My family has this very typical American Dream story. My parents immigrated here from the Philippines and settled in the Bay Area, at first in South San Francisco, where a lot of Filipinos immigrated, and they lived in a tiny apartment. My mom worked for IBM for many years, and my dad worked for McDonald's. He worked at a few locations, but the one I remember most was this McDonald's in San Jose off a main street called Story Road, which was near two major freeways. This was in about 1990, maybe earlier, and he was always trying to garner a lot of drive-thru sales.

But McDonald's was still a treat. We were eating a lot of Filipino food at home, and on the weekends, we went to church every Sunday and then went out to eat. A lot of times that meant going somewhere like a Cantonese restaurant or Taco Bell. My mom worked during the day and my dad worked at night, so being in the same room together was really important to us. These trips to Taco Bell were a luxury, because my parents were buying food for eight of us—themselves and their six children. It was cheap, but it felt glamorous relative to a pot of soup and rice at home. My order was a single soft shell taco, and I loved it.

Growing up, I could have McDonald's whenever I wanted, which was kind of every kid's dream back then. At that time, there wasn't this stigma that fast food was unhealthy or disgusting. I felt cool because my dad worked there. If he had to drop off something at my school, he would always bring McDonald's for me and my sister; I'd order a hamburger with extra pickles and a Sprite, a strawberry milkshake, and fries in Super Size so I could share them with all my friends at school. There was a huge chest of drawers in our garage that was filled with Happy Meal toys.

The period when my dad worked for McDonald's ended when I was in seventh grade, when he suffered a work-related injury, an aneurysm, and had to retire. My relationship with McDonald's is bittersweet as a result. My dad bent over to pick something up off the ground, and someone had left a microwave door open. He stood up, hitting his head on the door, and simultaneously let out a large cough which catalyzed a brain aneurysm, a typically fatal injury, that changed my family dynamic forever. While his injury affected his cognitive ability, when he shares any McDonald's stories, he is always glittering, beaming, and remembers fond moments so viscerally and sweetly, with sensory descriptions. He's even keen on using corporate restaurant jargon (i.e, "building his team to address efficiency, consistency, and value for the customer").

When I became a professional chef as an adult, my dad and I got to share a lot of stories. His career at McDonald's became much more interesting to me after a conversation we had six years ago.

He told me a story from 1991, when he was in a sales competition with an LA branch. They would call each other hourly during peak times to check on numbers, and it became a game to beat each other's records. My dad had all of these strategies—he would try putting the golden arches up on high poles so you could see them from the freeway, or having two separate menu boards in the drive-thru line. (These things fascinate me because they're the same kind of stuff you think about when you're running a small restaurant.) His branch ended up winning the competition, and he took all the money he won and used it to bring all his managers to Vegas to see a magic show. He got them hotel rooms, bought them TVs, and took them out to eat. It was a beautiful story of generosity, but he couldn't tell my mom about it because our family could have used the money. But I think that my dad felt at the time that he was making a lot more money than he ever thought he could. He felt successful.