Crap is crap and there is no difference between those places that are crap. You listed many places I will never eat at unless I really am starving a which point a person will eat anything when the pangs are strong enough. Examples are dumpster divers.
Chuck E. Coli
We don’t have Waffle House here, so I’ve never been inside one. I’ve seen them from the outside when I traveled for work, and I’ve never seen a single one that didn’t look like it should be condemned.
Right? We called it the Chi, and only ordered the minimum amount of food that would qualify us for a pitcher of Margaritas. The margaritas sucked, too (99% sour mix), but we were underage and they didn’t card.
The headquarters of McDonald’s is in the Chicago suburbs. Each year there’s a huge Taste of Chicago festival in Grant Park, and people swarm the park, coming from the city, the suburbs, and tourists who are there. You buy a pack of tickets to eat samples or full-size dishes from dozens of different restaurants in Chicago.
And who has a really big booth? Yup. McDonald’s. I can see getting grouchy and/or picky little kids something from there, but the lines really don’t match that faint hope of a situation. 
C’mon, you fight the crowds, buy tickets specially to eat this food, and … you waste them on McDonald’s? I don’t expect everyone to hit the African restaurant’s stand for some goat curry, but there are some awesome foods there from all over the city, and you know the food inspectors are out on the prowl so that’s not even a concern like Some Random Hole-in-the-Wall might be for your average nervous tourist.
If I go to a restaurant I’ve never gone to before, the food could be good or it could be crap. If it’s crap, then I’m either not going to eat lunch or I’m going to have to eat crappy food. If I go to TGIFridays, I know what they have, I know what I like, and I know what its quality is going to be.
I’m in this camp, too. Not everyone considers a meal as a chance to take a flavor safari.
I get that, but then the problem is you’re always eating the same old stuff. My husband and I went on vacation a few weeks ago, and ate at (does some quick math) about 10 different new-to-us restaurants. One was bleh, the others were good to awesome! The other experiences seriously more than made up for the one that was sub-par.
If you’re lucky, you can get out of a bad food situation early and make up for it. My husband and I went to a Chinese restaurant in San Francisco that had horrible service (they seemed more interested in supplying the takeout orders than the few in-restaurant customers) and blah food. We paid the waiter for the appetizers we’d received and picked at, canceled the rest of the order, and left. We walked across the street to a Japanese restaurant, where we had one of the best sushi dinners we’ve ever experienced.
Fair point but I’d still personally rather take a chance on something new in the hopes that I’ll love it. Especially when there are dozens of books and places online where I can find out who else sampled it and what they thought.
I can understand one or two meals at a place like Olive Garden but an entire trip of nothing but Olive Garden (especially in a place like NYC) seems to me to missing out on great chances in life. I live in the land of the strip mall. I don’t want to bring it with me when I travel.
It gets much worse inside. I only go when forced by a group, but most of the people I associate know better than to enter one. The “W” burned out on the sign of one in a town I used to live in and stayed that way for a long time. Since, then, I have called it the Affle (Awful) House.
Oh my gawd … I drove by an Applebees yesterday, and the sight of the place made me projectile vomit like a firehose for hours afterwards. :rolleyes:
Seriously, if there’s an evil chain, it’s McDonald;'s. It’s the poor service (much slower in recent years), the food, the dirty restaurants, and dealing with them as a business; they tend violate or to push the limits of zoning and sign regulations much more so than other chains.
Best. Nickname. Ever.
I agree with McDonald’s. Though there are many valid choices on the poll list, no one food entity has sullied the concept of “food” quite like them. And they charge more than just about any other burger chain for the privilege of eating processed styrofoam.
Now, to take sit-down restaurants as a separate category, I’d make it a toss-up between PF Chang’s and Romano’s Macaroni Grill.
Chang’s: By definition, Chinese food is probably the cheapest to prepare, and prepare well. And yet Chang’s insists on making its customers pay for that horrible tacky statue in front of each one of their stores. And it’s not even good Chinese food. Any major city must have at least two or three reasonably authentic Chinese places–why even go to this overpriced craphouse?
Romano’s: At one time, they were leaps and bounds better than Olive Garden. Now, ever since they were bought out, their emphasis has been on “light Mediterranean fare.” Translation: small portions and grossly inflated prices. Olive Garden, OTOH, while still not terrific, has improved the quality of their food significantly in recent years.
Dishonorable mention: I’m not a seafood eater, but Mrs. Know is, and you couldn’t get her within a hundred yards of a Dead Lobster.
Well, Red Lobster gets my vote as most evil because not only did they defend discriminating against gay employees, they tried to argue that our laws in Cook county banning such conduct are unconstitutional.
