Louisa Kung Liu Chu | Chicago Tribune

CHICAGO — CosMc’s, a new futuristic concept from McDonald’s, secretively opened its first location near Chicago Thursday. The fast-food chain originally announced that the beverage-focused shop would open in Bolingbrook, Illinois, Friday.

Some locals, though, noticed small lawn signs posted on-site stating that it was open to the public — and possibly the media helicopters circling overhead. A line snaked through the adjacent mall parking lot until the wait peaked at around two-hours long.

Named for CosMc (pronounced “cosmic”), a little-known company character (a space alien who visited the fictional McDonaldland in the late 1980s and early ’90s), the theme essentially throws back to the McDonald’s drive-in origin story. Though, instead of milkshakes and hamburgers, customers can now order popping boba slushies and spicy queso sandwiches.

And it’s a drive-thru only. There is no indoor dining room, outdoor seating or walk-up window. There are also no restrooms, important for a beverage concept, but you are welcome to visit the McDonald’s next door, said a CosMc’s employee.

If you choose to go in these extremely busy early days, be prepared to wait. Eventually, you’ll find four drive-thru lanes with jumbo menu screens and speakers where you order and pay. The service staff was excellent and surprisingly energetic given the onslaught of opening-day orders.

What’s different is that you’re asked to wait at the speaker until your order is ready. The screen displays a red stop sign, until it changes to green with your pickup window number. My order was shockingly fast, about five minutes for 15 items. Friday morning, however, an order with only three items took nine minutes.

Online ordering is expected to begin in the coming weeks.

Until then, after you cruise by the glass front building that looks into the open kitchen, you can park in the small lot to eat, but very few customers did on opening night. In fact, I was the only one who did so for nearly an hour.

So how did it all taste?

CosMc’s offers a thought-provoking futuristic restaurant experience that’s not quite present in flavor.

I ordered from every menu category, including six drinks, the stars of this trippy new experience. Please note that this is not a review and will certainly not have stars. I usually wait at least a month to visit a new restaurant, then typically visit twice, and rate it on our four star system.

Here are my tasting notes on the 15 items I tried.

The Chai Frappé Burst drink at CosMc’s in Bolingbrook is shown on Dec. 8, 2023. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune/TNS)

The one must-order item at the moment may be the Chai Frappé Burst, a blended ice drink poured over popping brown sugar boba and finished with whipped cream and cinnamon sprinkles. It’s a beautiful cross-cultural moment in a cup, aromatic with perfect bubble tea pearls.

A turmeric-spiced latte was also terrific, with espresso, gingery syrup and black pepper sprinkles. There doesn’t seem to be any turmeric, though, according to the ingredients. But that’s like its ubiquitous cousin the pumpkin spice latte, which doesn’t have pumpkin, just the spice.

The spicy queso sandwich, however, with a fluffy omelet, sausage patty, two cheeses and jalapeno chips on a small brioche bun, had me wondering, where’s the spicy and where’s the queso? Once I found the breaded jalapeno chips, which slid to the back, they delivered a nice kick and were the best thing about an otherwise bland breakfast sandwich.

A creamy avocado tomatillo sandwich, with egg, white cheddar and the thinnest cut bacon on brioche, didn’t fare much better with its runny green sauce.

The Popping Pear Slush, a prickly pear-flavored drink topped with whipped cream and popping candy, lacked much of any flavor, but the Pop Rocks-inspired carbonation was fun.

A s’mores cold brew, finished with toffee sprinkles, revealed one of my big pet peeves: Don’t call it s’mores unless it has at least the flavors of toasted marshmallow, melted chocolate and graham crackers. This had none of those.

But that wasn’t nearly as bad as the most highly touted of the so-called Signature Galactic Boosts, the Sour Cherry Energy Burst. It promised a tart cherry slush over fruity popping boba and an energy shot. I detected no sour nor cherry, just a black hole of syrupy sweetness. The bursting bubbles were the only saving grace.

