Chain restaurants..Applebees, Chilis, TGIFridays, Red Lobster, Olive Garden etc... - Page 2

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[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Chain restaurants..Applebees, Chilis, TGIFridays, Red Lobster, Olive Garden etc... (Page 2 of 2)

Posted: 1/6/2008 6:39:06 PM EDT

[#1]

Quoted:
Most everything you will ever eat out at a restaurant is "Par-Cooked" ahead of time. Partially cooked as far as it can go without unacceptable quality loss and then re-heated/cooked when ordered. Most proteins are frozen and then either cooked from frozen (fried fish) or thawed and then parcooked before final service (Chicken, steak, pork, etc.). Burgers are pre-made and frozen. Shrimp is universally frozen, other seafood is generally shitty quality but fresher than meats since it is has more obvious signs of spoilage.

Most starches are made in house, rice, pasta and mashed potatoes are too simple to make in house to be bought pre-made. Rice and pasta are pre-cooked days in advance and then refrigerated, final service for pasta is a dunk in a pot of boiling water and then a heavy toss into whatever sauce goes with the dish. Mashed potatoes are reconstituted from powders or chips but are sometimes actually made from whole potatoes boiled and mashed.

Most soups and sauces are made somewhere else and arrive bagged and frozen, some sauces require minor prep work. Gravies/Demi-Glace/Fettucini Sauce can be made from powders reconstituted with water.

Beans, some sauces, veggies and fruits are usually canned and then opened and heated when needed. Fresh veggies are becoming more common but are generally overcooked and underseasoned.

Salads generally arrived washed and bagged, sometime romaine is cut and washed in house. Dressings are usually found in gallon jugs with the occasional dive making their own ranch dressing from the powder (it's much better this way.) Tomatoes are sliced in house but are shit. Onions come pre-cut and bagged as do carrots.

Deserts are almost universally premade and are shit. Items like Tiramisu and certain cheesecakes are usually housemade but lack flavor and quality of a true pastry chef.

*This generally pertains to chain restaurants.

Do yourself a favor and spend some time researching smaller locally owned establishments. Find the ones that change their menu with the seasons and use quality ingredients. If they have a real Chef, talk to him and find out what they use and just how good they are. Never eat at chains again.

I think you are talking about "chain style" restaurants, and not the higher end ones. I know many higher end chains places around me have head chefs and such that will make you pretty much anything you ask for. Mitchel's fish market and Andiamo Italia will cook you anything you ask for. Mitchel's gets their fish flown in daily and Andiamo's will buy local produce and such.

Posted: 1/6/2008 6:39:23 PM EDT

[#2]

Quoted:

Quoted:
sysco

Winnah!

Sysco sells groceries, among other things. All restaraunts, be they a hot dog stand or a fine dining establishment with a fancy french chef, must get thier food from some kind of supplier. The Chains in question, for the most part, have a logisitcal scheme more like McDonalds. All Sysco is, is a middle-man that warehouses and delivers groceries in bulk.

Posted: 1/6/2008 6:47:32 PM EDT

[#3]

Sysco sells heat and serve too. That's a fact. I have a friend that works for Sysco.

In fact at Romano's Macaroni Grill I recently got a Syscos, still cool, meal and the waitress admitted it was one of the few items on the menu not made in house.

Posted: 1/6/2008 6:55:25 PM EDT

[#4]

Put it this way,if the Sysco supply chain broke down,the chain restaraunts would be without food.

Posted: 1/6/2008 7:47:07 PM EDT

[#5]

.

Posted: 1/6/2008 7:52:55 PM EDT

[#6]

Quoted:

Sysco sells groceries, among other things. All restaraunts, be they a hot dog stand or a fine dining establishment with a fancy french chef, must get thier food from some kind of supplier. The Chains in question, for the most part, have a logisitcal scheme more like McDonalds. All Sysco is, is a middle-man that warehouses and delivers groceries in bulk.

I own stock in that company, they sell a lot more that groceries.

Posted: 1/6/2008 7:59:11 PM EDT

[#7]

Quoted:
I just ate at Red Lobster tonight and had the ultimate feast w/a Long Island ice tea.
It was very good.

Last time I ate at Red Lobster I had the same thing. Two days later I was over having the screaming shitz.

Posted: 1/6/2008 8:06:13 PM EDT

[#8]

Quoted:

Quoted:

Sysco sells groceries, among other things. All restaraunts, be they a hot dog stand or a fine dining establishment with a fancy french chef, must get thier food from some kind of supplier. The Chains in question, for the most part, have a logisitcal scheme more like McDonalds. All Sysco is, is a middle-man that warehouses and delivers groceries in bulk.

I own stock in that company, they sell a lot more that groceries.

yes i know, paper disposables, menus, cleaning supplies, heavy kitchen equipment, and the list goes on and on. Im actually considering taking an M.A. job with Sysco in a few months.

eta- Funny what a political science degree gets you

Posted: 1/6/2008 8:10:59 PM EDT

[#9]

I hate eating out in general because It costs too much.

