Me too.
No, you wouldn’t.
I like Applebee’s. They have a ultra thin crust veggie pizza which is pretty good.
In my own experience, I would put Applebee’s a step above those others, and a big step above Chili’s, where I’ve never had good food.
You’re right. The actual truth is I’d rather go hungry than have either.
I find Applebee’s, of all the chain restaurants of that type, generally has the least selection of stuff Mr. Neville and I can eat, at least as of a few years ago. We keep kosher (but will eat at a non-kosher restaurant), so that means vegetarian dishes or dishes where the only animal protein is kosher fish. All of those type of restaurants tend not to have much for us, but my parents (who are not Jewish and don’t keep kosher) love them. We generally only go to that type of restaurant when we’re with them. We tend to avoid Applebee’s among the chains, though, because last time we checked they had so little we could have.
Whenever I leave a chain restaurant, I’m left with a vague feeling of disappointment, self-loathing, and frustration at having spent so much on such mediocre-to-awful food, but then I go home and forget about it.
And I’ve had some chain meals that were absolutely microwaved frozen dinners. No question. Your entree shouldn’t vary from painfully hot to still crunchy-frozen within one bite.
And you definitely shouldn’t have to peel off the foil to get to the cherry cobbler.
Applebee’s is OK. Some of their dishes are indeed dreadful, but they have some good healthy entrees too, like grilled chicken and fish. Their menu used to have more of a selection. For example, they discontinued the low-fat chicken/veggie quesadilla, which was my fave. They also took away most of their desserts, except for the blondie, except for the pathetic 1-oz “shot glass” dessert sampler. Why would I want only a teaspoon’s worth of hot fudge sundae? :mad:
What exactly did the OP expect? It’s not like there’s a decent, experienced French chef at the helm of one of these things. And it’s not like it is a reasonable thing to expect at Applebee’s.
What you CAN expect is a bunch of teenagers trying to pay for college or just getting some extra cash in the kitchen nuking precooked, frozen food.
Outside of their apple pie a la mode (because you can’t possibly screw that up - wait, I did get a nasty piece once, where the filling was chewy and gross) and some fo the burgers, it’s all crap.
Indeed. If you studied the whole menu, and decided the thing that sounded to you like it would make the best lunch was the Generic Fried Food Appetizer Platter, I don’t want to hear your opinions on food.
QFT.
Now, all of you who are still insisting you can’t get food poisoning that quickly, better start bringing up some cites for that.
Then we’ll shoot those down, because they’ll be wrong.
[sub]Applebee’s sucks. I like IHOP though[/sub]
Jack, QtM, you two just made my day. My know-it-all friend has in the past insisted, witheringly, that you can’t get food poisoning that fast. It gives me the warm fuzzies when I find out she’s wrong about something.
…Or that could be food poisoning.
No kidding. I mean, what are the servers even there for?
Thank you. As I said earlier, we aren’t barfy folk. If we’re barfing within an hour of eating, it was the food.
No. It might have been the food. It might have been an earlier meal. It might have been something else. It might have been any number of things.
An hour is fast for foodborne illness (not impossible, but very fast). People tend to look for the obvious cause, but you really don’t know and in such a short timeframe I’d say the odds lean away from food poisoning.
I’ve been seated and ordered an iced tea at an Applebees. I studied the menu. I have inflammatory bowel disease, or irritable bowel syndrome, depending on which doctor is diagnosing me at the time. WHICHEVER it is, if I eat more than a smidgen of black pepper in any given period of time, I am guaranteed to spend the next two or three days on the toilet. As I said, I studied the menu…and couldn’t find anything that looked both appealing and like something I could eat. I consulted with the server. He had no idea if there was anything that wasn’t preseasoned. I asked to speak to the manager. She told me that everything was shipped to the restaurant preseasoned “for consistency’s sake.” I thanked her and the server, paid for my iced tea, overtipped (I HAD taken up a table and a lot of the server’s time) and resolved never to set foot in one of them again. I strongly suspect that the pepper and other seasonings that are put on the food are to cover up the fact that the food is mostly microwaved by people who don’t really understand any other method of cooking, and to disguise the completely mediocre quality of the food, even if it had been fresh to begin with.
Yes indeedy. Any TV dinner fan knows that you peel the foil back from the cobbler before you put the dinner in the oven, or possibly halfway through the baking period. I forget which. I haven’t eaten a TV dinner in YEARS. Between the poor quality of the food to begin with, and the fact that many manufacturers will put a lot of black pepper on everything, my poor belly just can’t handle it.
Now and then I love some mediocre fatty microwaved food. It does now and then hit the spot- really.
But the thing about Applebees is that it is more expensive than the average chain restaurant, and the food is a step down. They don’t stick with the classics- they try to do trendy stuff. And they fail, badly, every time.
When I was a free-spirited teenager I and my friends went to Applebees to fullfill a type of fantasy that we were independent adults who could eat at restaurants without clowns painted on the wall.
I regret every moment of it.
Since I grew up a bit and become a foodie, I’ve become slightly more picky in choosing restaurants. One of my requirements is that the food actually be cooked at the restaurant, not shipped in frozen and zapped for half a minute. That discludes me from Applebees, TGIFridays and its ilk automatically.
I haven’t had independent verification, but I believe Red Robbin actually cooks their food.
Their basic turkey burger is good.
700 calories.
The other burgers are all over 1200.
That’s how many I eat per day on my diet.
You fatties.
I believe it was mostly psychosomatic. However, he may not be used to heavy greasy food. And it could have been bad food, as QtM sez.
I’d rather eat at In & Out than Applebees, but it’s hardly a haven of food poisoning.
You can’t request a booth with out making a scene? Really? :dubious:
I was SO ready to get into this thread but the OP failed as bad as Applebees fails as a restaurant.
I went in there ordered the riblets. I couldn’t tell where the meat ended and the bone began. Also, when I did find morsel of meat big enough to bite into; it just sucked.
Also, my chicken nugget appetizers were served to me at room temp.
And the cherry on top of the sundae was that both my appetizer and my entree were served to me at the same time.
I’ll never go there again.