To add to this, some dishes at chain restaurants couldn’t be modified, even if they tried; they come already prepared and are just nuked.
My restaurant rule: google ahead when on the road. I tend to plan my stops on long road trips and a quick google search for what’s available, many times will yield options that I wouldn’t have known about had I just stopped at the first place off the interstate.
On trips that you frequently make, have favorites, but don’t be afraid (when they’re not slammed) to ask your server about different options. If s/he has seen you there before, they figure that you’ll be back from time to time, even if there’s another place close by with a different cuisine (example: “You wouldn’t happen to know of a good Italian place near this exit for the return trip, would you?” at a steakhouse. Coupled with a good tip, your server will likely tell you “Yeah, Mama Rosa’s at the next exit has a shrimp and angel hair pasta dish to die for.”)
My family did this on a recent trip to New York. We were in the mood for Italian but didn’t want to leave Midtown (on account of it being really freaking cold), so we asked the bartender at the hotel where he liked to go for Italian in the neighborhood. Perhaps not surprisingly, he didn’t recommend the Italian restaurant in the hotel, but rather another place a couple blocks away which turned out to be quite good.
Cheesecake Factory is the one place where they do a mostly decent job of having a book for a menu and making the various cuisines decent, if not great.
Every time I see the Cheesecake Factory on Big Bang Theory, with its two-sided diner menu, I wonder why they can’t borrow a real menu. You’d think they could pull 50 gags out of its length.
Don’t ask the waiter “What’s good?”. It’s such an open-ended question they won’t even know where to start. Instead, ask “Is the <insert dish here> good?”, or “I’m trying to decide between <dish A> and <dish B>”.
And it’s my philosophy that yes, you can actually trust the waiter with such questions, since they don’t want to serve you something that you won’t like: That’ll generally lead to lower tips and less repeat business.
It’s a very good list. I’d say for #7, look for the dishes in the middle of the price range. The most and least expensive dishes are likely to be overpriced. The middle range of the prices is also where you’ll find the dishes that match rule #2, the dish the restaurant is known for, the one they make most often, and the one that will have the freshest ingredients because of the high turnover.
Depressing. I’d rather go with, Never eat anything within half a mile of the interstate unless from a home-packed basket or cooler. If you must travel by interstate, get a few miles off it for meals. The time is well-spent for better food, better prices and better setting.
As mentioned, each distinct cuisine a restaurant offers lowers it’s quality by about half. An American-Mexican-Greek restaurant is going to be 25% as good as a straightforward Mexican restaurant. The exception is when the chef has one or two items from their own homeland on a diner menu.
Good Mexican restaurants have pickled veggies.
Just because a lot of Asian people are there does not mean that an Asian restaurant is good. I know my Chinese food, and I’ve been to some incredibly inauthentic slophouses that still have plenty of Asian clients. That said, daily specials on the wall in Chinese are a sign of a good Chinese restaurant, but there is probably a special menu you have to get to get the good stuff. Either that, or the authentic dishes will be put in willy-nilly with the American “lemon-chicken” stuff and people unfamiliar with real Chinese food won’t know what to pick.
Heh. One day a friend and I went out for lunch. He wanted sushi, I hated the stuff, so he went into a sushi restaurant full of Caucasians, and I hit the burger joint next door. The burger joint was full of Asians.
When we met afterwords, I asked if his sushi was horrible, and he said yes.
I know a very pleasant, non-preachy vegan. (I would never invite her for dinner, however.)
My rule of meat: if you aren’t fussy, and it’s a good restaurant, when the waitstaff asks you how you want it cooked, ask for “the chef’s preference”. A good chef will have a preferred style around which the meal was originally conceived; not only do you get to eat the original dish, such an order coming into the kitchen may inspire the chef to pay extra attention to your plate. Also, most chefs have a preference for rare - and so do I.
The Interstate rule skips the most important criteria of all: choose a busy truck stop if there is one. Truckers know where the good food is. And they are on the road enough that they do eventually start to want some fresh food, at a good price. They plan ahead and don’t ‘have’ to stop at any particular exit, so if the truck stop is busy, it’s either because they have a truck wash, they have substantially cheaper diesel, or the food is good. Usually the latter.
If the bathroom is filthy, never go back. I admit that I don’t check them out before I’m seated, and I’ve never canceled an order because of this, but a restaurant inspector once told me that there is almost always a direct correlation in cleanliness.
Why is it depressing? I live in a town with kickass restaurants; every few years the New York Times sends a reporter down here for a fluff piece about how great our restaurants are. When I’m on the road, I generally want to get to my destination quickly. Great food is not a priority at that point; it’s a time to settle for mediocre food. My experience is that chains along the interstate will have mediocre food, and that non-chains are generally horrifying. I guess I could pack a cooler, but it wouldn’t be hot, and I like a hot meal when I’m traveling.
This is not always true. I live in Trucking Central and while there a zillion good restaurants in town, they’re not accessible by truck. The restaurants that are accessible by truck are places like Denny’s and the restaurants located at truck stops. Why would I go to any of them if I can find better food at a better price in town?
If you’re on a road trip, and you’re more concerned about getting to your destination than having a quality dining experience, places like McDonalds, Whataburger, or Wendys all tend to be a solid bet: You can be reasonably sure of what you are going to get.
Of course, this depends greatly on what your opinion of said places tends to be normally. If you’re me, then they’re pretty decent, very fast, and affordable. If you’re many other people I have met on the SDMB, then they are horrible places with apathetic workers, cardboard food, and overpriced.
1.The afternoon will be filled with the after church crowd. This means lots of large parties and kids.
The restaurant is likely to be short staffed due to people calling in hung over or waiters not wanting to deal with the after church crowd.
The restaurant is likely to be out of several items after a busy Friday/Saturday night.
At night, the after church crowd is gone, but the restaurant is likely to be even more short staffed if they use a Monday-Sunday workweek. The managers are likely to send staff home once they’ve reached their 40 hour limit. This goes double for a chain with a ‘No overtime, ever’ unwritten policy.
Thanks for sharing.