I think 85% of chain restaurants should be nuked from orbit. They make bland dishes created for people with underdeveloped palates.
I think the worst of all chain restaunts is Red Lobster. One of the reasons it’s so bad is because there are certain people who consider it as a fancy restaurant. You will seriously see some people dressing up to eat at this shithole. The decor is awful, it looks like some unsophisticated meth-head drummed up some theme he thinks that looks like a real nautical getaway.
The food is so not fresh. When you walk in, the smell of a umkept lass with BV hits you right in the face. The salmon, the salmon! It’s farm-raised and drowned in some marinade that tastes like bull-semen and lemon pledge.
Yet my grandma loves it. :smack: Well, at least the cheddar biscuits are good!
What do you consider as the worst chain restaurant?
I’ve never been to Red Lobster (allergies) so while they may be the worst, for me, Olive Garden is atrocious.
And not in a food-snobby way. I have a friend that I nicknamed the goat as he eats pretty much anything. First time I went to the OG with him and even he didn’t finish.
Meh. That can pretty much sum up all of them, and I’m pretty sure that’s by design. They fall neatly into a handful of categories and within those categories they’re pretty much interchangeable.
Bring me menus from TGIFridays, Chili’s, and Applebees, or Olive Garden, Carrabba’s, and Macaroni Grill with the logos removed and I certainly wouldn’t be able to tell them apart.
Not to threadshit, but they stand out primarily because they do not stand out. The food is edible-to-okay but never anything great. Picking a “best” or “worst” is therefore impossible.
I have fond memories of Red Lobster. My grandparents used to pick me up from the dorm when I was in college and take me to eat there, encouraging me to get the big platter with six kinds of fish on it. After eating out of a can or eating some of the worse cafeteria food I’ve ever had in my life, it was heaven. Mmmmm, fried shrimp!
My “worst” designation goes to KFC. That chicken is inedible.
Applebees by a large margin, all of the other chains I’ve eaten at have food that’s at least edible. Not fantastic fine dining mind you, but it’s generally pretty tasty for the price. Applebees on the other hand…well let’s just say that I’ve had Banquet frozen meals that taste better than most of what they sell.
Cuz he was too fulled up on salad and breadsticks!!
I’d like to say Red Lobster but I don’t go there to begin with. Not a seafood fan at all. But a few friends recently went there and it got non-too-great reviews.
I’d have to say Applebees. I played trivia there for a few months last year and by the third month I was just all “make it stop!” trying to come up with food I wanted to eat every week. And I like boring food!
I don’t even remember what it was that I disliked so much about Applebees, but I was really turned off by the time I left.
H00ters. I understand the marketing and the business model–but if they were to rely solely on the quality of the food, they’d be out of business soonly. I’ll stop short of saying it’s bad, but it’s in the low rungs of mediocre.
My mother has a term for this: Predictable mediocracy.
She coined that term when we were trapped in Gainesville, home of predictable mediocracy. Pretty much every restaurant (at least on Archer) was a chain. We got pretty sick of it.
Actually the worst was Wendy’s, but this particular Wendy’s is far worse then the rest of the chain. It was seriously awful.
And my sister’s family took me to Olive Garden. Actually not too bad, but my sister’s family considers it a real treat. That’s high-quality quisine to them.
Somewhat regional (mostly West Coast) is the horrible Wienerschnitzel chain - imagine my disappointment, after having lived in Germany, to go in there to find that crappy menu.
I went to an Applebee’s once - I found it an overpriced, bland menu that made your average truck stop look like a five star restaurant in comparison.
I also went to a Carl’s Jr. once - not impressed. And when I later found out lots of people boycotted them for their support of right-wing political donations, it was quite easy to resist going back.
The food isn’t great or anything, but I’d give it to TGIFriday’s just for the service.
I’ve been to half a dozen TGIFriday’s in three different states, and I can’t believe how terrible the service was at all of them. I am not a demanding customer at all, but I don’t think it’s too much to ask that the server not roll her eyes when I ask politely for more water. And just for kicks one time, I ordered take out and picked it up at the bar. The bartender took my cash, went to the cash register (at the other end of the bar; I don’t know why it was set up like that), got my change, set it right next to the cash register, and walked away. What the fuck?
How has this kind of stuff happened at every TGIFriday’s I’ve been to? Is there some kind of corporate-wide server-training program in need of a massive overhaul?
