#admittedly the Sonic is like twice as far away as the Five Guys

[random2908]

I have been conducting a study.

I have been studying fast food chocolate shakes. I am now prepared to share my findings:

McDonald's: it's fine. It's the most generic milkshake possible, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. There's nothing to complain about, but there's nothing to laud, either. If you haven't tried a McDonald's shake in 30 years, give it a try again, they completely revamped the recipe in like the late 90s or something and it's a lot better now.

Jack in the Box: it tastes like chocolate syrup, very sweet, very artificial-chocolatey. Fine if you like that kind of thing; for me, I think it's an ok flavor for a topping but not as the main flavor in my milkshake.

Carl's Jr: tastes very real. Like milk. Tastes like milk and real ice cream but not much like chocolate at all. If you want your milkshake to taste like it's healthy go with this one. I could imagine having this at a diner.

In-n-out: despite the reputation, I really don't think it's particularly better than McDonalds. Its defining feature is that it goes heavy on the vanilla, even in a chocolate shake, which I find very nostalgic. Specifically, it's nostalgic of 9th grade, when used to walk through the In-n-out "drive"-thru across the street from my school and get a shake for lunch like two days a week. I will say this and music are the two things that are nostalgic of high school in a good way. That still does not make this an especially good milkshake, though. I mean, it's fine. Like McDonald's, it's perfectly fine, but it's not especially good.

Burger King: you can get a chocolate oreo shake here, not just chocolate or oreo like at most other places. So I've never had the chocolate shake here.

Five Guys: you can also get a chocolate oreo shake here. The one in Ann Arbor was better 5-10 years ago, chocolatey but not sweet--or at least not so sweet as to completely cover that very specific chocolate bitterness, which is something I've grown to appreciate as an adult. More recently there, and also here, it's not as chocolatey. But it is probably the thickest ice cream of the fast food shakes. Really very good.

Wendy's: I've only had a Wendy's frosty a handful of times in my life--a few times in early childhood when they still existed in my hometown, and then a couple times in college and grad school. My memory is the texture is bad and that's why they call it a frosty rather than a milkshake. It's fine if you just need a chocolate-flavored fry dip, but maybe not as a drink. I don't know, maybe I'm misremembering, though.

Sonic: this one is the best. It tastes like chocolate pudding, and I love chocolate pudding. This is the first time I've ever lived within 50 miles of a Sonic (shocking that that happened in NorCal of all places). But since I was doing a study, I went out of my way to get one. I drove over 20 minutes, telling myself I'd been waiting 18 years for this--ever since I had a classmate in grad school from Oklahoma who used to rave about them and complain that we got radio ads for them in the Detroit area even though the nearest Sonic was well into Ohio. Anyway, yeah, it was worth it. I can't believe it beat Five Guys, but it beat Five Guys by a lot. The one negative, and I can't believe I'm saying this, is there was about twice as much whipped cream on it as I really wanted.

I had been going to extend this test another couple weeks, to give Burger King, Wendy's, and Five Guys their fair shakes (...as it were)--Wendy's because I remember not liking it but haven't had it since... like... since I was a TA and it was the only thing open near the bus stop after my night classes? And Burger King and Five Guys because I only ever get chocolate oreo, and it's not fair to all the other shakes, so I was going to try plain chocolate--but Sonic blew everything else out of the water tonight so I gave up.