Goes back to the original Little (Black) Sambo tale, with a tiger chasing around the tree Sambo hid in until he melted into butter. (No, this makes no sense in any scientific discipline.)

Late add-on, I'd guess. (Our AC was still doing carhop service when I first moved here 9 years back, but added the drive-thru not long after…and had enough parking - lot room to do it correctly.)

"Garlic finger" sounds like a James Bond villain by way of Kevin Smith.

By the late '80s, the big draw at Shakey's was the "Bunch o' Lunch" buffet - fried chicken, their "MOJO Potatoes", slices of pepperoni or cheese pizza, and many other things all intended (and salted) to make you buy many pitchers of beer. (Or pop…and in them days, you paid extra for " no ice" in the pop.)

My best friend lives in Norman,OK and introduced me to Braum's. (And also, since he's a weather router for ships and a tornado chaser, to the DefBraums scale created by a co-worker.)

Still some in California. (And I actually liked them, at least my local in Vallejo - I was usually the only white guy in the place most times.)

Surprising - I can get it several places near me on the Oregon coast.

LJS is awful. (I was amazed at the line out the door when one opened - in a combo with Pizza Hut - near my sister's place. Turned out it was just because it was something new in a desperately shitty town - they shut the fish part in about 90 days.)

Also "Crustos" , the cinnamon-and-sugar flour tortilla chips that Taco Bell used to sell as "Crispas" .

No, but I'd guess their reputation was where the gag came from. (See also the comments on British Rail cafes from last week.)

I assume they closed the Wendy's bit because Tim Horton 's is now owned by Burger King (allowing BK to move its operations to Canada and avoid US taxes.)

Apparently someone already owned the name "Burger King" in Australia: it's Hungry Jack's there (with the same logo and menu.)

The one remaining Sambo 's is the original (started by two guys named Sam and Bo); given the history and that it's in the very rich and very white town of Santa Barbara, they don't seem to have much trouble over the name.

We have one in the town where I work. Beats hell out of every other chain in town.

I'll tell you one: Nolan Bushnell was allowed to keep the Pizza Time Theatre chain as part of his severance when he was fired a year or two after Warner Communications bought Atari.

All the Arthur Treachers' in Washington were bought and turned into Ivar's Fish Bars. Very tasty (and exist nowhere else - though they had one in Santa Clara, CA for awhile due to popular demand from all the Microsoft employees that had moved there from WA.)

Wimpy was the first burger chain in the UK (originally as the "Wimpy Burger Bar" in Lyons Corner House restaurants); they were infamous in their early years for taking the 'fast-food' idea way too seriously - the bars and the early standalones were deliberately designed to be sparse and uncomfortable so that customers…

They shortened the name to just Wienerschnitzel decades ago, but they're still all over California at least (and as someone else noted, merged with Tastee-Freez some years back.)

The standalones are still pretty common from Northern California up into Washington. (The one about 30 miles south of me in Oregon even still does carhop service!)

Taco Bell also used to have the BellBeefer. (And the much better Taco Time has a "Taco Burger" on the menu still, at least in Oregon - the Washington menu is somewhat different.)