There was one rib place that I did always look forward going to. They grilled the ribs on a grill right behind the bar kind of. You could hear them sizzling when they laid them on there. Then they had the best tasting celery seed coleslaw ever. Best of all they had the best prices ever. Unfortunately they shut down.

CiCi's pizza is pretty cheap for 2 people @$10 w/ water. Pizza istn that great but hard to beat all you can eat for $5 each.

Posted: 1/6/2008 8:13:46 PM EDT

[#10]

There aint NO WAY illegal aliens can cook that good.Its all pre-cooked and then heated when your order it...

Posted: 1/6/2008 8:17:16 PM EDT

[#11]

Quoted:

Quoted:

Sysco sells groceries, among other things. All restaraunts, be they a hot dog stand or a fine dining establishment with a fancy french chef, must get thier food from some kind of supplier. The Chains in question, for the most part, have a logisitcal scheme more like McDonalds. All Sysco is, is a middle-man that warehouses and delivers groceries in bulk.

I own stock in that company, they sell a lot more that groceries.

yes i know, paper disposables, menus, cleaning supplies, heavy kitchen equipment, and the list goes on and on. Im actually considering taking an M.A. job with Sysco in a few months.

eta- Funny what a political science degree gets you

ex-gf worked there, just be prepared to work your ass off, get disgusted and move on in a year or so. They burn em out pretty quick.

Posted: 1/6/2008 8:18:11 PM EDT

[#12]

Quoted:
There aint NO WAY illegal aliens can cook that good.Its all pre-cooked and then heated when your order it...

The biggest eye-opener is sneaking a peek in any of the chain restaurant kitchens.

Posted: 1/6/2008 8:28:32 PM EDT

[#13]

Chain food is a ripoff, they charge too much for what you get. Remember, they all have a HQ to support and maybe stockholders to make happy.

I've worked in commerical refrigeration for 25 years and I'll tell you this, those kitchens are dirty and greasy. They try to clean but the volume of food they are putting out does not allow them enough time to clean properly.

Food of much higher quality and freshness can be had for much cheaper if you know where to look.

Posted: 1/6/2008 8:30:46 PM EDT

[#14]

Quoted:
I look at them as being "not as fast food"

Posted: 1/6/2008 8:33:40 PM EDT

[#15]

Quoted:
sysco

Even fine dining restaurants use Sysco. Just because an establishment gets some products from Sysco means zero. Nearly every establishment in America has used, or is using Sysco. They sell nearly everything, even condoms. They are a distributor, not a manufacturer. In fact, I've gotten some really nice stuff from them. That being said, chain restaurants are generally crap. If you like microwave meals, go to Applebee's. A good friend of mine was a bartender there for a few years, and they cook nearly everything in "Chef Mic."

Posted: 1/6/2008 8:35:51 PM EDT

[#16]

Yes.

Posted: 1/6/2008 8:43:32 PM EDT

[#17]

For the "Sysco" comments; I worked for TGIF for 8 years. I worked for Bahama Breeze, Steak and Ale, Pizza Hut, and 4 small non-corporate restaurants. the big chains don't use Sysco, they don't have to. If TGIF wants to have a frozen whatever or a bottled sauce, they don't shop around to find one that meets their needs, they call some manufacturers and give them the specifications and start talking quantities. A manufacturer WILL produce the product according to the supplied recipe if the quantity to be ordered is large enough!

Posted: 1/6/2008 8:49:03 PM EDT

[#18]

All of the chains listed suck... Only the Olive garden is somewhat decent, but they've been getting worse for years. I remember when they used to have MASSIVE freaking olives and tastier food... I miss those days.

Posted: 1/6/2008 9:01:00 PM EDT

[#19]

Outback steakhouse cooks everything when the order is placed. All salad dressings, sauces, etc are made from scratch. About the only thing that comes premade is the cheesecake

Posted: 1/6/2008 9:07:14 PM EDT

[#20]

SYSCO SYSTEMS MONOPOLIZES WHAT YOU EAT

Slate Article, "How Sysco Came to Monopolize what you Eat"

"Every Bite you Take"

A hot dog from Yankee Stadium. Potato latkes from the Four Seasons in Manhattan. Sirloin steak at Applebee's. The jumbo cheeseburger at the University of Iowa Hospital. While it would seem these menu items have nothing in common, they're all from Sysco, a Houston-based food wholesaler. This top food supplier serves nearly 400,000 American eating establishments, from fast-food joints like Wendy's, to five-star eating establishments like Robert Redford's Tree Room Restaurant, to mom-and-pop diners like the Chatterbox Drive-In, to ethnic restaurants like Meskerem Ethiopian restaurant. Even Gitmo dishes out food from Sysco. Should you worry that one source dominates so much of what you eat?

