- The place: The state's first Sonic outlet in eastern St. Paul.
- The time: Last Tuesday night, roughly 36 hours after the restaurant officially opened.
- The scene: Nuts. Business was so brisk that a police officer was on hand to direct traffic. We were pointed to a nearby parking lot where we idled for 25 minutes before being politely escorted to our berth under one of the restaurant's carports; on the way in I counted 45 people standing in line at the walk-up counter.
Dining: Sonic boom
The nation's largest drive-in chain finally opens the state's first outpost in St. Paul.
August 17, 2012 at 8:56PM
The nation's largest drive-in chain -- 3,000 locations, and counting -- has finally landed in Minnesota, with plenty of hallowed drive-in rituals in tow. Customers order through a curbside speaker, and a super-friendly carhop delivers the goods, a familiar mix of Americana fast-food. There are a few updates, too. Customers can swipe their plastic at their curbside kiosk, and the chain operates its own satellite radio station, complete with DJs shouting out greetings to Sonicizers. One missing staple was the ever-convenient window tray; we carefully spread our meal out across the dashboard.
The enormous menu covers all the predictable fast-food bases: big burgers on toasted buns, chicken sandwiches, a few wraps (including one filled with chili, cheese and Fritos), various deep-fried delicacies (French fries, onions rings, tater tots, mozzarella sticks and corn dogs), several kid-sized meals, a few breakfast-all-day sandwiches and burritos and a long list of soft-serve shakes and sundaes served in the requisite dizzying variety of flavors. Its 1,000-calorie/31-fat-gram tally aside, is the Gopher State ready for a banana cream pie shake?
Our order arrived in a flash, delivered by the perkiest teenage carhop since "Happy Days" left the airwaves, and if I ignored the packaging -- both inside and outside the car -- I'm not sure I could have determined whether I was enjoying the hospitality of Burger King, Hardee's, Culver's or any other chain. Still, a testament to Sonic's winning formula could be observed at the near-empty branches of McDonald's, Wendy's and Arby's nearby. They might want to invest in a few "No waiting" signs.
Sin City attempts to lure new visitors with multisensory, interactive attractions, from life-size computer games to flying like a bird.
