Testy Chef – hmmm. Is that a subsidiary of the Soup Nazi?
Dead Lobster is the Worst. They always had the slowest service. I used to work around the corner from them and had exactly 60 minutes for lunch. They couldn’t take an order & get food to your table within 60 minutes. Ever. (Several Attempts…management ate the cost of drinks ordered while waiting every time)
Olive-Drab Garden : You know, Fresh Italian Pasta shouldn’t have cold spots or crunchy freezer burn (Yum!!!). And If I want a Microwaved Dinner I can go to a supermarket and get one for less than $5…
Here is a good reason to stop eating at chain restaurants:
Well now, since you’re a relative newcomer to Carolina, lemme explain this to you. I suspect that the name results from the fact that you have to be damned careful about BBQ in Carolina. It is taken seriously there. If it ain’t good carolina barbeque, than you better not call it carolina bbq at all. The “texas” thing probably buys them some breathing room. Theoretically.
Oops, hit “Submit” too soon.
As far as chains go, I don’t mind Macaroni Grill. I also think Bennigans is fine. However, it used to drive me NUTS when I traveled for my job in admissions. We’d be going to all these different places and a bunch of us would join up to go out for dinner after college fairs. Invariably someone would suggest Bennigans. Come on, we’re here in Dallas (or Little Rock, or Baltimore, or Raleigh, etc). And you want to go to a place you can go to back home?
Three bad places spring to mind:
Red Lobster
Olive Garden
TGI Fridays
All have poor service and poor quality food.
I’ll take a local restaurant any day. Bostom Market wasn’t too bad, but when they came here to Puyallup they tore down my favorite Mexican restaurant and built the Boston Market. BM was gone in six months and now a Walgreens stands there. What a waste.
ooh, I hate TGI Fridays…and Dennys. I especially hate how Dennys pulls out the late night menu (with extra overpriced microwaved crap). The only time I go there is when nothing else is open! I don’t particularly like The Olive Garden either, but for lunch, that all you can eat soup, salad and breadsticks thing is pretty good, considering that I am a vegetarian. I hate their pastas though…
I’ll agree with some of the slams, such as Olive Garden. And I second the OK for the Macaroni Grill (with thier prices, it should be decent).
I’ve never understood how Monterey House manages to stay in business. It’s not easy to screw up Tex-Mex, but they make it nearly inedible. And this is Houston, Texas! We’ve got Tex-Mex all over the place. Who goes there, anyway? More than once, I mean.
I don’t know how Red Lobster stays open around here. They’re just awful.
We have so many great local seafood restaurants, with chefs who can get truly fresh seafood, and really know how to prepare it. You can go to just about any local seafood place in town, and your dinner was more than likely swimming in the Bay that morning. You can go to some really nice places and sit right out on the water and just soak up the ambiance.
Why even bother with Red Lobster and their frozen and reheated crap?
Chi-Chi’s…ugh. There’s a great Mexican restaurant about 5 minutes from me, a REAL Mexican place, that’s just wonderful. Freshly-made salsa and homemade chips (that are still slightly sizzling) on the table. It’s what Chi-Chi’s can only dream about being. The platters don’t cost more than $6 or $7 dollars and you get enough for 2 or 3 people. Doggie bags are always in order.
All the Boston Markets around here have closed up.
I do like Macaroni Grill, though. I think both their food and service are good.
Damn, now I’m hungry.
I lived near the Carolina coast for more than 20 years, so I know what fresh seafood should taste like, and I LIKE Red Lobster. Well, Let me qualify that - I have been to Red Lobster restaurants all over the eastern USA and found that the quality of service and food varied a lot from place to place. Some were pretty horrible while others were more than acceptable. But in general, I have enjoyed the food at Red Loster for years. It’s certainly a different style of seafood than what I would get at the coast, but that doesn’t make it worse. I now live in Texas, and my family eats at our local RL at least once a week and loves it.
Oh my God! They killed Kenny!
You bastards!
Ewwwwwwwww!
Everybody knows the only way to eat lizard is fried on a stick!
Chain restaurants have, almost by definition, 2 major features:
- moderate prices.
- consistency.
And both of these tend to make chain restaurants, whether seafood, italian, mexican, or even hamburger chains, lean toward being basically mediocre.
Moderate prices means that you are going to be starting with supplies that are of medium quality, not your highest price-no-object quality, that you might see in a special local restaurant.
And consistency means a standardized menu for all locations (so no local specials to take advantage of local supplies – the Red Lobster in Maine gets it’s lobsters from the same supplier as the Red Lobster out in Nebraska). And no Chef’s specials – they’re not on the Red Lobster menu.
