R.I.P., Jollibee ― or Good Riddance

TheBurgerReview.com

The "craptastic" burger from Jollibee on Fourth.

Live SoMa broke the news last week ― the Fourth Street branch of Jollibee was crispier than a two-day grain of rice on a woolly sweater. The Filipino fast-food chain closed Nov. 30, according to the blog, along with the adjacent Red Ribbon.

My friend Michelle, who grew up in the Philippines, says she's not surprised. "The rent was probably too high," she says. Michelle's been to the Daly City Jollibee, which stays open 24 hours and has a drive-through ― the fried chicken sells out after the bars close, Michelle says. The buko pandan shake with sago pearls is pretty good, she says, along with the pancit palabok, rice noodles with shrimp and achuete sauce. "Recently they've had fried bangus ― milkfish ― but I've never tried it," Michelle says. And the burger? She hasn't scarfed a Jollibee specimen since she was a kid in Manila.

That may be just as well, according to TheBurgerReview blog. In August, the site's Burger Busters made a swing through San Francisco, finding nothing but shitty burgers. The shittiest? One from Jollibee on Fourth:

The Jollibee cheeseburger was mercifully small, but it packed a wallop of crappiness. Steamed, rubbery, salty, searless―just craptastic.... It was barely worth reviewing―it was just a cheap, low-quality, unpleasant, highly processed bit of fast food awfulness.