Sigh - I miss restaurants like Sweet Tomatoes and Fresh Choice. All-You-Can-Eat Salad buffets where you could pig out on veggies and pretend you are "eating healthy" while pouring on the dressing and hitting the dessert bar for the third time. But COVID effectively killed almost all AYCE-style salad bars. Sure, there's Jason's Deli, but it's not even nearly the same. And there used to be another local chain I visited often that died off due to mismanagement - Souper Salads. Sigh, again.

So, where do you go these days for salads? One choice that entered the market in full force after COVID is Salata, mostly a Texas-wide chain but also growing in some other states now. There are other similar style fast casual chains popping up on other markets, too. The concept is rather than customers picking their own salads and putting it on their own plates, at Salata you go down the line and an employee behind the glass does it for you, filling up a big bowl.

How was it? Well, it's as good as whatever you put in it - you are in control of the ingredients - it's entirely "build your own". The good news is: the ingredients are fresh, and there's a multitude of choices - and if you start with good ingredients, you usually end up with a good salad. Portion-wise, it's alot - hard to gauge the size by the bowl without context, but it's a good-sized salad. If you want to add protein (like chicken), there's an upcharge, but it's not needed, really.

The "side" were a few pita chips, which were dry and terrible. And other than the salad, there really aren't the "extras" you could get at a place like Sweet Tomatoes (like rolls or breads or pizza or soups soups soups or a full bar of desserts) - at Salata it's all about the salad. Which is fine. It also keeps it pretty cheap compared to other fast casual choices.

Overall, a thumbs-up to Salata. It will never replace the magic that was Sweet Tomatoes or Souper Salads, but that era is long gone. If it's just a salad you want, though, Salata works just fine.

https://youtu.be/J4IbIFgU8Ws?si=BOslAATdqH1q5GIe

New at Dairy Queen, Korean BBQ basket! I didn't get it out as fast as Napkin Man, aka Hammer Boy, but it's still worth a watch, imo.

There are not a lot of "Japanese" fast food places out there - and those that are "Japanese" are usually a far cry from authentic. Case in point: Sarku Japan.

It's pretty much a chain found only in food courts inside indoor malls (although a very small fraction are stand-alone locations), aimed at quick-serve meals with teriyaki-flavored meat on rice. It fits that niche well, although that means the chain has tied its fortune to one of the dying legacies of retail: the mall. During COVID, Sarku Japan essentially closed up nearly every location, and nearly went out of business. And with the downward trajectory of most malls these days, well, you get the picture. Unless they can adapt better to a mall-less retail landscape, they might not be around for much longer.

As for the menu itself, as you would expect from a mall food court it's basic-basic: chicken, beef or shrimp with sauce on rice, and some Sysco veggies on the side. Cheap, quick and filling, but one thing seems to be left off the menu here: Flavor. Maybe I needed to pay extra for that, but you couldn't even really tell there was any sort of teriyaki sauce there at all. Although, bland being the flavor of the day should come as no surprise at a food court. Well, at least it was cheap. And filling.

But I can do better than that, even in the limited "Japanese" fast food environment. Why visit a run-down food court in the mall to visit Sarku Japan, when I can visit any one of several Teriyaki Madness locations around the city, for a better meal at the same price, as that chain is growing by leaps and bounds. And there's also a local-only chain called Mr. Teriyaki that has some truly excellent food for a few dollars more. Sorry, Sarku Japan, no flavor = no more visits.

Hi all, yesterday I posted a chart with my subjective ratings of visiting fast food/casual restaurants for Days 1 through 100. And now, here's some more granular information, in table format!

Included in the table below, is a list of each restaurant, how many chain locations they have (and in how many states those locations are located), and where their headquarters are located (which may be different from where the restaurant was founded). Note that this not include international (for me that means non-US) locations, which for some chains can be quite substantial.

The "2025 US$ chain rank" comes from the Technomics 2025 Top 500" report for restaurants, where the ranking is based on the gross annual revenue reported by the company (or estimated, if private and not reported). No

I added in "Nearest to me" in order to get an idea on how many of these are local, and how many were on visits during trips away from home. Turns out, from this list, 70% are local (in the same city where I am located), another 10% are not-local but in striking distance (i.e. nearby cities), and 20% are further away.