And then, to deal with the variable quality of cooks, this leads eventually to very standardized & detailed recipes, and even pre-made parts of the meal. Thus Red Lobster cheese biscuit dough is pre-made, and supplied to each location frozen. They just have to thaw and bake it. And (unless they burn them or undercook them), the biscuits are pretty much the same at every Red Lobster location.
And because the customers want it, standardized decor in all Red Lobsters, standard uniforms for the servers, and even standardized greetings, etc. (‘Hi, I’m x, and I’ll be your server tonight…’).
So you can go into a Red Lobster anywhere in the country, and get basically just what you expect. Some might be slower than others, some servers might mix up your order, sometimes an order might be overcooked, but basically, it’s the same all over.
Just like going to a McDonalds – you know what to expect, and generally that is exactly what you get. Nearly everyone can name a local joint that does hamburgers better than McDonalds. But at only 1 or 2 locations, in a limited volume – you won’t find them all over the country. And if they did try to expand to that, their quality would almost inevitably drop to the same level.
So really, it’s pointless to rail against a chain restaurant for the things that are just an inevitable part of being a chain restaurant. You know what to expect at them – if that isn’t what you wnat tonight, go somewhere else!
I’m sure consistency is what chains are after, but in reality, individual restaurants can vary a LOT.
In the town in which I previously lived, there was a RL about 20 miles from my house. If that had been the only RL I had ever eaten at, I would have wholeheartedly agreed that the whole chain sucks. Once at lunch, I ordered a baked potato and received one that was thoroughly cooked and stone cold - obviously left over from the night before. The food and service there were always sub-par. I tried eating there several times over a period of 3-4 years, hoping that management/staff would change and it would improve, but eventually gave up.
Twenty miles farther from my house was another RL, and the difference in the two was like night and day. The food was always hot and fresh (ok, well chain-food fresh:-) and the service was on-the-money. It was worth the extra 30 minute drive.
Admittedly this is a small sample.
I’ve heard of pie-floaters, but never seen one. As for the rest of Outback Steakhouse’s menu, in a nutshell, no it’s not Australian. 
Narrad: Outback food is non-Australian. For instance, Outback steaks are better than any steak I ever had in Australia.
t-bonham: Well said.
As for Olive Garden, the one in the Stonestown shopping area, San Francisco, was fine. The soup and breadsticks were tasty, and I liked that I could get all that I wanted. I’d generally fill up on several refills of soup, then take the main course to go. Made for two reasonably priced meals with no cooking. It wasn’t fantastic, but neither was it bad. Not by a long shot. On the other hand, I’ve been to some other Olive Gardens that didn’t make for a happy meal experience.
I’ve had “the good stuff.” I’ve been to amazing restaurants that serve incredibly well prepared food, with fantastic service. Does Olive Garden’s chicken parmigiana compare to Abra’s suckling pig? No. Does Olive Garden satisfy my need for really high quality food? No. But I dislike being called “stupid” or “wilfully ignorant” for having patronized Olive Garden when I wanted a quick meal. What’s wrong with eating at a chain when it gives you what you want?
Every time I go to Seattle to visit my uncle and his wife (Seattle, I say!) they take me to Red Lobster as a “special treat” on my last night in town.
In Seattle, fer cryin’ out loud!
Surely that’s blasphemy. :eek:
Just for the record, I like The Olive Garden. The one near me has good service, and the food is always pretty tasty.
However, I will look askance at someone who patronizes Red Lobster here in Baltimore when there are so many good, local seafood restaurants that are so far above and beyond what RL can offer.
I can’t imagine why someone would go to a place like that, and order something that’s been frozen and trucked in, over going to a local place, and ordering something freshly caught and prepared to order. (Just my opinion, of course)
On preview, I agree with what auntie em just said.
It’s fricking blasphemy to eat at a place like RL when you live in Baltimore.
Would I call them “Stupid” or “Willfully ignorant”? No, not to their face.
Are they “Stupid” and “Willfully ignorant”? Well, maybe not stupid, but yes on the willfully ignorant part. Or perhaps woefully ignorant.
As a vegetarian, pickiness is completely different. TGI Fridays has a fine Garden Burger and I can general convince people to go there over other chain resteraunts who’s food may be of an verall higher quality but lacking in any choices for me. We do have a local burger joint that has an awesome gardenburger, but for some reason, midwestern suburbanites consider a great night on the town Applebee’s. And before I get railed on for eating vggie burgers, not one of the ones i like even try to approximate meat. I dont like meat, Im not the type to enjoy being fooled into thinking Im eating it.
I really like the Outback… We always had great service and very good food. We’ve been a dew times and never had a bad meal. I am surprised a lot of people don’t like it.
TGI Friday in my area is pretty good too… although I only went there once.
I ate at the Olive Garden once, and didn’t think it was any good. Like most of you said there are so many good little place that I don’t see the need to go to a chain for Italian food (or seafood for that matter).