The spicy queso breakfast sandwich at CosMc’s includes a fluffy omelet, sausage patty, two cheeses and jalapeno chips on a small bun. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune/TNS)

Savory hash brown bites, however, won for the most insulting menu item. Four pieces for $2.39 — that’s about 60 cents for each limp piece of former potato. The order does include one dipping sauce, but the alleged spicy queso sauce is nothing more than what one might find on gas station nachos. What’s so puzzling is that McDonald’s hash brown, with its crunchy crust, is one of the great fast-food items.

Pretzel bites, also with one dipping sauce included, were fine, but the herb ranch is just the same ranch that’s at the main chain.

The Tropical Spiceade teased with hot-pink sweet heat lemonade topped with dried dragon fruit, but the fruit itself is mildly flavored at its best, which was not evident here. An employee wearing a CosMc’s branded yellow puffer jacket said it was her favorite beverage because it was an “Instagrammable moment.”

The caramel fudge brownie and blueberry lemon cookie sundae ended my tasting on a nice, sweet note.

And the McPops exceeded expectations. They’re small, soft doughnuts filled with Nutella-like chocolate hazelnut cream, Biscoff-style cookie butter or apple cinnamon. The McPops can often be found at the McDonald’s Global Menu restaurant at company headquarters in the West Loop neighborhood. That’s another baffling disappointment for a brand with the world’s best resources in its hands.

CosMc’s is a compelling look at what we perceive as a restaurant. Right now it’s nothing more than four drive-thru lanes and a box building with a front window that offers a glimpse into a kitchen that could be from a nostalgic past or a bright future — sometime when we hoped robots would take over the hard work for humans, and not humanity. Let’s hope for the former, and a better menu.

©2023 Chicago Tribune. Visit at chicagotribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

The University of Pennsylvania’s board of trustees on Tuesday appointed J. Larry Jameson as the school’s interim president following Liz Magill’s resignation over the weekend.

Magill announced her plan to resign on Saturday amid a wave of backlash from alumni, donors and politicians after she equivocated, during a heated congressional hearing last week, on questions over whether students should be disciplined if they call for the genocide of Jews. Magill agreed to stay on in the role until an interim president was selected.

The board approved a motion to appoint Jameson, the dean of UPenn’s medical school, during a 2 p.m. Zoom meeting on Tuesday. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported on Monday evening that the board was considering Jameson for the position.

Magill’s departure came after she, along with Harvard President Claudine Gay and Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Sally Kornbluth, participated in a contentious, hourslong grilling from lawmakers last week over the leaders’ handling of antisemitism on their campuses.

But Magill is the only one of the three so far to end up out of the job. Harvard’s governing board released a statement on Tuesday morning standing by Gay amid the calls for her removal, and Kornbluth received her governing board’s “full and unreserved support” two days after her testimony.

Colleen DeGuzman | (TNS) KFF Health News

Many people from racial and ethnic minority groups brace themselves for insults and judgments before medical appointments, according to a new survey of patients that reaffirms the prevalence of racial discrimination in the U.S. health system.

The KFF survey of nearly 6,300 patients who have had care in the past three years found that about 55% of Black adults feel they have to be very careful about their appearance to be treated fairly by doctors and other health providers. Nearly half of American Indian, Alaska Native, and Hispanic patients feel similarly, as do about 4 in 10 Asian patients.

By comparison, 29% of white people surveyed said they worried about their appearance before appointments.

“In 2023, the notion that any person must prepare for discrimination is sad on one hand and angering on the other,” Burgess Harrison, executive director of the National Minority Health Association, wrote in an email. “The stress that this causes, in addition to whatever health issue involved, is crazy.”

Discrimination has long been a concern for both patients and health providers in the U.S., where racial disparities in health outcomes are vast and particularly unfavorable toward Black people.

A 30-year-old Hispanic man in Illinois who responded to the KFF survey told researchers he wears clothes to health care appointments with the logo of the university where he works. He noticed, he said, that when health care providers know he is a professor, they listen to him more intently and involve him more in care decisions.

A 44-year-old Asian woman in California told the researchers that her white male doctors ignored her concerns about breathing issues, telling her she “was probably just thinking too hard about breathing.” She was later diagnosed with asthma.

The two respondents were not identified in the study.

The survey offers “a way to actually quantify what those experiences are with racism and discrimination, and the multitude of ways they then impact people’s lives,” said Samantha Artiga, director of KFF’s racial equity and health policy program.