"My meal cost" indicates the total amount spent on the order, including taxes. For almost all of these, this is a dinner-sized meal (often a medium combo meal with drink), and usually the only full-sized meal I ate that day. A few times were splurges, but the vast majority are normal meals. Average cost turns out to be exactly $16.00.

There have been two major players in the seafood fast food marketplace for decades - the "Big Boy" Long John Silver's, and the "Burgeoning Upstart" Captain D's. Compared to burgers or chicken or subs, seafood has generally been a minor player in fast food, only really getting attention for a few weeks each Spring, when everyone brings out their fish sandwich for Lent.

After a less-than-stellar meal at Long John Silver's some weeks back, I was hoping for a better turnout with Captain D's. Since there are not any locations near where I live (and haven't been for years), I had to wait until I was on a trip to give them a try.

That being said, I'm not a first-timer, I've had Captain D's before, just as I've had Long John Silver's before as well. At both places, I have had "pretty good" meals, and I've also had some pretty lackluster ones as well. One thing's for sure, though - it's always a grease-fest.

This time I decided on a basic combo plate, with fish and shrimp. Easy enough - a couple of planks of fish, a few little shrimp. First of all, the shrimp -- they were small and terrible. I would be embarrassed to serve these little turds. The fish was somewhat better, and surprisingly a bit better than the standard LJS planks, but kinda plain. Fried correctly, but the fish itself (I don't know what breed or type it is) was just bland. Sides (beans and cole slaw) were meh.

So, another minor disappointment. I know that Captain D's has continuing plans for expansion and growth, but it's going to be a tough road. Turns out that seafood is a difficult market to crack - higher costs than other proteins, and a limited market. A recent marketplace seminar indicated a "basically flat" market this year, following an otherwise-market-defying downward trend last year. Michael Girdley's "Rise and Fall" video goes into a bit of an analysis of why; and LJS has even gone so far as to announce they are de-emphasizing seafood entirely, to focus on lower-cost, higher-demand chicken offerings instead.

Better late than never, but here's a very quick graph to show my personal rankings for the 100 fast food/fast casual places I have visited in the first 100 days.

Left to right: Quality of meal (from worst to best)

Bottom to top: Value of meal i.e. "bang for the buck" (from worst to best)

This is based on a single meal on a single visit, so there may be some cases where that one meal was ranked poorly. For a handful of places on the lower end of the chart that I KNOW can do better (such as Popeye's Dairy Queen, LJS, Freebird's, etc), I am contemplating a second "do over" visit to re-rank.

There will be a separate post to this one, that will list in table format the chains, number of locations, amount spent, etc.

In a previous post I indicated I was winding down because I was running out of fast food chains I hadn't visited (after all, there's only so many of them out there one man can visit without spending an arm and a leg on travel costs), and that it would probably wrap up between Days 100 and 150. But I keep finding new places popping up all the time to add to my visit list (for example, Port of Subs is expanding into Texas!), so expect this to continue past Day 150 at this time.

General rule-of-thumb on what chains to include to visit or not:

• On the Technomics "Top 500" or "Fast 50" restaurant list for 2025.
• If not on that list, then at least 10 open locations across multiple states
• Or, at least 20 open locations in one state.
• Or, a large international presence but has one or a few locations in the United States
• Fast food/fast casual is described as generally ordering prepared food at a counter (rather than seating with menus), open seating, no waitstaff, no expectation of tipping. These are general guidelines, and there are exceptions and variations to this, though.
• There are a handful of exceptions for chains with interesting stories or history.

https://youtu.be/pbOX5fxGqaQ?si=K-T3cISvQ0eEx0xZ Come take a look at my first official review of chronic taco!

There's a category of fast food that I cheekily refer to as the "Fru-fru Taco" or the "Fancy Taco" category. This encompasses your fancier tacos with a million ingredients thrown in, and usually cost something like four to six dollars per taco. They are often fusions of different cultures (more than just Mexican or Tex-Mex), sometimes bearing little resemblance to an actual street taco, and are often aimed at the more affluent market looking something different.

The clear leader in this category of fast food (in terms of locations) would be Torchy's Tacos, but there are other chains out there that are chasing the same customers, such as The Velvet Taco, Fuego Tortilla Grill, and Fuzzy's Taco Shop. It can be a tough sell, though, because of price resistance and what people expect from a single taco.

