Here’s another variation on the good chain restaurants/bad chain restaurants threads that have been so popular in IMHO lately - restaurants that are bad, but everybody seems to love them nonetheless.
A perfect example would be White Castle. Most fans of the chain, in describing its appeal, seem to focus on the negative - “The workers are always rude, there’s all sorts of strange customers hanging around, the fries are greasy, it takes forever to get my food, the place is filthy, and sliders give me the farts. I love White Castle!”
Mighty Taco in western New York also has a similar reputation. The food there tastes pretty good – much better than Taco Bell or other fast Mexican food chains – but it’s also known for its effects on the digestive system. Everyone younger than 50 in the Buffalo area seems to have a story about puking from a Super Mighty, but ask expats what they miss the most about home, and Mighty Taco almost always comes up. “Oh, man, back when I was going to Buff State, I went to Mighty, and got a bean and cheese burrito. I was hurling all night, and I must have had the runs for a week afterwards. I love Mighty Taco!”
Casa Bonita in Denver is extremely popular. People wait hours in line to get bland Mexican food, served cafeteria style, haul their tray a few hundred feet to a table, and eat their enchilads among the swarms of screaming kids. People are always bashing the food and the dining environment, but they still swarm back there. "The sopapillas are great!
So, what bad restaurants do people love around your neck of the woods?
Back when I lived in Cleveland, the Beef Corral restaurants would have fit this bill. I actually saw a kid barf on one of the tables once just after eating.
They went out of business a long time ago, though.
Waffle House. Always staffed by mutants, with other mutants grafted to the stools at the end of the counter, and one table with extreme religious phamplets left on it.
The Hamburg Inn. It’s a grungy, greasy diner-type place. It looks like a hole in the wall and the food is awful. I’m afraid to touch anything when I’m in there because it’s greasy and disgusting. The decor is chipped brown Formica.
And yet it’s locally famous. When political figures come to town–Ronald Reagan, John Kerry, etc.–they go eat at the Hamburg Inn. There are pictures of these people plastered all over the walls. It makes me shudder to think that’s the image of ourselves that we’re presenting to people we want to impress.
I used to have a roommate who would brag about how her boyfriend would buy her dinner at the Hamburg Inn all the time. All that made me think was that he was a cheap bastard with no taste. Yet everyone else seemed impressed. Even my sister, who is a picky eater and a clean freak, adores the place. However, when I press them for reasons why they like it, they can’t offer anything. I’m totally befuddled.
Nick Tahou’s in Rochester. Their signature dish is the “garbage plate” and it deserves the name. Filled with unsavory people late at night, filthy bathrooms, and surly workers. It’s a VERY popular hang out for the college crowd after last call.
The GM Steakhouse, formerly in Austin. It was a burger joint, staffed with skinheads who were always on the lookout for ways to insult a customer. Back in the 1980s, my wife once saw a student ask why the hamburgers cost a quarter more than the cheeseburgers. The woman (I can’t help but think that she was set up) started crying as the counterperson laid into her with a description of all the extra work that they had to go through in order to make a cheeseburger into a hamburger.
It’s long gone, and the burgers weren’t bad, but the service at least deserved a mention.
My friend Eric told me about the garbage plate once. Ugh.
I love Waffle House – they’re beautiful in their perfect uniformity. Always an ugly but friendly waitress, always a pasty rail-thin guy with a straggly mustache on the grill, always two damn files buzzing around.
At least 50% of the barbecue joints I have been in (in Middle Tennessee) do not bear close scrutiny. Do not look around, do not read the inspection score on the wall and do NOT ask to use the restrooms while you are there. There is a reason they are called barbecue “joints.”
Fortunately, the pure pork goodness makes up for it. I’m reasonably confident my body can handle the other stuff.
The Santa Cruz Diner definitely fits into this category. Greasy, greasy food, rushed and unhappy servers, questionable hygiene, yet I go there all the time. Must have something to do with the 24 hours breakfast as well as the delicious Vietnamese spring rolls.
There’s a place in St. Louis called O.T. Hodge Chile Parlor that serves the most vile slop you’ve ever seen masquerading as chile(i). It is nothing more than a blended, processed, reddish colored soupy thing, with absolutely no texture or “contents” (no chunks of tomatoes or actual beef or chiles or peppers or beans or anything). The establishments themselves are greasy spoon diners where everyone shares large tables with other patrons. Their most famous dish is called “The Slinger,” and consists of potatoes, bunless cheeseburger patties and over-easy eggs, completely smothered in this “chile slop.” The object is to immediately break open the runny yolks and mix it all up with the other crap on the plate. I have rarely seen anything so vile in my entire life.
And yet they’ve been in business for 101 years!! and pack them in.
The key litmus test of the restaurants mentioned so far in this thread, I think, is that their patrons – and possibly the population at large – acknowledge that the atmosphere and/or their food is awful, yet continue to patronize it. I’m not talking about a foodie perspective of questioning the popularity of chains such as Olive Garden and Applebee’s, or old-people restaurants whose customers can’t tell that the food is bad, but rather those places that have a cult following, where the customers know the food is bad, but they still defend the place, and sometimes go out of their way to eat there.
Nick Tahou’s is a good example. Their customers know the food and service is awful, yet they still love the place; it’s practically a local landmark.
Joe Tess Fish. I simply can’t bear the place myself, but it has a lot of defenders locally. (South Omaha, Nebraska). If your idea of good eats is breaded, fried, scrawny boney catfish, this is your place! Maybe it’s nostalgic for some people, since I swear they must be using the same grease for frying that they used when they started in business ages ago.
Not too many of them around anymore, but my GF loves Bob’s Big Boy.
I guess that there are just a few dishes that when you haven’t had them in a while, you forget why they’re really not that good. (The chicken parmesean plate, served on a plate of pretty darned ordinary spaghetti and, uh, sauce.)
We’ve also got a Tommy’s fast food stand around here; the tamale and chile combo is to die for (and I don’t mean that in a nice way).
Real Chili (two locations in Milwaukee, it’s also at 1625 W Wells) does it for me.
The use of spaghetti instead of macaroni is an interesting textural chance, and the opportunity to add your own onions and sour cream, along with oils and spices of your choice!
Back in my RIT days I won a $50 bet for eating the garbage plate. The garbage plate isn’t on the menu; you have to ask for it special. I shat liquid for three days straight.
Whoa. Are you talking about the one at Grand River and Novi? I had a couple of friends who worked there when we were in high school. That one’s gone now, but there’s still one on…I wanna say Farmington Rd and 5 mile, but I could be a mile off.
