Jonny McCambridge: The coleslaw controversy and a strange transaction at the drive thru lane

The texture was unfamiliar, the mix of colours was unusual. Hasty and animated conversations between the rows of diners at the long tables quickly reached a panicked conclusion – we were being served ‘Chinese food’.

The response was, to put it politely, mixed.

Some suspiciously prodded at the exotic offering with forks. Others point-blank refused to even try it.

One boy beside me, who was affectionately known as Gubby, took one taste and then spat out the mouthful, declaring not only that he would never eat this again, but doubting that he would ever be able to eat anything again.

This remarkable dish, which inflamed such animated opinions, turned out to be coleslaw. Not a single boy in my my rural school had ever eaten or heard of it.

I tell this story in an attempt to paint a picture of a culture that was so traditional that its culinary habits were sheltered to an extent which seems difficult to believe today.

Cooking fat is another example.

All I knew was that lard was used for frying. After dinner, the grease in the pan would then harden and turn waxy overnight before being reheated the following day. I think I was close to 30 before I bought my first bottle of olive oil.

Takeaway food meant the chip shop. Pizza deliveries were unknown where I grew up.

There was a Chinese takeaway in Ballycastle, but I never visited it. I first tasted Chinese food (coleslaw aside) when I was in my 20s and loved it. My first Indian takeaway came even later, and the pungent mix of spices was revolting to my palate at first.

It would have been difficult for me to have believed then that I would in later life develop a lasting love for curry.

In my final year at secondary school, several dozen pupils were taken on a bus to Belfast for an open day at Queen’s. My group of friends walked straight through the quadrant and out the other side towards the city centre.

Our main objective on the day was educational in a sense – to get to Burger King to taste our first ever Whopper.

A lot of distance has been travelled between then and now. Quite a bit of it has been spent in the drive thru lane at McDonald’s. Big Macs and Chicken McNuggets, which would have once seemed an unobtainable dream, are now a routine treat.

Perhaps it’s my traditional background which ensures I’ve never quite become comfortable with the drive thru.

Barking instructions at a screen is so deeply impersonal and I fear that I’ll get it wrong, mess up the order and then not be able to retrieve the mistake. I possess an unshakeable and irrational dread that I will somehow end up driving the wrong way.

I get through by relying on habit. There are three stages – order, pay, collect. I do it exactly the same every time. Order at the machine, pay at one window, collect at the next – the routine stops me from going wrong.

Recently, a new fast-food chicken restaurant has opened near our home. I was duly despatched to the drive thru lane.

It is not McDonald’s but I felt that what I knew would get me through – order, pay, collect.

There was a long queue of cars, so I had too much time to think about it. I kept repeating the phrase – order, pay collect. I got to the screen and relayed the food order requested by my son. My car inched further along the queue, around the corner of the bright new restaurant.

Some minutes later I got to the second window. The young employee told me the price and I paid with my card. She turned away and I pulled my motor further forward. As I turned another corner I started to finally relax.

And then it went wrong. I noticed there were no longer any cars in front of me and I was passing an exit sign. I seemed to be leaving the restaurant, but I had no bag of chicken.

My initial confusion gave way to realisation – the process was different at this drive thru. There was no separate window for collect.

Rather than order, pay, collect; here it was order, pay and collect (at the same window). All of my terrors about the drive thru had finally been realised.

I didn’t know what to do.

There is, to the best of my knowledge, no accepted pattern of behaviour for when you leave a drive thru without your food.

The prospect of circling back around to the beginning was a hopeless prospect.

So, I began to reverse. I cannot say this was the right thing to do, but I slowly inched the car backwards around the corner again while dozens of bemused diners in the glass-walled restaurant watched me.

The next problem was obvious. The car which had been behind me in the queue was now at the pay and collect window. I reversed as far as I could and then had to proceed on foot – in the middle of the drive thru lane.

The employee at the window was attempting to give a large bag of chicken to a confused driver behind who was telling her he hadn’t paid.

To compound the farce, I had to step onto a steep kerb to proceed along the narrow space at the side of his car and then stick my head in front of the window, weakly pleading ‘Sorry, but that’s my food.’

And then, even more pathetically adding, ‘I thought you had another window.’

The strange transaction was concluded. As I walked back along the drive thru lane, the employee recovered from her confusion and called after me ‘Enjoy your meal…please call again!’