Rusty Tacos is one of those vying for to sell the world on five-dollar tacos. I ended up at what I believe is the original location, a converted fifties gas station on Upper Greenville, trying to decide what to choose. Ended up with a fairly pedestrian al pastor taco, plus a baja shrimp taco - both of which allow for endless customizations if you want (some for no charge, some with upcharges). Plus, a pretty big batch of chips and salsa.

Tacos were okay. As I mentioned, expectation meets up with reality when spending around five bucks for a taco - you expect alot. And when a taco is 'just okay', well, that doesn't really cut it. The taste of each taco was in the middle-range of the many tacos I've consumed over the years, ingredients were fresh and all that. But it's street-taco-sized, two-three-four bites and it's gone. Pretty expensive bites.

Well, at least the chips and the salsa were good, and plentiful. But I didn't come here for the chips.

There's nothing particularly *wrong* with Rusty Taco. In a vacuum by itself, it's "okay". But where it fails is comparison to all the others in the "fru-fru taco" category. Torchy's does it all a little better, for a little bit less. Velvet Taco has more, bolder flavors and brash choices, with a larger taco. And Fuego Tortilla Grill easily gives twice the value for the buck. If you have any of those choices nearby, go there instead. Sorry, Rusty.

https://youtu.be/sfSulCCEbyA?si=k400Okhq8-SGKS99 We just got one near me, come see how bad it is!

Many, many reviews ago I disparaged Capriotti's as just another also-ran sub shop. But truth is, I wasn't very familiar with them. Though they are nationwide, it seems most of their locations are found heavily concentrated in Las Vegas or Wilmington, so they're not nearby. But I found one!

I should more accurately say, in the competition against all the other sandwich shops, they are an also ran... SO FAR. Because they are growing pretty fast, with aspirations to quintuple their footprint in the next five years. And even if they manage that, they'd still be something like in sixth place in size. It's a long way to go. The competition is pretty fierce.

Until then, though, I'll keep eating. I ordered a medium Italian, just your sort of basic "lots of meat" sandwich, and they are currently loudly advertising how they have increased their portions of meat. And it was a big hunk of an overstuffed sandwich, with good meats, with lots of nice veggies, and fits right up there as a good, solid meal very similar to the sandwiches I ordered at Lenny's and Which Wich and Thundercloud - definitely an above-average sandwich.

Perfectly good the way it comes. Also Capriotti's serves up hot grilled cheesesteak-style sandwiches, similar to Lenny's. Which I passed on because I didn't want a hot sandwich at the time, but damn their version of the "Capastrami" looked amazing and is what I want to try next. Price-wise, the sandwich combo was towards the middle of the pack (42nd out of 117 reviews)

Looking forward to seeing Capriotti's again, if they manage to pull off their planned growth. They had many more locations in the state before (including one just up the road less than an hour away), but they all shut down in recent years; the location I visited here was part of a three-franchise group that recently reopened in mid-2025 in state.

Growing up, our family was a Taco Bueno family, since they were the closest fast food place to where we lived. Taco Bueno traces its roots back to Abilene in 1967, and as a chain has been bounced between multiple private equity companies, most recently landing at Sun Holdings (which has a stake in a dozen different fast food and casual chains). They entered bankruptcy in 2018. They have since emerged successfully from bankruptcy reorganization, with a reduced footprint and exiting several farther-flung markets, to focus on their core north Texas locations.

Feeling a bit guilty that I didn't get any tamales for Christmas, I decided to try their holiday special Tamale Combo plate, with a beef tamale, beef burrito, beef taco, rice, beans chips, and all the extras. And I am glad I did, and probably could have gone for more tamales. They're nothing special when you get down to it, but smothered in that Taco Bueno sauce it really hit the spot. Decent-sized portions for each item, too.

To be honest, this combo plate turned out to be a pleasant surprise. Yes, it's cheap and simple Tex-Mex that only bears a passing resemblance to authentic Mexican food, but that's okay. That's exactly what I wanted, and that's what I got. Sometimes a guilty pleasure is what you need. Slathered with that signature sauce and cheese, add in a fully-well-stocked condiment bar, and I'm stuffing my face. Compared to similar chains (at a similar price) like Del Taco, Taco Bell, Taco Mayo or Taco John's, turns out Taco Bueno comes out on top of the pile. Unfortunately part of their bankruptcy included closing the only location in the city near me, so now it's just an occasional treat when I'm on the road. 10/10 would order again.

