This. A dinner for two costs you $70 when the quality suggests $30.
This again. Go to LJS and a dinner for two costs you $20 when the quality suggests $20.
There’s nothing objectively wrong with Red Lobster’s food; just don’t charge me premium prices for average-below average fare.
Quiet, you! You’re making me hungry. Daughter’s going to what is now a Mexican bistro, but I remember when I would check if Dad was cooking 'cuz his sons were always high. Now the sons are all respectable-like and run the joint, but one still looks like a gorilla stuffed into a business suit.
Let’s see if I have this calculation right: Busty wench touching your food is okay, but anybody else touching your food is not. Yep, works for me, and that thinking has kept Hooters in business all these years.
It was mediocre and bland, exactly as people have described it in this thread. The decor was dated and threadbare. The prices were too high for the quality of food. It was the absolute picture of the stereotypical Red Lobster.
Of course I also ate at an Olive Garden for the first time this year (we don’t have them in Canada, and I’d heard bad things about them) and the food was stunningly bad. I don’t know how THAT place stays in business, but, I guess these things come and go.
If I was made of money, and cholesterol and other such things weren’t in the equation, I’d eat at LJS every day. I love there fish. Now, you could make the argument that there fish dosn’t really taste like fish, but I love whatever it is.
We do (or did, I’ve heard that it closed) have one in Calgary, which was always absurdly busy. It’s a good place if you want to gorge yourself on breadsticks. But then, we have East Side Mario’s which is basically the same thing.
I’ll throw another reason out there: The rise of flex scheduling and telecommuting means fewer people have the traditional lunch hour. I worked at Red Lobster in the late 1980s and they usually did a pretty brisk lunch business. Red Lobster doesn’t have the bar and grill type atmosphere that a Chilis, Applebees, or TGI Fridays has, so they’re also not going to make money from people stopping in for a beer and finger foods from 4-6 either.
I’ve never had fish from LJS, but I have a thing for their chicken strips. The little crunchies they put in the box… mmmm…
Olive Garden is owned by Darden’s, the same company that owns Red Lobster, so there’s no mystery they’re seeing similar issues.
People comparing RL to LJS are wrong. LJS is fast food, marketed as fast food - $5 dinner, and a remarkably limited menu (you can get white fish, or shrimp). It’s the McDonalds of seafood. RL is a step up from fast food ($10 dinner), but market themselves as higher market ($20 per plate). People have far greater access to good seafood, far wider availability of “exotic” seafood, and the dishes prepared in much greater variety and creativity. If all you want is shrimp (the bulk of RL’s seafood menu), you can get that anywhere.
Couple that with poor management decisions to cut corners to cut costs, and an economy downturn that puts people who might eat there pinching pennies, and you have a recipe for going out of business.
The expectation is that an employee of the company has certain hygiene expectations that she will probably meet, whereas any random customer may not. If you’re not comfortable with an employee of the restaurant touching your food, then don’t go to restaurants.