“For folks who have been following these issues for a long time, the findings are not unexpected,” she said.

Other findings:

A third of adults reported at least one of several negative experiences with a health care provider in the past three years, such as a professional assuming something about them without asking, or suggesting they were to blame for a health problem.
Nearly a quarter of Black adults, 19% of Alaska Native and Native American adults, 15% of Hispanic adults, and 11% of Asian adults said they believed they endured negative treatment because of their race or ethnicity.
Twenty-two percent of Black adults who were pregnant or gave birth in the past 10 years said they were denied pain medication they thought they needed. Just 10% of white adults in similar circumstances reported the same complaint.

When people don’t feel respected or welcomed by their health care providers, they may be discouraged to reach out for medical help or may switch providers more often, Artiga said. Members of minority populations are found to be “experiencing worse health as a result of experiencing unfair treatment in the health care system,” she said.

The survey also found that discrimination outside the health care system had health consequences. People who said they experienced discrimination in their everyday lives were more than twice as likely to report often feeling anxious, lonely, or depressed compared with those who rarely or never faced discrimination.

Black people who self-reported darker skin tones were more likely to have encountered discrimination than those with lighter skin, the survey found.

The survey reveals “how persistent and prevalent experiences with racism and discrimination remain today, in daily life and also in health care, despite, really, the increased calls and focus on addressing racism,” said Liz Hamel, KFF’s director of public opinion and survey research.

Diversity among health care providers matters, the survey found. Most people of color who participated in the survey said that fewer than half of their medical visits in the past three years were with a provider who shared their race or ethnicity. But Black patients who had at least half their visits with a provider of their race or ethnicity, for example, were more likely to report better experiences, such as their doctor explaining things “in a way they could understand” or asking them about health factors such as their employment, housing, and access to food and transportation.

Nearly 40% of Black adults whose health providers were also Black said they discussed such economic and social subjects, while just 24% of Black adults who saw providers who weren’t Black said those issues were brought up.

Harrison, of the National Minority Health Association, wrote that “a renewed emphasis on recruiting more people of color into the health care field is vital.”

The survey, he added, “painfully illustrates that racial bias in healthcare is as damaging as any disease.”

KFF’s “Survey on Racism, Discrimination and Health” was conducted from June 6 to Aug. 14 online and by telephone among a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults in English, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese.

___

(KFF Health News, formerly known as Kaiser Health News (KHN), is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs of KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling and journalism.)

©2023 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

St. Paul police on Tuesday released body-worn and squad camera footage of last week’s shootout, during which a police officer was injured and a man was killed.

Officers were called to the Merriam Park neighborhood on Thursday just after 2 p.m. after a woman called 911 and reported a man who she had an order for protection against was following her as she drove in the area. She said the man, identified as Brandon Daleshaun Keys, was intentionally driving his vehicle into hers, was armed with a handgun and had broken out a window of her vehicle, police said Thursday night.

At Cretin and Marshall avenues, Keys got out of his car and approached the woman’s vehicle, according to the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, which is investigating. Officer Michael Tschida arrived and ordered Keys, 24, to get on the ground.

Keys fired at Tschida and struck him in the lower leg, and Tschida returned fire, police said Thursday night. The BCA described the situation on as an exchange of gunfire, and said they recovered a handgun at the scene.

Tschida shot Keys in the head. Paramedics took Keys, of Maplewood, to Regions Hospital, where he died early Friday.

Tschida was treated and released from the hospital Thursday. He was placed on administrative leave, which is standard in such cases.

Mayor Melvin Carter and Police Chief Axel Henry previously said they’re committed to releasing body camera videos as soon as possible when an officer uses deadly force — after witness statements are collected and next of kin has an opportunity to view it.

Related Articles

Townhall meeting on Ramsey County’s bail reform effort set for Tuesday

Man imprisoned as teen for flower shop killing is released after judge throws out his conviction

Man dies in shooting at Hamline-Midway home; 2 suspects jailed

Catalytic converter thefts down 95% in St. Paul, according to police. Here’s why.

‘Grateful’: Hudson bicyclist continues recovery after hit and run, with help from local community