Much as I might aspire to be a person of refined tastes, expounding on the art of cinema or submerging myself in some acclaimed literary wonder, I must also admit a taste for some less inspiring fare. This, sadly, is especially true of food. We are aspirational chefs in our household and strive to eat well. Given the opportunity, though, I would happily, greedily purchase and consume a whole sack full of thirty-nine cent hamburgers.

Sometime during my first year of college, joyful drunkards of my acquaintance discovered this concrete bunker nestled within the strip of commercial eyesores on the way out of town. It was a fast food restaurant with a simple, beckoning message articulated in its very name: Hot ‘n Now. What better promise for hamburgers can you have for that? A thirty-nine cent price tag, that’s what. This was at a time when every nickel saved could be applied towards another pitcher of Point Beer at Ella’s or some other fine local establishment, so such a bonanza of cheap eats was uncommonly treasured. There were many radio station parties where someone was dispatched at the midway point to retrieve the questionable foodstuffs. After all, a collection that yielded ten bucks from attendees could be exchanged for bags loaded down with more than twenty burgers, just the sort of additional base needed in the assembled stomachs to soak up all the beer.

Despite out adulation, Hot ‘n Now never caught on and became a huge national chain. They even filed for bankruptcy at one point, although there seem to still be a few outlets in operation. There are others in the world who took the same doofus delight in the establishment that my friends and I did, but generally it’s an unknown and largely unloved purveyor of gastronomic wonders. Maybe that’s because they had a knack for creating off-putting trademark sandwiches such as the unimaginable “olive burger.” To this day, their specialty menu items remain uniquely unappetizing.

It’s been many, many years, probably close to a decade since I’ve eaten something served in a wrapper emblazoned with the Hot ‘n Now logo. At least I’ve still got a song about the place.

Black Solid, “Hot ‘n Now”

(Disclaimer: I’m fairly certain this song is out of print and completely unavailable. In fact, I can nearly nothing about the musician known as Black Solid on the Internet. There’s a photography outfit, a Polish film making troupe and a pretty sharp bowling ball findable under that name, but no bass player with a proclivity for Kiss covers and hard livin’. So I’m operating under the assumption that posting this is fine. If anyone with due authority to do so asks me to remove it…well, I’ll probably still leave it up. Grimace would want it that way.)