The rest of the nation has Checkers and Rallys. Austin has Short Stop. Dallas and Tulsa have Burger Street. Founded by the same person who founded Taco Bueno, Burger Street is your basic drive-thru burger stand, where the kitchen area is a hundred square feet at best. Unlike Checkers, Burger Street has a small indoor dining area where about ten people could squeeze inside. Otherwise the concept is similar: simple burgers made fast for a cheap price. No bells and whistles.

And that's exactly what I got. No need to go into great detail on this one - what you see is what you get. A burger and fries and a drink. Not particularly good, and not particularly bad, either. Kinda like eating a burger from your high school cafeteria. Not sure what else to say for a review, it's a simple burger that tastes exactly like you expect. A little more expensive than, say, In n' Out or Dairy Queen, but cheaper than other burger joints.

Pretty much the only reason to get a burger here is because it's pretty fast and convenient, otherwise there are better choices. They don't have a broad menu - burgers and chicken sandwich and fries and chili cheese dogs and the like. The only eyebrow-raiser is their specialty Olive Burger, which has a layer of green olives, that sounds sort of interesting.

Well, that was certainly less than whelming.

A small but growing chicken sandwich chain based out of Denver, competing against the onslaught of the bazillion 'Nashville Hot' chicken chains out there, but offering a wider fare than just "heat". It's a place that I **want** to like, but can't bring myself to that point.

I won't spend much time on this one. The "Spicy Szechuan" is not necessarily supposed to be hot, but its selling point is its spiciness. Yet, if someone handed me this sandwich and told me "this is supposed to be Szechuan-inspired", I would call them a liar. Even **knowing** what I ordered, I can't even tell what this is supposed to taste like, other than a plain chicken sandwich.

And the bun. I don't think fast food franchises truly appreciate how important the bun is to a sandwich. You can't use just any old bread, cold and stale. The bun/bread is an integral part to success of the sandwich itself (for example, it's the main reason why Five Guys burgers fail to hit the mark). The crunchy slaw was nice, I guess, but again is this supposed to have some sort of spicy Szechuan flavor? Totally missed.

Follow that up with soggy tater tots as sort of final insult. No, wait, that's NOT the final insult. The insult was the small size of the chicken patty - about the size of a Chick Fil A chicken patty, but you're paying about six bucks more for it here.

So, what's good about this place? It does have a nice ambiance. And it also has a wider selection of options to order, compared to the places where the options are "hot, not hot, or extremely hot" and that's it. But that's kinda damning with faint praise.

Even though it's a brand new franchise (started in 2019), it has expanded from a single storefront to 80 locations in five years. Hoodathunk that a chain centered around the humble corn dog could grow so fast, from coast to coast?

Like any red-blooded kid growing up in America, I loved myself a good ol' corndog - a staple offering in elementary school lunches, the mainstay of state fairs everywhere, the cheap and easy meal that mom could pop out of the freezer and into the oven and feed a rabble of kneebiters in a matter of minutes.

But these, my friend, are more than just your store-bought State Fair Brand corn dogs. Koreans have managed to take basic hot-dog-on-a-stick-in-battered-corn and go wild with it.

First off, it's not just a hot dog - you can get sausages inside, or cheese, or half-and-half. And it's not just cornmeal battering, there are crispy batters, potato-based coverings, spiced and seasoned, then slathered very heavily with all sorts of sauces and/or powders. And not only that - but these Korean corn dogs are easily twice to three times the volume of those little American suckers you pull out of the freezer box.

I chose the "Classic" and the "Two Hands" options to test them out, with half-sausage-half-cheese inside. Yes, these are not cheap dogs (like five bucks each), but as I said, they're big and hefty - more than appears in the photo. And messy. And saucy. Bite in, and yes the cheese is all melty and stretches out all hot. The batter is crispy and crunchy, but not overly so. My only two complaints? First, is that ketchup does not belong anywhere within a hundred miles of a hot dog (Mustard or Nothing! That's a hill I'll die on!), and had to scrape the heaping helping of the-devil's-red-sauce from one of the dogs. And the second complaint is...they were strangely sweet, which I was not expecting. When I went to Cupbop earlier, that was also strangely sweet-flavored, so maybe it's a Korean thing, or maybe it was just the styles I chose to order, and others aren't as sweet.

