Half-Assed Gourmet: DQ is your source for country gravy and toast?

On various "apps" and streaming video services, I keep running into a Dairy Queen ad touting "fan food"--not fast food, mind you, but fan food--in the form of a chicken strip basket. I am not a regular Dairy Queen customer, and it's been years since I had anything besides ice cream, but when I have indulged, I have enjoyed it. I recall the best thing being how freaking hot it was. I guess when you are the only idiot that comes in and makes them fire up the grill for a burger, you have a good shot at getting something fresh and sizzling.

I don't think this promotion is going to lure me in there. The chicken strips look fine--I mean, they're chicken strips; how can they not be--but DQ muddies the waters by introducing an actual murky liquid: GRAVY. It's not just any gravy, it's country gravy.

I hate gravy. I don't like it with turkey, not with sausage, and not with chicken strips. I hate gravy so much that if nacho cheese, which I love, were called Mexican gravy, I would hate it. Under no circumstances do I want any gravy-ish substance in a basket of fast food. How about some honey mustard of buffalo sauce instead? That's how I roll. No disrespect intended to Rural America.

Fortunately, DQ offers its country gravy in a side cup, so I presume that even if I begged them to leave it out of the basket and they forgot, I could pluck it away from the food and hurl it into the sun the way Superman did when Lex Luthor tried to poison the Metropolis water supply with generic country gravy (Ed. Note: See Weird-Ass Adventures #46.4). That's a good thing, but we need to talk about something else, the other thing that the commercial feels worthy of a hearty brag.

This basket comes with toast.

Yep, toast.

Part of the reason I eat fast food is that I want something I can't make at home with speed or ease. Toast is perhaps the single easiest thing one can make. Why go to a fast food joint and pay for it? Even if you consider it a throw-in, it looks superfluous. Chicken, fries...toast. Just how good can it be to make it seem like a big deal? IT'S TOAST!

Are we supposed to dip our toast in the country gravy? We know that ain't happening. Look, I don't mind toast as a delightful complement to real food in a breakfast platter, or as a quick wake-me-up in the morning, but let's not make toast a fast food thing, country or not.

Hey, wait! I just figured out how Dairy Queen can make me care about its toast. Put some ice cream on it, then some whipped cream, then some bananas slices, and then some chocolate syrup. Then just hold the toast, bring me a bill for the banana split, and then you haven't broken any rules.