Thursday, September 18, 2008

The whole world is watching

Among my guilty pleasures of late is an American-style diner at one of Singapore's numerous malls. (I suspect Singapore probably has the most malls per capita in the world.) You know the sort of place, kitchy and over-the-top with its decorations from several different long-ago decades, but the food is great nonetheless. It's not really that unusual for Asians to try too hard in their own way to act American, but this place takes it to extremes. Tonight, though, I was in the mood for some comfort food after almost making it through a good but fairly tedious week, so off I went to the diner.

They have a rather wide selection of burgers. I usually don't order a burger because I'm trying to watch my weight (and I'm also now old enough to see that some of the more elaborate specialty burgers are, well, gross), but just out of curiosity I checked that part of the menu tonight. They had a new addition to the lineup: the Obama Burger. Just a reminder of whose side the rest of the world is on, I guess. I did check to see if they had a dish named for McCain...maybe a mooseburger, or something involving extra-aged beef...but they didn't, although their fries are made from McCain potatoes. (I don't think there's any relation, though...isn't the potato company Canadian? I do know they have a big processing plant on Prince Edward Island.)

I chose not to read anything into the fact that the Obama Burger comes with black pepper sauce. If they were trying to be offensive, they probably would have topped it with collard greens or some such.

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