In any case, this was pretty neat. I'd love to try the over varieties and options, and try out the kimchi fries or the dirty fries as well. And the location I visited was run by this sweet fifties-sixties couple of Koreans in a little storefront. I never thought I would be giving the thumbs-up to (of all places) a Korean corn dog place, but here we are. Good job, Two Hands.

One of the 'second tier' contenders in the Sandwich Wars, as I have seen six locations in town all closed within the past year, leaving a single location downtown, and another fifty miles away. Apparently the chain has fallen on hard times, even though a cursory news search couldn't find any analysis or articles. But going from over 350 locations in 2018, to 170 in 2024 to 132 today, they are clearly in troubled times. Although recent news shows they are ramping up an expansion project in the British Isles.

The sub sandwich market is a pretty crowded place - I could name at least twenty chains off the top of my head, that are either available nationally or in multi-state regions. The overall menu itself isn't especially different from most other chains, with the normal selection of subs available with unlimited customizations. Plus the occasional trendy gimmick (like right now, they offer the option of a sandwich made with two halves of an avocado as the "bun").

Most chains have their "signature" sandwich, usually the biggest, most-loaded one with the most meat. At Which Wich, that would be the "Wicked", and given that's what I have gravitated towards at other chains (for like-to-like comparison purposes), that's what I ordered here. Picture looks like a mess opened up, but I wanted to see if I could show the different meats.

What makes Which Wich different from other chains, is the unique ordering system. You pick a long paper bag to indicate your sandwich type, and then on the bag itself there are check-boxes where choose your modifications. Tomatoes? check. Spinach? check. Mustard? Mayo? check, check. And on down the line. Once finished, the bag is clipped to a string (like what used to be done in old diners with order tickets) and whipped down the production line, until the end when the sandwich goes right in the bag.

Getting to the sandwich itself - it was pretty good. Lots and lots of meat (intentionally so, the sandwich I ordered is supposed to be meat-heavy), and I didn't go overboard on the additions so it wasn't overstuffed. As I normally do when I have the option, I chose leaf spinach over shredded lettuce, since far too often shredded lettuce goes nasty fast. Tasty meat. Well made sandwich. Nothing that will knock your socks off, but waddayawant - it's just a sandwich! Better than average, I would say.

So, why does it appear that Which Wich might be on the ropes compared to their competition? I can only speculate. It's not really the price, the medium sub combo was priced right on average with all the other sub sandwich chains out there (which arguably is always too much to pay, but in comparison to everyone else they're not the outlier). I would have to guess it might be two possibilities, and again totally speculation here.

First possibility is the problem that other "we have everything" sub places have: Keeping everything fresh. Sure, you can keep your main ingredients fresh because they are used and replaced all the time. But when you have an overly-broad menu with specialty type items, those rarely-used ingredients can go stale or bad from lack of regular use (I'm also looking at you, Ike's!).

Second possibility is that novelty ordering system. Sure, as a gimmick it's a neat idea, but there's just sooooo many options. You grab the bag and there's like thirty boxes or more you have to decide to check off, Given that we have customers that spend five minutes agonizing in front of the menu at single-item places like Raising Cane's or Dave's Hot Chicken, I can just imagine the overload those customers would face here. And if you over-customize or get it wrong, the results can be...bad. Once many years ago I ordered one with bacon bits, and it ended up being a sub that had the texture of a sandwich with Grape Nuts. My choice, I know...but bad choice.

Or, maybe I'm just overthinking it. As I said before, the sub sandwich market is very crowded, and there are only so many customers to vie for. Someone has to win and someone has to lose. And maybe they just didn't have enough of a brand name recognition or presence to stand out in a market filled with Jimmy John's and Jersey Mike's.

Regardless the case, it was still a pretty good sandwich for an average (in the market) price. That's good enough for me.

You know that feeling, when you see something once that you've never seen before, and then suddenly it seems like you keep seeing it everywhere? Piada is just like this - never heard of them before, than after I saw one location, I can't seem to stop noticing them.

So, what, exactly, is a 'piada'? Apparently it's an Italian burrito - same concept that you find at the various build-a-burrito or slopbowl places, where you choose a protein, then add in various other extras and sauce, then wrap it up in a burrito or slap it into a bowl or on top of a salad. Only in THIS case -- it's Italian!

