Dinner at the Quickie-Mart

We're nearly there! The landlady has only one more day conducting business in her home office (also known as our TV room), then we get our normal lives back. It has been a challenge keeping the kids quiet during the evening and specifically, meal times (due to the conflict of when people feed their children in this country compared to Canada, our pychotherapist-homeowner entertains clients until 7:30 pm--right about the time I'm doing bed times with MY clients). To top it off, Matthew's homecoming is still 5 days away, so I'm needing a bit of a break.

So as a treat, I took myself and the boys to a restaurant last night, and to one I KNEW they'd like (I sacrificed a glass of wine and table service for them, I hope they appreciated it). We went to the equivalent of McD's call the Quick Quality Burger Restaurant (check them out online: www.quick-restaurants.com/consumer/be-fr/main.asp ) and they each got a Magic Box (read: happy meal) and I got a pretty decent salad (the fast food joints in Canada should come compare their products--no wimpy iceberg in this lovely concoction of seasoned chicken, corn, croutons, cubed cheese, boiled egg sliced, mesclun mix and shredded carrot served with a mustard and white wine balsamic vinaigrette).

Count on the Belgians to even do kiddie fast food better than the North Americans. Here's what was in each of their Magic box for 4.85 Euros:

• a very recognizable cheeseburger with a slice of real (not processed) Gouda, pickle, onion, mustard, mayo and ketchup on a fresh bun
  
• a minute maid juice (330ml)
• a kid sized portion of fries (no salt, you had to ask for it, and "sauce" also was extra--andalusian mayo anyone?)
• two yogurt-tubes (actually fromage frais which is less acidic than yogurt) in 2 of 3 flavours (yum--gotta get us some of these!)
  
• a pretty decent toy that kept Duncan busy for an entire sheet of Malcolm's homework (and this wasn't a cross-marketed plastic version of a movie advert: it featured the "Hamburgler" style mascot instead--I was most impressed by this, as who needs to be bombarded with, "mom, I wanna see this show" on top of being under-thanked for the treat of going out to a restaurant?)

So this was a real eye-opener for me, as I thought it would somehow be less than that of our fast food joints (since Wendy's is our family's favourite) but I see even junk food, Belgians get right.

Oh, and to top it all off, for the parents, every wrapper had the nutritional analysis printed right on it: the burger and fries were both 266 Kcalories, the dessert yogurt-tubes provided 30% of the child's daily calcium needs and the juice had 100% of their daily vitamin C requirements! So even parents feel a little bit "happier" about the meal, as they get to feel good that the food isn't really all junk. Now where are Dave Thomas' CEO's on this one?