another was beginning, and the transition was marked by the arrival of an American restaurant radically different from anything they had ever seen.
Like so many of my fellow Westerners, I’ve felt the urge to eat the way locals do while traveling abroad. In a city like Tokyo, there’s an array of sushi bars and noodle shops to choose from, tucked away down the narrowest side streets and waiting for the adventurous traveler. They’re all the rage on Instagram, where those eager to prove they’ve indulged in an authentic eating experience post images of their latest “discoveries.” Yet as fond as I am of the hidden gem, I have another, less conventional way to gather insights into local life: I go to fast-food restaurants.
Sitting on the hard seat of a Burger King, chicken sandwich in hand, I feel welcome but not intrusive, surrounded by locals as they go about their lives no differently than they would have if I hadn’t shown up at all. If I’m feeling really ambitious, I might ask the group at a table next to mine what I should order here the next time and see where the conversation leads. I’m looking for a very specific encounter with normality. I want to see people living as I do, under global capitalism.
I tend to think the search for authenticity in a new country is rooted in a desire for something we find missing at home. To live almost anywhere in the United States is to be surrounded by brand names. The supposedly authentic foreign experience is perhaps a sense of life untainted by the influence of global brands. Traveling abroad, we may find it only natural to dismiss anything else as less than the “real” version of whichever country we’re visiting. Yet brands like KFC or McDonald’s are just as ingrained in the fabric of everyday life in Dublin, Paris or Tokyo as a given pub, bistro or noodle shop.
Tokyo eaters, for example, have been going to KFC and McDonald’s for about as long as Japanese-style sushi bars have existed in the United States. In the 1960s and 1970s, the same years that Thai, Indian and Japanese restaurants began taking off in America, the McDonald’s franchisee in Hong Kong offered an “all-American taste,” while another in Britain promised “the United Tastes of America.”
Since those early international forays, the major brands have largely dropped the American overtones from their advertising, as years of continuous expansion have turned them from a curiosity to something utterly ubiquitous. Restaurants that often look indistinguishable from ones you might find in an American strip mall are locally owned and supplied, often with a few menu items specific to the area. You can get poutine at many Canadian McDonald’s locations and jollof rice at West African KFCs. In India, McDonald’s offers a menu that is entirely free of beef and largely vegetarian, with items like the pea-and-potato McAloo Tikki burger ranking among the best sellers.
At a KFC in Ghana some years ago, I bought a sandwich with a piece of chicken that was more breading than meat and still had cartilage attached to it. (It wasn’t all that surprising: The franchisee had a history of struggling to secure a high-quality poultry supply.) After collecting my order, I went to the second floor of the three-story restaurant, tray in hand, ate and struck up a conversation with a younger man a few tables over. He was getting a degree from the Wisconsin International University College in Accra, he said from behind a laptop. I asked how often he came. “Not much,” he said. “Maybe twice or three times a week.” He liked the food, he said, and an order came with half an hour of free Wi-Fi.
KFC was embedded in Accra’s culture. Whatever novelty it brought to the area, it was also a place to get some work done and escape the limitations of the city’s infrastructure. Not long after I returned one evening, the entire block went dark in one of the blackouts that the decaying, debt-ridden power sector has made an inevitable part of life in the region. Thanks to some generators, the store remained lit up, and its doors stayed open.
Perhaps because fast food is so deeply ingrained in American life, we struggle to recognize that it is just as deeply embedded in other countries. Fast food is indigenous to a world made by capitalism, you could say — the apotheosis of a global monoculture that pervades Cape Town, Madrid and Seattle equally. But step inside. Order something. Try speaking with the customers. You might even leave with a better understanding of how they live, what they struggle with and what they hope for themselves. In other words, by going to the most generic restaurant, you can learn what makes a place unique.
The post Want an Authentic Travel Experience? Try McDonald’s. appeared first on New York Times.
