One thing they all have in common around here, and “they” being places like McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, Sonic, Portillo’s, Panera, etc, is that the current prices aren’t worth the product you are buying. The guys I work with are paying about $15 bucks a day for their lunches. I can and do make my own lunch at home for a fraction of the cost, and it is tasty and much healthier.
That’s nothing new; it’s always been cheaper to make your own lunch rather than to buy fast food. You’re paying for the convenience and perhaps something you can’t or don’t make at home.
THIS big a difference? I can make 5 lunches for the price of their one.
I have no idea on the exact multiples, but yes, home cooking has always been cheaper.
When I was growing up there were only a few Pal’s, with none in Bristol. They sell the legendary drink Dr. Enuf, which is somehow appropriate since it’s been a local drink for 75 years.
We go to Bristol several times a year to fly fish on the South Holston and Watauga, that’s where I ran into PAL’s. We always eat there at least once, it’s been consistently good service and food.
I miss cocos ours went out about 2010
bunch of lunch! in the summers when mom was tired of us hooligans and she knew the manager there shed drop us off to play videogames and stuff our gills for a few hours … sometimes thyed even let us take the left overs home
oh, ours is crazy ottos diners it started as a tiny breakfast lunch place next to the railroad tracks now there are like 5 of them but only the main one serves dinner …and well, it isn’t really consistent on the dinner menu since the 2nd owner but the breakfast stuff and lunch stuff is still good…
but it’s known for things like selling a pancake plate that’s one pancake… that weights a pound and is cooked in a specially made pan that’s based on a 50s caddy hubcap the portions are huuuge
Have you checked out Ridgewood BBQ? Not a chain, but one of the best BBQ joints in the country. The kids and I used to eat at Pal’s, but now that it’s just Ms. P and me we don’t (she’s vegetarian).
Oh yeah, I know Ridgewood. Their pork is different than traditional pork, it’s more ‘shaved.’ It’s really good on a pizza, we’ll bring some back and use it for our version of Jiggy Ray’s Appalachian pit pie (a place in Elizabethton).
Another good chain in the area is the Mad Greek.
Interesting, Squeeze In is still around in a similar market (more east + Modesto) but don’t acknowledge each other.
Similarly, Northern NV has a weird pizza place situation, I assume feuding family or business partner situation. They have separate websites that don’t acknowledge the other ones, but have an almost identical logo:
Blind Onion, with currently one location
Blind Onion, with 3 locations
Blind Onion, with 3 locations in Portland, OR
Wild Garlic, 2 locations
I mean, yes, @Dewey_Finn is correct, ,it’s always been cheaper, but the scale of increase for fast-ish food has been substantially more than the noticeable cost of staples to cook your own.
Pre-COVID, and in part before fast food started targeting young professionals on the go as their primary market, the various value or dollar menus meant you could get a solidish, or at least filling meal for $4-5 even without coupons.
Which is why so many chains are bringing back (for a limited time which will likely be extended) value package meals in the $5 range. Even they realize they’ve overstepped.
Back to the thread though, on a recentish trip (March) to visit my folks in New Mexico, I got to go through my favorite local chain, Blake’s Lotaburger (which I’m pretty sure I mentioned upthread) but the location I visited had very obviously been bought by new, franchise/corporate overlords, and had very much experienced upscaling, both in the dining area and bathrooms (nice!) but also with all TV screen menus, push button ordering, and some noticeable loss of quality while matching modern Fast Food prices. Still better than any national fast food chain, but now not the local outlier of years past.
You really have to use the apps these days to get normal prices. Typically, restaurant markup is 3-4 times ingredient cost.
and until recently, Melt
In SoCal Fatburger and Original Tommy’s (chile burger to die for!)
