#365 McWrap

Recently I went by a gas station mini mart place. The sign they had bolted to their light post said they were now offering hot dog wraps. Excuse me? Hot dog wraps? I think they’re missing the point here. Wraps and hot dogs are not compatible foods. It’s like eating green olives with your chocolate milk or anchovies on top of your strawberry cheesecake. Wraps are supposed to be healthy, or filled with healthy stuff, you know, sprouts and apple chunks and rare cheeses and bacon bits. Not hot dogs, the legendary tubular repository of lips and sphincters. So then I thought about it even further. What point are they really trying to make? Who is their target customer? I’m guessing they don’t get a lot of health-conscious people in there in the first place. The mini-mart has not traditionally been the venue for gourmet gustatory offerings. I fully admit that they have perfected the art of the serve-yourself pile-it-on hot dog. If you’re not too squeamish about whose meaty, sweaty, grease-knuckled fist has last gripped the tongs that you are even now using to pinch out some relish that is more or less exclusively light green and fish past the bits that appear to be onion-like contaminants mixed in by the previous hot dog aficionado, then it can be a pretty decent meal for a limited budget. But a wrap? At what point in my convenience store eating career do I decide: You know, this chili dog would be a lot healthier if I got rid of that refined flour, sugar enriched, hydrogenated vegetable oil saturated, white bread bun and replaced it with a Americanized tortilla? Do the wraps have a gram more of fiber? Are they carbo less? Lord knows, there’s a big dietary movement in mini-mart restaurateurs for Atkins-friendly hot dogs. Still, what is a corn dog but a hot dog wrap on a stick? The wraps just fried on. And dipping something in batter and deep-frying it is classic American cuisine at its best. Then it hit me. The wrap idea, warped as it is, does speak to the other key aspect of on-the-go cuisine—can you hold it in your hand. Being able to hold the meal item, without too much in the way of lap-droppage, allowed American drive-throughers to keep driving and was a key component in Mickey D’s early success. Lots of burgers out there were better, loaded with more juicy ingredients, which, being from relatively unprocessed food groups, were healthier. And also, inevitably, sloppier. McDonalds realized that the interchangeable modular burger, primly wrapped and precisely one hand full, was the key to the mobile American palate. The family could swing into a McDonalds, use the bathroom, order up meals for the wheels, and head back out onto the American highway with less muss, less fuss and fewer catsup stains on the upholstery and most importantly, Dad’s lap. You know, this wrap thing may be genius. Our country needs a leak proof chili-dog.
America, ya gotta love it.