The American chain restaurant Kentucky Fried Chicken is surprisingly popular in the Middle East. At least, it surprises me. I can't think of anyone more American than a Confederate Colonel, but that's just me.
There are a few KFC locations in Lebanon. KFC is all over Saudi, to the extent that people like to call it "King Fahd's Chicken" (although the joke's gotten old now that Fahd is dead, and Abdallah doesn't fit anywhere into KFC).
I ate at KFC once in Amman, Jordan. It was horrible. The one time I ate at KFC in Concorde in Beirut, it was bad too. But at least they have good advertising campaigns with happy pieces of chicken gracing bright red and white billboards.
I think I saw a KFC in Tel Aviv on the corner of Dizengoff and Arlozorov (or was that a Pizza Hut? They're owned by the same people).
In The Lexus and the Olive Tree,Tom Friedman writes about the big KFC billboard he saw out of his window in Kuala Lumpur. That was one of the few moments in which he was caught off guard and sickened by the American commercial presence.
I throw my weight behind Tazaj - the Saudi international chicken chain. The first time I ate there was in the United States. Pretty funny, eh? Tazaj in the US, but KFC in the Middle East.
Mmmm... Everyone loves chicken (except for vegetarians, and the Hindus who don't eat it on certain days of the week)!
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9 comments:
KFC is horrible.
Globalization is evil.
Tom Friedman is stupid.
there is one in Damascus as well, at the corner of Abou Roumaneh Street, across from the park. It opened about a year ago, supposedly under license from the Kuwaiti Food Corporation, whose coincidental initials allowed the Syrian officials to look the other way at the entree of such an obviously American chain into America-free Syria.
I haven't been inside (I'm a non-Hindu non-meat eater :-)!) but from peeking in at the resto while passing by I think the branding is slightly different. same colors, but less of the Colonel. To be fair, though, I have no idea what KFC's current state-side branding is, so it be precisely the same.
I ate KFC once. It tasted surprisingly like chicken.
KFC Is horrible
As someone who has actually worked as a cook in a fast-food chain, I'll explain: Whenever the fried chicken tastes terrible, it almost always means some punk kid dumped the vegetable shortening meant for the pommes frites into the chicken fryer instead of the beef fat they normally use, and the manager didn't want to clean the equipment afterwards. This is important because fast-food chain chicken is cooked under pressure, so a large part of the taste is due to the fact that the frying oil penetrates throughout the meat. Use a tasteless oil like soybean or a diesel oil like canola and the resulting product tastes terrible.
I've never tasted KFC's food, but I've seen it in several places in Israel.
McDonald's and Burger King are far more popular here. Somehow, I prefer more healthy food.
As for the influence of these food chains, I don't think it's right to criticize US for opening restaurants in other countries. It's not the US, it's the private companies who are given the green light (by the local authority) to open restaurants and thus "spread the American culture". They employ thousands of locals, they pay taxes to the local government, the ads that they put all over the country are authorized so it's not really them to blame. They're just guys with a lot of money.
I wouldn't mind to see a Tazaj restaurant in Israel. The opposite, I'd love to check the food it offers. ;)
What's even more weird is the abundance of KFC-like places in the Middle Eastern neighbourhoods of Western cities. If you walk through the Middle Eastern areas of London, for example, every second restaurant is a "Hallal Fried Chicken" or a "Kentucky Fresh Chicken" or something -- usually with the familiar red-and-white logo.
KFC Is horrible
KFC rules.
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