The one that I think of isn’t one that’s based around here or even within the U.S. It’s Nando’s, which is most known for its flame-grilled chicken. It was based on the style done by Portuguese immigrants to Mozambique. It was first founded in South Africa, although it’s now owned by a British company. The country with the most of their outlets is the U.K., although Australia has a larger amount of them per capita. It’s has over 1,200 outlets around the world. Most of the ones in the U.S. are near me. 29 of the 45 ones in the U.S. are in the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area. I had visited several of the restaurants in the U.K. before they opened their first in the U.S. and was overjoyed that they did so.
I know this is replying to a two year old post, but I don’t think anyone else addressed this comment, so I will.
I like Chicago style pizza, and a good deep dish is my preferred pizza, so this is in no way some sort of pretentious “New York is the only real pizza” review.
A few years back a Rosati’s opened near me (northern Denver suburbs), and I was excited to get some proper Chicago pizza. Unfortunately it was really bad. It was all in the cooking. The ingredients seemed to be good, but the deep dish was a soggy, undercooked mess, that was a perfect example of everything people hate about Chicago style pizza.
I’ve not been back to see if they’ve corrected the problems.
Oh my, had a visit there today that made this place elevated in my mind. I’d been there before, but I’d only had breakfast, because we’d always visited at breakfast time. They make an awesome breakfast, but it was just breakfast food. That’s generally pretty easy, even if they offered an extravagant steak breakfast that I’ve never ordered.
Well, this time we went for dinner. They still serve breakfast then, of course, and I was tempted. French toast and bacon is always a good answer. But I opted for a plate of onion rings for an appetizer and a bacon cheeseburger with fries for my meal. My sweetie opted for a vegetable plate because she was planning on getting a slice of coconut cream pie for dessert from the start.
Wow, the onion rings were divine, as were the complimentary corn bread muffin and yeast roll you get. The cornbread was simultaneously large grained, smooth and moist, while being sweet but not so sweet you’d mistake it for cake. My burger was possibly the best burger I’d had in my adult life. I spent half my meal wondering where’d I’d tasted just about the same cheeseburger before. It eventually dawned on me that it was reminding me of the cheeseburgers I’d had at The Counter in Tyler, TX. That was a local chain around Tyler as well, long gone. They specialized in burgers and a soda fountain theme. The last time I had one of those, I think that The Empire Strikes Back was in the the theater. The flavor still sticks in my mind.
My wife was similarly head over heels about her vegetable plate. The greens were wonderful and smoky, the lima beans were giant and tasty instead of little green flavorless guys, she was delighted. I had a bite of her coconut cream pie with its giant meringue, and it was great as well.
Long story short, if you’re in DFW and have a calorie deficit you need to fill, visit a Norma’s.
I don’t eat out much, but when I do I often splurge on sushi, but my two favourite restaurants aren’t chains and so don’t qualify.
One place that I occasionally go to that meets all your criteria is “The Keg”, originally called “The Keg’n’Cleaver” years ago. You’ve probably never heard of it because it’s mostly a Canadian chain, but they do have nine US locations, five of them in Arizona for some reason. In Canada, they’re all over the place.
They bill themselves as a steakhouse but the menu is actually pretty wide-ranging, with seafood, burgers, and much else, including my favourite, roast beef. And a good selection of sides you can order with the main besides whatever it may come with. Also a good selection of appetizers and drinks, including reasonable wines, and a decent bar if you have to wait for a table (although they now appear to take reservations – they once did not). Plus some nice desserts or, if you prefer, one of those alcoholic coffees decorated with whipped cream to finish off.
It’s not particularly cheap but not super-expensive either. Dinner for two with a few drinks might be around $150, maybe a bit more if you get carried away with wine or several fancy appetizers. One potential problem: the Keg is the kind of place where you may run into a moderately large gathering celebrating a birthday or some stupid business event, and of course such mobs tend to be LOUD if they happen to be near your table. It’s far from a routine occurrence, but it does happen from time to time. In general, I recommend it and do keep coming back.
One of those locations is in Lynnwood, just north of Seattle. Maybe I’ll have to check it out if I ever make it to that end of Puget Sound.