Riblets are basically bone chips with BBQ sauce on them. You pull off one bone chip, suck on it to get all the sauce and incidental meat off it, then spit it out. Repeat.
They’re not…bad? But if I want to get messy and hands-on I’ll get real ribs, thank you.
It goes:
Denny’s = McDonald’s
TGIFridays = Burger King.
Applebee’s = Wendy’s.
Chili’s = Fuddruckers.
There is solid science to back this up.
Regardless, how snarky and so disdainfully cool it is to characterize Applebee’s food as “nuked”, it is totally misinformed and incorrect, and a blatant misconception. Although some ingredients come frozen or refrigerated and vacuum packed… the vegetables are fresh and unseasoned, the meat is actually fresh and grilled, the sauces and vegetables are sauteed or heated on a stove top. It is a very conventional kitchen and they are not nuking your food like a michaelina’s microwave meal, it’s just that most ingredients are sourced from corporate. (The same thing goes for Olive Garden…)
I unfortunately have the good luck of being currently employed by Applebee’s. Is it the greatest among chain restaurants? Absolutely not. I do think though that it offers decent food for usually less than $10 or less per entree (at least in my area).
Perhaps things differ from franchise to franchise, but this is not true at all where I work. None of the vegetables, grilled chicken, grilled fish, and few of the steaks are preseasoned. In fact, most seasonings are added during the cooking process, with the major exceptions being some of the fried foods and the Bourbon Street Steak.
This is actually true. All grilled meats are cooked fresh for each order. Mashed potatoes are made fresh each day in the restaurant, along with the rice, cole slaw, and most other non-fried side items.
As far as the OP’s appetizer, the only thing that would have been microwaved is the spinach dip. The boneless wings and mozzarella sticks are both fried, and quesadillas are made on a flat-top grill.
Some of these things may vary by franchise, but for the most part I think food items are consistent. Service and quality of food may differ even from day to day within the same store, but I doubt that cooking methods do by much.
It’s been a few years since I went in there. However, I usually don’t eat fish at all, and I rarely eat chicken. I eat beef, pork, and occasionally lamb. I was assured that all the beef dishes were seasoned with pepper, and I wasn’t interested in the chicken dishes. I certainly wasn’t going to order a vegetable plate. I was ready for some beef or maybe some ribs, and since either everything was preseasoned or both the manager and the server were lying to me, I departed and found someplace else to eat.
They’ve made some really poor recipe decisions, though. Even compared to other bland, Middle-American crap-food chain restaurants. I will never forget one time (out of maybe three) that I ate there–it has stayed with me to this day. I ordered some garlic bread. Well, it was just a couple of Wonder-Bread type hotdog buns, opened up, soaked in some liquid Crisco/Monsanto sort of grease, then covered with some mixture of 75% salt / 25% artificial garlic salt, then toasted.
I was astounded. It’s hard to fuck up garlic bread but they did astoundingly well at doing just that. That was only the star stand-out of an utterly crappy meal; the rest was merely insipid, tasteless, salt-grease infected with corn syrup and nuked just before serving.
Yes, there may be equally poor food out there, but you have to really search for it.
Honestly-- really honestly-- I vastly prefer Taco Bell and McDonald’s to that crap. It’s cheaper, and it’s better. Probably healthier, too.
And-- you don’t have to have food poisoning to yak. Sometimes the very idea of the flavorless greaseballs you just ate can do the trick.
Really? Not bad?
The thing is, I used to eat at one many years ago, and while it was not spectacular, I didn’t really find it to be disgustingly offensive. My riblet adventure was at a different location, and was quite possibly the worst food experience I’ve had in my life, Subway notwithstanding. I’m not sure what inspired me to go back there, but I tried some other things, and they were nearly as awful. I’m talking about things like burgers and fajitas. Same offensive taste, same over-saltedness.
I would have written the place off completely had it not been for some friends that insisted on going. And the one thing I ordered (probably the only thing I’ll order from now on) was actually fairly decent.
I think that the difference was that my awful experiences were at a franchise that had just opened. Maybe the “head chef” just felt that everything was undersalted and underseasoned and tried to compensate. Hopefully he was taken out back and shot.
It must have been that location then. Either that or we have very different palates. Riblets are nothing more than abbreviated ribs. They taste exactly like regular ribs, there’s just less of them. At least, it was so the last time I had them, which was several years ago.
Yeah, it had to be.
When I could barely make it through a third of my meal, I asked the waiter for the check. He asked if I wanted him to wrap up my leftovers to go. I resisted the urge to respond “Are you fucking kidding me?!? Is this some sort of sick joke?!?”
It’s impossible to describe in text how truly awful it was. I really hope that it was an anomoly.
If asking for a more comfortable table is “making a scene” break up with her now.
You’ll thank me later!
Cite!!!
What the heck? I posted here yesterday, and now… nada?
I was straining to find an association between food poisoning and Quantum Field Theory until I remembered those newly discovered fermions: the nauseons, the bloody diarrheons and the projectile pukeons. 
If inadvertent, hilarious. If deliberate, you’re GOOD…
It is (here, I mean). Our main shopping strip includes the following restaurants:
Local Italian place, but it’s like a Olive Gardeny-type place – my favorite
Applebee’s – second favorite
Friendly’s – sentimental favorite
Chili’s
Burger King
McDonald’s
Denny’s
Weathervane (seafood, local chain)
Wendy’s
99 Steakhouse
Subway
Chinese takeout
D’Angelo
Panera
So Applebee’s is one of the best options there. (I’m also a big fan of huge portion of greasy cheesy American goodness.) Yes, it’s better to go to a different town for a nice dinner at a non-chain!
I went to Chilis a couple times for their new “2 can eat for $20” special. I then learned the quite tasty onion rings things were over 1000 Calories all by themselves!:eek:
So, did the OP die?
And if he does have food poisoning, it wasn’t from today’s lunch. Most types of food poisoning take (off the top of my head) 8-48 hours to set in.
Drives me nuts when someone calls me at work, tell me they just finished a sandwich and now they have (name food borne illness here) and they demand we do something about it.
Ummm, go see a doctor and find out what you have first.
BTW, I like Applebee’s and Friday’s and Chili’s
The Good Doctor here disagrees with you**,Joey P.** although I admit it’s not all that common to set in that fast.
I must protest. Nuking? Excuse me? You’ve never heard of an invention? Called the deep-fryer?
There ain’t no need to microwave the frozen patties when you can just toss them in the fryer for a few minutes. This is the technology that keeps chain restaurants in business. Anyone can microwave a frozen dinner at home, but very few people are going to heat up the fry-daddy just for a few chicken strips.