Applebees gets my vote for the most evil food and worst service though. Microwaved plastic food like stuff served after it has been allowed to congeal, with servers who were actively hostile and mocking, not just once, but every time I went to any Applebees.
Soupersalad! That made my day.
I voted for Applebee’s. There’s a reason I call it “Assholebleeds.” I’ve only been back if forced after a raw chicken experience.
And I respect any vote for Olive Garden. That’s evil on a plate. Pricey evil at that.
We have friends who visited NYC for the first time a few years ago. They checked into their Times Square hotel, got ready for a night on the town, walked out onto the street ready to find a great restaurant… and chose Chili’s. When they told Mr. Winnie and I about his, he and I literally both just stood there and stared at them for a moment, thinking maybe we’d both simultaneously hallucinated. How difficult would it have been to walk a block or two find a really good, if even GREAT pizzeria or some other type of restaurant? The worst part was that they were really excited about it, and spend several hours there chatting up some other people they’d met from Virginia. While the most fun and intriguing city in the world pulsed with excitement just outside the greasy window of the Chili’s.
Or you can find a brand new trigger for your inflammatory bowel disease, and spend the rest of the vacation in the hotel, on the toilet. Think of it, you’ve been saving up for a year, you’re paying out the nose for these accommodations, and the sight you’re gonna see is the inside of a hotel bathroom.
Triggers are not always readily apparent in the menu description, or even visible in the food itself.
Been there, done that, got the little bottle of shampoo as a souvenir.
If I go to McDonald’s or Friday’s, I know that the best I’ll get is mediocre. On the other hand, I know EXACTLY what I’ll get. It’ll be pretty much the same thing as I get at home.
Hey, I’m a vegetarian, I know from triggers. The thing is, I’m safer not eating at most of those chain restaurants as a result, because I do know that most of their food doesn’t work for me. I can’t even eat the freaking fries at McD’s. If you have serious food intolerances, that’s one thing.
It just makes me sad to see people flock to big chain places that they can eat at back home when in a new, wonderful city full of choices if there’s no reason for it other than “Oh, I love Omnipresent Restaurant, let’s go there!” So many little restaurants fail each year (something like 75% within a year or two, IIRC) and sure, for many there are things that the restaurants could have done. But plenty of well-run, interesting places fail just because they can’t get their word out efficiently and sufficiently enough to keep going. So many people eat at chains out of sheer habit.
I voted for McDonald’s, because I do think they are the most evil chain restaurant, but if I was dying of hunger and faced with a strip mall with all of these restaurants, I’d probably go there over several other places, such as Taco Bell, which is just disgusting.
I’m also not impressed with Cracker Barrel, which I visited once and spent ten minutes scanning the menu before I finally found the ONE vegetarian thing on the menu - a baked potato. Even the salads, every once of them, had meat. When I complained about this to my boyfriend, the waitress, who was approaching the table, overheard me, and was very snotty about it to me.
The first time I ever visited the Midwest, it was for my friend’s wedding in Cleveland in 2001. The groom’s parents took me and the groom’s best friend out for breakfast at Bob Evan’s the day of the wedding. The groom’s best friend (from Texas) and I (from California) both ordered scrambled eggs. When we asked for salsa to eat with the eggs, the waitress looked at us like we were crazy and offered ketchup, permanently cementing in my mind an image of Bob Evan’s as an example of extreme Midwestern blandness.
And now that I live in the Midwest and know that salsa is plentiful and often tasty and hot, it seems weird and almost reactionary not to have salsa to eat with one’s eggs.
My last visit to one had these highlights, and I mean last as in forever.
- Dirty and and crowded.
- Person brings out milk shake when I order a malt. They tell me it’s the same thing.
- The food comes out 30 minutes later. and of course the drink is gone by then.
- My bacon cheese burger was a burger with liquid artificial cheese sauce poured over it. I always ask in a new place if the cheese on burgers is a slice of cheese now as the other thing was gross and unexpected. This is Wisconsin where cheese is King. Who would pull this shit.
- Ethnic employees verbally abusing each other. It was slightly better than the filthy Burger King where they told the manager to fuck off they weren’t cleaning plus they swore at each other. I never went there again either.
I voted for cici with Outback a close second. What Cici 's does to pizza is an abomination. Funny Applebee’s sucks ass too… i was once chosen in KC to go to their coporate HQ and eat two meals and give an assessment. WHile i was their a lady told me you can get Applebee’s in Athens Greece… and on a barge in the NILE river. I asked why in the world would anyone eat at Applebee’s if they were in Athens. she just glared at me and said… well sometimes you just want the taste of Applenbee’s… Okay… WHEN does anyone wake up and say “I just gotta have the taste of Applebee’s”??
“Eatin’ good in the neighborhood”…even if that neighborhood is Syntagma Square or Mohandissen.