Sonic Drive-In: never again. You suck.

Maybe I should actually be grateful that the last fast-food hamburger joint holdout has now been scratched off my list.

Sonic has, in my book, maintained staying power because as far as the fast-food delicacies go, in any state I've consumed one of their burgers, it's tasted as though it was freshly prepared. Hot meat. Cold veggies. Doesn't bear marks of heat-lamp effects. They make their shakes with real ice cream. If you don't have the time or inclination for a gourmet burger sort of experience, Sonic for me has filled the bill.

And I was in just a mood for a fast-food burger experience; I think it's been nearly a year since my last one, so I think I'm allowed. So yesterday in the hunger that's triggered after several hours of music rehearsal, I made a U-ey on 152, near 101 around Gilroy, to catch the Sonic there. Oh boy! Cheeseburger and onion rings! Yum! I don't know the last time I ate an onion ring!

Big geek that I am, I was listening to a Minstrel CD in the car when the roller-skating delivery girl came up, and we chatted a few moments on how much she liked the tunes I had playing. Everything was all good. I fetched a piping hot crispy onion ring from the bag on the way through the exit.

And all I could taste was: sweet.

WTF?

I know that onions sweeten up when they're fried into an onion ring - that's what, for me, makes them yum. But this was SWEET-sweet, like maple syrup sweet.

I put the ring (minus the one bite) back in the bag. I'll do the hamburger first and return; maybe in my starved state, the taste buds were off.

The burger was fine. OK, let's try this onion ring thing again. Finished off the one I had started earlier.

Still sweet.

Maybe that was a dud? I took another onion ring out and ate it.

Still can't get the idea of maple syrup out of my head.

Then, in a moment of pure stubbornness, thinking that they seriously couldn't all taste so gross, I took a bite out of a third. Go ahead, call me crazy. You know you want to, and I know the definition that I was embodying then and there (a definition I often see attributed to David Hume, that I've not happened to come across in his text and somehow kinda doubt, attribution-wise).

Yup; the epiphany of grossness. But why? Who the hell needs an onion ring to taste like a General Mills breakfast cereal?

I had a bag of pretzels in the passenger seat, and I must have consumed half the bag on the rest of the way home, working to get the taste out of my mouth (well, that and I love pretzels anyway). It took nearly 45 minutes before the edge of the sweetness wore off. Which means that whatever the fuck disgustingness they put into their batter, it wasn't only an ingredient that hit the sweet spots on the tongue, it was a vicious substance that stuck there.

Gah! Never again. Thanks a lot, Sonic.