3.8
Good
154 Reviews
5081 Eastpointe Drive, Medina
Customers’ favorites
- Arby
- Curly Fries
- Roast Beef Slider
- Reese’S Peanut Butter Cup Cookie
“I did not expect to find a piece of my childhood parked in the glowing drive-thru lane of an Arby’s at nine o’clock on a cold Tuesday night, but grief is a strange, shapeshifting thing that loves to hide in the smell of toasted sesame seed buns and warm, salty beef. My dad passed away three years ago, and since then, I have spent a lot of time trying to outrun the quiet spaces in my mind where his memory sits, but tonight, the exhaustion finally caught up with me and guided my car toward that towering, neon cowboy hat sign buzzing against the pitch-black sky. When I was a kid, Arby’s was our sacred payday ritual; every other Friday, he would pick me up from school in his creaky old pickup truck, and we would head straight to the neighborhood branch, sitting in those heavy, faux-leather swivel chairs under the harsh fluorescent lights while he told me the same old stories about his high school football days, always laughing so hard he would have to wipe a stray glob of Horsey Sauce from his mustache. Sitting in the drive-thru tonight, watching the exhaust smoke from the car ahead of me drift past the brightly lit menu board, the sudden, overwhelming weight of his absence pressed down on my chest so hard it was difficult to breathe, so when the crackling static of the speaker box asked for my order, my voice cracked as I asked for the exact same meal we always shared: a classic Roast Beef, a large order of curly fries, and a Jamocha shake. The young woman working the window had no idea that she was handing me a heavy paper bag of pure, unadulterated nostalgia; she just gave me a tired, friendly smile, wished me a safe drive home, and handed over the order, the familiar, comforting aroma of seasoned onion and garlic from the curly fries immediately filling the quiet, dark cabin of my car and bringing a sudden, hot prickle of tears to my eyes. Instead of driving home to an empty kitchen, I pulled into a dim corner of the parking lot under the faded yellow glow of a streetlamp, tore open the paper bag with trembling hands, and unwrapped the foil sandwich wrapper, watching the steam rise up into the cold air. I took that first bite of the roast beef sandwich, and the world seemed to stop; the soft, squishy bun, the incredibly thin, salty ribbons of warm beef, and the tangy, sweet bite of Arby’s Sauce tasted exactly, precisely the same as they did fifteen years ago, offering a tiny, beautiful, unchanging constant in a world that has shifted entirely too fast and left me behind. It is absurd, really, to cry over fast food in a dark parking lot, but as I dipped a perfectly spiraled, crispy curly fry into a little plastic cup of sauce and washed it down with a thick, sweet, coffee-flavored sip of that Jamocha shake, the crushing loneliness of the last few years finally softened into a gentle, aching warmth. For twenty minutes, the highway noise faded away, the grief became manageable, and I was not a lonely adult sitting in a car; I was just a kid again, sitting across from a man who loved me, sharing a meal. Arby's is just a fast-food joint on the side of a busy highway to anyone else, but tonight, that little paper bag of comfort was a quiet, sacred bridge to the past, reminding me that even though he is gone, the simple, beautiful moments we shared over a cheap paper wrapper will never truly leave me.”
New American · $$
Recommended
