I just ate at Applebees (I think I'm going to die!)

The BBQ Pit
1

Warning: If anyone is expecting something witty, I just don’t have it in me right now.
I’ve been vomiting profusely for about two hours from this experience and can not work up the vitriol to do more than type and look sad.

For anyone who has had the pleasure of eating at one of these fine establishments the thread title should be a pretty good explanation of how you felt afterward. Seriously, it’s been two hours and I am still pissed that I paid money for that dreck.

It all started innocently enough. The girlfriend and I couldn’t decide where to go for lunch. We’d never eaten at Applebees, and since they seem to be everywhere I assumed we should probalbly find out what all the fuss was about. That was the first mistake.

So we get there and are ushered up to these fucking 4-foot tall tables where I have to sit on a bar stool that makes my feet go to sleep. I could at least 8 real booth tables that were empty in the place, but the girlfriend didn’t want me to ‘make a scene’ so I was stuck.

Then comes our server. She seemed nice, had a trainee in tow, and was trying. But it was the sort of trying that just makes you want to scream obsenities at them and throw silverware. She just kept coming back to check on us. Again. And again. AND AGAIN! We were in the restaurant for a total of 24 minutes and our server popped in to ‘see if everything was all right’ a total of eleven times. That’s once every 2.18 minutes! And yes, I was timing it just for the sheer spectacle of it. I mean, go the fuck away!

And the ‘food’. Oh god, the ‘food’. I honestly stared at that menu for about five minutes without finding a single thing I wanted to eat. Well, I take that back, I would have ordered a salad but there was no way in hell I was going to pay $12 for a god damn salad. Anyway, I ended up getting the appetizer platter. I was treated to four cheese sticks, four balls of chicken (chicken should not come in a ball!), a small dish of spinach dip, and some sort of tortilla thing. All of it had the nice warm glow of things that had just recently been taken out of a freezer and microwaved.

Anyway, I got about halfway through each dish before I just couldn’t eat any more. It wasn’t that I was full, it’s that I just couldn’t force myself to ingest another bite of this flavorless, textureless, bland looking food. Did I mention the texture? I swear my 90 year old grandmother with her dentures out could have gummed this food enough to swallow it. I swear I didn’t have to chew a thing, it was awful.

So I paid my $24 bill and fled the premises. Got home just in time to see the lovely array of colors my meal had created in my stomach as I hunkered over the toilet in the fetal position. I think I’m dying now.
Anyone else ever been to Applebees?

2

You are indeed a giant pussy.

3

There wasn’t any puking from food poisoning. What the hell kind of dieing is it that you don’t like the food. I want vomit, I want pictures, I want to hear about the infected finger in the soup. :mad:

4

Melodramatic much? You must be an incredible joy to have lunch with.

5

I can’t stand trainees/wait staff that err on the side of being over-helpful, either.

6

So, did you save some room for some hot Caramel Macadamia Nut Fudge Plunkers with Hershey-Mango dipping fluid?

7

Puking. For two hours. Uh huh.

If you don’t have food poisoning, you must be the biggest drama queen to grace the Pit in quite some time.

And no, I don’t like Applebee’s either.

8

It’s definitely the pussy drama king part of it (I resent the queen part though. Them’s fightin’ words). And I’ll give you twenty minutes of puking and one hour forty minutes of wishing I hadn’t, but not a minute longer.

Fucking Applebees.

9

I’ve eaten at Applebees a bunch of times, and I’ve never gotten sick. In fact, the burger I had there a few weeks ago was pretty damn good.

10

Flavorless, textureless, bland, but not food-poisoned meals make you vomit for hours on end? You have my sympathy, but I’d be pitting your stomach rather than Applebee’s.

11

I was so excited when I saw the thread title; I thought it was going to be some awesome riff on how Tyler Florence cashed in his name to make bland food for senior citizens in order to lure them away from the small-town charm of Dave Thomas’ delicious noontime chili special, and how a burger on some day-old french bread isn’t gourmet even if you call the bun focaccia and crumble a bit of imitation bleu cheese on top. I had a suspicion that it might be one of those fun socialist/anarchist rants about how faux-family “neighborhood” restaurants eat away at the fabric of our society, turning our children into vacous mind-slave to the corp, and how we should rise up for Jesus/Marx/Goldman and fight the phallocentricism/godlessness/man by taking up arms against the symbols of corporate tyranny.
Imagine my sadness when it’s just some whining who thought the mini-dillas were, well, the type of food you get at an Applebees analogue.

12

Mmmmm… riblets…

13

Sounds like a case of the Mondays. :stuck_out_tongue:

I used to eat there somewhat often with my ex-girlfriend. The food is not exactly gourmet, but I think they are perfectly edible. Never got sick.

14

Odd. Applebee’s is one of the best restaurants in my town. I like their food.

15

Must be a pretty small town.

I mean, I like Applebee’s, especially their blondie…mmm, blondie…but they are pretty middling in quality. They’re the McDonald’s of family restaurants, or the Burger King at best.

16

I’ve never eaten at Applebees. In fact, I’d never even *seen *an Applebees until about 5 or 6 years ago, but this reminds me of the guy telling me how horrible this place is.

Some years ago I saw an Applebees commercial on TV, and was amused to find that everything looked so horribly unappetizing. I said to the guy, “If they can’t even make the food look good on TV, they must be presenting you with a grey pile of goop in person.” The husband recoiled, apparently disturbed by the mere memory of having eaten at Applebees. There were horror stories about the two times he’d been required to eat there, and how everything tasted like a paper towel soaked in grease. One of his stories involved a Russian guy who lamented how horrible the food was. “And I’m Russian!” he is reported to have said. “In Russia, we ate boiled bread and we liked it! Still, I find this food to be deplorable.”

I’m almost curious to eat there and find out if the food is really as bad as people say it is. I’ve found a handful of people who don’t mind, but these are the same people who dine at The Olive Garden on Fancy Night.

17

It’s just standard salty and bland. Best to avoid, but some people love it. Shrug.

18

I have pity for the foodies on the SDMB who, on a cross-country road trip, when facing hunger pangs somewhere in Middle America, are greeted by an Applebees, Bennigans, Olive Garden, Red Lobster, IHOP, Denny’s, Pizza Hut, Golden Corral and Chili’s at Exit 134. Really, the posts with a sentiment of “I ate at [insert middle-end sit-down chain here, usually Applebees], and I’d rather be waterboarded by the CIA at Abu Gharab” are legion here.

No, I wouldn’t take a date to an Applebees, but it’s perfectly serviceable food. Sure, I’d rather eat at The French Laundry, but … well, do people really have palates that are so sensitive that anything but the most exquisite high-end boutique food or low-end “authentic” ethnic and regional cuisine causes them to vomit for hours on end?

19

I’ve heard rumours that Applebees is a nuke your frozen entree type restaurant. That would explain their strangely-textured steaks. They have a dish there that I like okay (chicken with lime and salsa? something like that), and they have a couple of desserts that used to be delicious (deep-fried cheesecake burrito thingy), but the last time we were there, the dessert was very badly done. Mediocre food, plus mediocre dessert, for $50 for the two of us, for food that we strongly suspect was just re-heated frozen dinners? No thanks.

20

Doesn’t food poisoning take longer to make you ill than just the time it took you to get home? (I’m guessing about 30 min? That plus a 24 min experience is only about an hour.) Is it possible that you have a stomach virus and the food you ate before getting violently ill is irrelevant?

You can still pit the quality of food at Applebee’s and your experience, of course, but you might consider that coming down with a stomach virus, in my experience, makes you not inclined to enjoy consuming food/enjoy anything regardless of what or where.