Burger King

1524 Erie Blvd. East, Syracuse, NY 13210
Grade: C


Recently, I have been paying a lot of attention to the information provided by Eat This, Not That. The website's articles are extremely useful when trying to make healthy eating choices - both at restaurants and the grocery store - and being otherwise left in the dark. One interesting tool I came upon assigns letter grades to popular fast food and chain restaurants based on the availability of healthy options on their menus, and gives a brief rundown of what you should and shouldn't be eating at each establishment.

A brief examination on my part revealed that the health grade on Eat This, Not That does not necessarily correspond with the men's room grade on Places to Do Business; Taco Bell, for example, is given a B+ for health, while I have found their restrooms to be notoriously average. I guess that in most cases it would be up to you, dear reader, to determine whether healthy meal options or quality restrooms are more important.

In the case of the Burger King on Erie Blvd. East, though, the correlation between the two sites' grades is somewhat on the money. Eat This, Not that gives Burger King a somewhat surprising C+, recommending the Whopper Jr., while I'll award this men's room with a solid C. It is strictly utilitarian (a phrase I am, quite frankly, getting tired of using), but it is kept remarkably clean.

(I should point out here that I do not award points for cleanliness - I only take them away for uncleanliness. I worked in fast food in high school and part of my job was to clean the restrooms several times a shift. It took maybe 15 minutes to clean both of them thoroughly. It is not that hard. Cleanliness is a reasonable expectation of a decent, well-attended restroom.)

I was about to dock points, in my soulless way, for a receipt that was left lying on the back of the toilet seat. Upon closer inspection, however, I found the receipt to be new and incredibly clean. This makes me think that the staff members do attend to the restrooms very frequently; a piece of paper does not sit on a toilet seat for long before becoming very, very nasty.

Also, the levitating trash can made me chuckle, for some reason.