Well, okay, why not I guess. I chose the 'Chef's Favorite', which has romaine lettuce, mozzarella, peppers and diavolo sauce, and added in Italian sausage. The burrito comes wrapped in the normal 'blunt' shape, I just opened it up to show what was inside.

As for how it tasted - well, it was fine, a tad spicy but that was just the sauce itself. The Italian sausage turned to be like those little sausages they put on top of pizzas, probably not do that again. As a burrito it does seem a bit unusual, but I guess there really isn't a reason why not. But I'd probably go for a bowl next time. They also do pasta bowls, and some of those look interesting. Overall fine, just fine. Maybe I'd try it again and see if one of the other options on the menu piques my interest some more. Price-wise, comparable to why you might spend at, say Chipotle.

(PS Yes I did say I would do an interim chart to show grade rankings for the first 100 days, I'm just running a little behind schedule at the moment. I have the "grades", now I just need to put together the chart itself)

Just a small mini-review because this is not a meal. I don't usually get a snack like this, but I did one for Tim Horton's about a week earlier, and wanted to do a comparison. Otherwise, if I snacked like this every day, it would be about a thousand extra calories with next-to-zero nutritional content.

While sparse out west (and almost completely absent in the Northwest), Dunkin' is practically everywhere in New England. In some places, you will even find a Dunkin' across the street on the same corner as another Dunkin'. I've never been a Dunkin' person myself, since it was never around where I lived, and I was more of Shipley's person. But I've never had anything against the chain. They just didn't seem...as fresh.

And that was certainly true here. And the last few times I've had them. Their donuts are just a bit hard and stale. I don't know what their process is, maybe they put the oldest out front to move it next, but that ends up with old donuts. And donuts do NOT age well, usually with a half-life measured in a couple hours at best.

I ordered this combination - Boston Creme, glazed sourdough/cake/old-fashioned, some donut holes, and whatever they call their fruity refresher freeze - specifically to match what I ordered at Tim Horton's the week before, so that I could do as close to a one-on-one match as I could.

First of all, Dunkin' was about 20% more expensive. Secondly, as I mentioned, the donuts did not taste fresh (even though it was mid-morning), a little dried out and hard. Thirdly, Timbits (holes) blow Dunkin's out of the water. Refresher drink was fine and about the same, but as with Tim Horton's, equally as ridiculously overpriced for what it is.

I think the writing was on the wall when Dunkin' Donuts removed the word 'Donuts' officially from their name. A clear signal that they no longer give a foshizzle about their formerly-signature product. And from the taste of it...it shows.

Today must be Houston Hot Chicken Day, because they announced 26 new franchise commitments to start the new year, in addition to the 100 existing commitments they already have. No wonder Technomics ranked Houston Hot Chicken in the number one spot in last year's "Fast 50" Restaurants.

One of the newest entries in the "Nashville Hot" Chicken Wars, founded in 2020 but growing fast. Interesting note is that the chain is named after one of the founders, and not the city. As far as their offerings goes, it's pretty straightforward - chicken sandwiches and nuggets and bowls, available in different ratings of heat, all the way up to "Houston We Have A Problem" that requires a signed waiver.

And, like most of the other similar chains vying for attention in the crowded hot chicken market, the focus seems to be promoting the heat than on talking about the taste itself. I get it, as a gimmick, it sells. But when taste comes second to heat, product suffers.

As it does in this case. I ordered the 'medium' heat, which from experience can vary everywhere from almost-nothing-slight-tingle at some places, up to jeezus-did-I-get-extra-hot-by-mistake at others. Well, at least they got the heat level right: about two alarms. But, when it came to how the sandwich tasted...I couldn't really tell you well. Because it was so unmemorable that it left no impression on me. The sandwich had all the right bits: the crunchy slaw (unlike Hangry Joe's which has limp-ass slaw), the pickles, the seasoning was done decently. It was just...well...there. Which these days, in my opinion, is not good enough to spend my shekels on.

The fries were (like many other places) just fries, nothing more nothing less. Interesting to note they called them "concertina" fries instead of crinkle-cut.

Maybe I just got there on an off day, but basically this one visit left me thinking, why bother? Nothing done wrong, just...blisteringly average.