WV Gourmet

Growing up in Logan County, I ate at Morrison’s Drive Inn at least 800 million times in my short life.  No trip home is complete without a trip to Morrison’s Stollings, WV.  In fact, I really don’t consider it Christmas Eve without a lunch trip there.  I was visiting my parents last week and slipped over to Stollings with Mom to get some delicious Morrison’s food. 

The Chicken Liver Basket

Mom went with the cheeseburger basket.  The cheeseburgers at Morrison’s are served on toasted buttered and white bread, and wrapped in cellphane.  I believe they do this to prevent any flavor from escaping.  It comes with standard burger toppings: pickles, mustard and a big ol’ piece of onion.  It’s pretty much what every cheeseburger aspires to be.

The Cheeseburger Basket - see how the cellphane locks in the flavor.

I would be remiss to not mention the hotdogs.  Morrison’s makes some great hotdogs.  That’s all I’ll say, since they were previously praised by the WV Hotdogs guy. 

They also sell beer, which they will bring to your car.

The Morrison's Menu

I was driving through Kentucky recently to visit some friends and had to stop off and get something to eat, so I went through the McDonalds drive through.  I was planning on getting their rip off Chic-Fil-A sandwich (which isn’t as good as Chic-Fil-A, but a good effort, nonetheless), when I saw that this McDonalds was in the test market for the new McAngus, or whatver they call their “premium” burger, launched to compete with the Hardees Thickburger and the Burger King something something angus burger. 

I had high hopes for this thing, and had wanted to try one ever since I first heard about it.  While everyone else in the fast food business has been launching a higher priced, “premium” burger, McDonalds has seemed to be sitting this one out.  When I heard that they had developed one, I assumed that the folks at the McDonald’s taste labs had been working their balls off to come up with something that would knock the ass off the current champ, the Hardees Small Thickburger.  I don’t include Five Guys in this, because they are higher priced - sort of like comparing Panera and Subway, sure they both sell sandwiches made on bread made in the store, but one costs a little more and tastes really good, and the other is Subway.  Anyhow, back to what I was talking about.  This was a big burger (one third pound), which I’m not that big a fan of.  The quarter pound size is more or less the perfect size for a burger.  Oh well, it looked really good.  The toppings looked good, and hell the onions (which typically suck at Micky D’s) were actually good (I think it was a nice big slice of a red onion, but don’t quote me on that).  This is a burger and no amount of quality condiments can save you from a lackluster piece of beef.  This was not all that great.  It was somewhat more beefy in flavor than the standard McDonalds burger, but the texture was dry there was something somewhat off about the flavor.  I’m not really sure how to describe the off flavor, but there was something a little shitty about it.  In the end, it was kinda good, but kinda shitty.  The fries were excellent, as awlays.

*Adendum: I subsequently learned that the McAngus has been released wide and you can get it at the McDonalds restaurants in Charleston, but I strongly advise against it.