There’s a local “Irish Pub and Restaurant” except I’m positive they only added the “And Restaurant” part to trick people to come in because it looks like a normal bar except in the corner there’s two tables with two chairs each while everything else is normal barstool seating (and ironically enough you can’t eat at the actual bar) I once got some food from there to-go because I was curious and it tasted like generic over-sauced barfood except way more expensive, like five chicken wings for $9.
They might not be trying to make money on the restaurant part. It might be easier in some places to get an alcohol license if you also sell food.
Some of those are pretty ridiculous, but I don’t think we can blame it all on hipsters. Decades ago, I ate at a truck stop restaurant called Iron Skillet. Everything was served on an iron skillet. This included, for instance, the salad bar, where you had to carry an ice-cold skillet by the handle as you piled stuff on it, trying not to tip it laterally. I’m pretty sure I lost a few cherry tomatoes.
Ugh, Melting Pot. Got sick as dog there from cross contamination.
Insanely so, given that the kitchen does little besides prep.
How do the local alcohol laws work where the restaurant is? In a lot of areas, it can be hard to get a ‘bar’ license but easy to get a ‘restaurant’ license to serve alcohol, and they may just be doing the bare minimum to be technically a restaurant.
This might not qualify but I disliked most of the theme restaurants that starting popping up in the 1990s. Theme restaurants weren’t exactly new, Showbiz Pizza was started in the 70s for example, but in the 1990s they seemed to be everywhere with restaurants like The Rainforest Cafe, Planet Hollywood, The Jekyll & Hyde Club, etc., etc. And they were all pretty bad.
Manhattan had the kid-themed Mars 2112, which was a hoot to visit but like most of these, had pretty indifferent food. I found it amusing that they had some KILLER cocktails and mixed drinks for Mummy and Daddums.
I do have an idea for a really badass theme restaurant, but I’m wise enough to know I can’t do more than write a check for someone who knows what they’re doing. I’ve been the cook for a very large family for a long time, and I understand how I could fool myself into believing that’s enough to run a restaurant… but learned better without making the big, expensive mistake.
Did anybody else notice that, right after 9-11, McDonalds stopped offering serrated plastic knives with carry-out meals, so terrorists could not pull up at the drive=through window on their way to the airport? After that, the plastic knives just had straight edges, unsuitable for cutting throats of flight attendants.
The original Jekyll and Hyde Club was awesome, upon entering it at first felt like one of those ubiquitous places that hung antique crap everywhere, the spookiness and the nature of the decor snuck up on you.
But then they had to keep making it “bigger and better” until it was so obvious and overblown that it was just another tourist trap.
I’m old enough to remember them changing their coffee stirrers from a long handled mini-spoon design to a long handled flat blade stirrer. This was allegedly done because the spoons were being widely used as cocaine paraphernalia.
There are two kinds of Cajun fare. One is prepared dishes like etouffee, or fried crawfish. The other kind is the crawfish boil, which is as described - whole crawfish boiled, typically in a bunch of spices with corn and potatoes. You peel and eat by hand. That’s the way it’s done.
Crawfish boils are real popular along the Gulf coast.
Grrr, ninja’d. “Are either of those easier to peel and eat than crawfish?”
While it is true that many restaurant ventures fail for a variety of reasons that often boil down to poor management, there are some locations that are not as supportive as others. For instance, in suburbs where different polities are mushed together such that the borders are indistinguishable, you can have differing tax rates on streets a mile apart. Or parking can be nonexistent in an area where foot traffic is not high.
shudder WTF?
Not only is that a thing, there are now chain versions, like Genghis Grill and Gobi Mongolian.
Back in Clear Lake, long before the chain fad there was a mom and pop that had good Mongolian BBQ, my first introduction to the concept. It was open for two decades (or longer), but then the old man retired and handed it over to his son, and between that and the spring up of the new chains, they went out of business. Too bad - I liked them for the variety difference from Genghis Grill, which I also like.
That doesn’t sound like the Genghis Grill I have patronized.
No one’s mentioned the “Frog and Peach”? Just for grins.
Got a call from my daughter in Manhattan this afternoon. She was waiting in line to get into this place.
Fuckin’ hipsters.
Waiting in line for 4 + hours?!?:eek:
Actually, her wait was closer to 30 minutes. She called because she wanted someone to talk with and pass the time.
In fact, I was her second choice.
Why so snarky? Christina Tosi is a pastry chef. Milk Bar is a bakery. It sells cookies, cakes, pies and a few savory stuffed breads. Is it really odd for (an admittedly quirky) bakery to sell drinks that go with those things? The cereal milk is also used as a base for ice cream and shakes.
My NYC contribution to this thread is Rice to Riches, a place that only sells rice pudding in many different varieties. It’s been open for several years.
Because she pretends to be a gourmet chef who bloviates as a judge.
That is insane.
My buddy tells a similar story. Every time he would eat in the Chinese place by his work he would ask for super spicy. No matter how often he asked for as spicy as they could, it was always a letdown. So one day he asks for it “spicy like you would make it spicy for yourself”. He takes one bite and his head started sweating- finally spicy heaven! The waiter came up to him and said “Today the food is free- you pay for the water!!” to big laughs all around.