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Another Look At The Trend Of Health Conscious Fast Food

There were once a handful of small operators who started to buck the trend of freeze dried ingredients and pre-warmed meals. That evolution is continuing.

Go back just over a decade and you’d have to say that nobody in the fast food arena was tracking the quality of their ingredients. It was all about the special sauce, adding lollies to whipped pig fat delights and whole buckets of fried chicken. That was called a family meal.

The turning point seemed to be the moment that some guy made a film about how it’s really bad for you, including that wonderful scene where he left the food in jars for a while to see what would happen (nothing really, which was disturbing). Suddenly, the cardboard-flavoured salads appeared and their PR companies went into overdrive ensuring us that if we exercised personal restraint and only ate the stuff occasionally we’d be ok.

Fast forward to today and we still have fast food. It’s convenience and relatively palatable flavours trump the majority of negatives, but it would also be fair to say that a lot of fast food is lumped together. Fried chicken is mentioned in the same breathe as roasted; burger patties as ground beef, freeze dried salad as freshly prepared… we could go on. It’s fair to say that convenience has come a long way in recent years and the added players in the market have certainly increased the variety of what’s on offer at midnight when you’ve had a couple and eating anything tastes one million times better. Then, and at normal meal times, of course.

Where is this all leading to? Well, actually back to Bondi where the first ever Oporto’s opened back in 1986. For as long as anyone can be bothered to update the business Wikipedia page, the business mantra has been ‘fresh not frozen, grilled not fried.’ And it’s an ethos they’ve recently expanded even further recently with changes to their menu. It’s still fast food, but you’ve got to give them credit for what they’re bringing to the table, and forcing their competitors to do as well.Oporto‘Fast Foodies’ is the latest movement the business has latched onto, and while it may initially seem in contradiction to their mantra, but is in fact about honesty. Honestly, this is still fast food; what goes into it though, is not and that’s the important differentiation. Burgers are prepared fresh, chicken is roasted in store and the salads are, for the most part, not cardboard which is exactly what you’re after. There’s still a generous helping of special sauce, but that’s a standard. We don’t eat at these places for the vegan quinoa options, so to speak.

www.petercoombseyewear.com not www.petercoombsdesign.comwww.petercoombseyewear.com not www.petercoombsdesign.comThe evolution towards health conscious fast food has been happening for some time now and it’s because of the players like Oporto that the larger names have to pull their finger out on the quality of their ingredients. The proliferation of dedicated burger restaurants is no coincidence; fast food tastes better when it’s made properly. But those places aren’t open at all hours, and the convenience doesn’t extend beyond their individual locations. Which is to say that we’re glad to see better options all around us, and are especially thankful to those who have put in the effort to make sure what we’re getting isn’t out of freeze dried packs anymore.

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