It turned out there wasn’t any chicken in it, either. It wasn’t bad, this no-chicken, no-noodle soup. The chicken broth had a gingery, Asian lilt, and its roasted carrots had a concentrated sweetness. If I had ordered vegetable rice soup, I probably would have been happy.

My favorite burg was an egg sandwich. The eggs were gently cooked, not dry or rubbery at all, and splashed with Green Goddess dressing and a fine hot sauce. If Locol had put that sauce on the counter, I might have been able to save the chili.

The thing I liked best about this sandwich was the roll. Made from a recipe devised with the help of Chad Robertson, the bread wizard behind Tartine Bakery & Cafe in San Francisco, the roll was the farthest thing imaginable from the squishy insubstantiality of most fast-food buns.

Said to be rich in nutrients, and undeniably excellent, the roll represents the potential upside of the Locol experiment. The fried chicken represents the downside. Like a McNugget, Locol’s chicken is an amalgam of chicken bits invisibly bound together. Inside a thin sheath of fried coating, this composite of ground meat is mysteriously bland and almost unimaginably dry. It can be had as a single patty between buns with coleslaw, as the Fried Chicken Burg, or in a paper cup, with barbecue sauce, as bite-size Chicken Nugs. But the best thing to do with it is pretend it doesn’t exist.

The Cheeseburg is a little better than the Fried Chicken Burg. Melted cheese, iceberg lettuce, a crunchy pickle relish and a sauce in the Thousand Island dressing family all add moisture and flavor to a flat patty that needs all the help it can get. At about 70 percent beef, mixed with tofu and grains, it is richer in nutrients than an all-beef patty. I suspect, though, that it will give many people an instant sensory memory, and not the kind Proust wrote about. Dry burgers made with filler bring me, at least, right back to school lunch and Boy Scout camp.

Locol has a vegetarian patty, too. It is more moist, but also a little gummy.

Instead of soda, Locol has nice strawberry or pineapple agua frescas. The coffee, for $2, is excellent. For dessert, there is soft-serve ice cream. I bought a sundae. A few minutes later, the cashier gave me my money back and said that the ice cream machine was broken.