Like any retailer, chefs need wholesalers that distribute goods cheaply and efficiently, and Sysco's 400,000-plus item catalog conveniently sells everything a cook needs to run an eating establishment. A little more than half of their products are brand names like Parkay and Lucky Charms. The rest are Sysco-packaged items like 25-pound bags of rice, half-gallons of salsa, boxes of plastic gloves, beer mugs, dish-washing detergent, not to mention 1,900 different fresh and frozen chicken products. Whatever a cook orders is delivered straight to the kitchen door at bottom-barrel prices: One Sysco invoice I got my hands on has a 25-pound bag of Uncle Ben's Converted Rice selling for $20.95, or about 84 cents a pound, while a 1-pound box bought through Amazon Grocery costs $2.09.

All of that seems relatively innocuous—restaurants need to make a profit, after all. But Sysco also hawks pre-packaged food. While chefs have long relied on shortcuts like freezing and using canned goods like beans and tomatoes, it's entirely different to pass off one of Sysco's thousands of ready-made items—ground beef burritos, vegan tortellini, quiche Lorraine pie, tiramisu cake—as homemade.

The ingredients alone on some of the pre-made items are enough to make a restaurant-goer swear off eating out. The breaded cheese chicken breast, for instance, contains monocalcium phosphates, sorbic acid preservatives, and oleoresin in turmeric. The Serve Smart Chicken is particularly frightening. While it looks natural, it consists of parts of other chicken breasts mashed together into a single, chicken-breastlike block. As the company notes on its Web site, our "unique 3-D technology gives you the look and texture of a solid muscle chicken breast, at a fraction of the cost. … Available in four great flavors: teriyaki, BBQ, fajita and original." What Smart Chicken tastes like, I'd rather not know.

Restaurants make a mint from serving these pre-prepped foods, since the meals can be purchased in bulk and stored in a freezer for months. A box of 36, 4-ounce chicken Kievs, for instance, can be kept in an icebox for up to 180 days. And the savings from labor costs are considerable. Each reheated Angus country fried steak will bring in almost $5 in profits. In the words of Sysco, these meals require nothing more than the ability to "heat, assemble, and serve."

It comes as little surprise that institutions like hospitals, universities, and military bases flock to Sysco's pre-cooked foods. But well-regarded bistros and pubs have also begun to offer such items to save time and money. Recently, New York magazine reported that Thomas Keller uses frozen Sysco fries at his Bouchon bistros. (While a company spokeswoman wouldn't confirm the brand, she confirmed the use of frozen fries.) Mickey Mantle's Restaurant, an upscale sports bar, serves Sysco's pre-made soups, like Manhattan clam chowder and vegetarian black bean. And then there's Edgar's restaurant at Belhurst Castle, which has won numerous awards of excellence from Wine Spectator magazine. There, the kitchen takes Sysco's Imperial Towering Chocolate Cake out of the box, lets it defrost, and then sprinkles it with fresh raspberries before serving it to diners. "We've had a lot of success with that cake," executive chef Casey Belile says. The Edgar's menu, of course, does not list the dessert as a Sysco pre-made cake, but it does charge $8.95 for the experience.

The company has a long history of championing frozen foods. Sysco founder John Baugh has been quoted as saying, "frozen foods taste better than anything I could grow in my garden." He started the company in 1969 when he saw an opening in the food services marketplace for a large, national distributor that would beat out local competitors through its sheer size. At the time, Baugh owned a small frozen-food company in Houston, and he convinced eight other regional food distributors to join forces to form a national conglomerate. Within a year of its start, Sysco posted more than $100 million in sales, and for the next 30 years, snapped up more than 150 local food distributors, becoming the largest in the nation. The company is about 50 percent larger than its next-largest competitor and five times bigger than the third-largest player; its boxes and cans are now as common in restaurant kitchens as salt and flour. A very partial listing of its better-known customers can be found here.

Some obvious food trends have helped Sysco's rise to Wal-Mart-like dominance. In 1970, households spent 34 percent of their food budget on dining out, compared to almost 50 percent today. And as small, local farms have closed down to make way for strip malls, restaurants increasingly depend on regional and national food processors to supply them with basic ingredients. While Sysco has smartly capitalized on all of this as the middleman between individual food distributors and the kitchen door, it's also earned the ire of gourmets, who portray the company as a leviathan that destroys local economies—and good taste.

But many quality restaurants, like Tree Room, use Sysco responsibly—shying away from pre-made items they can disguise as their own. Bardia Ferdowski of Bardia's New Orleans Café in Washington, D.C., purchases only raw and unprocessed Sysco products such as flour, potatoes, and beef, and receives frequent deliveries so that ingredients are as fresh as possible. For its part, Sysco has also been upping the quality of some of its offerings. It now distributes more locally grown meats and produce, and teams up with companies like artisanal cheesemonger Murray's to deliver specialty foods. Chef Tom Hosack of Hudson's at the Heathman Lodge in Vancouver, Wash., for instance, buys most of his greens through Sysco, and they're almost all regionally grown.

And not every cook has the time—or the money—to spend every afternoon foraging for fresh heirloom tomatoes at the local farmer's market. Nor do they need to. Many of Sysco's products—the meat, the vegetables, the fruits—are not that different than what you'll find at your local supermarket. But no restaurant diner should pay a chef to defrost and heat. Cooks are called cooks for a reason.

Posted: 1/6/2008 9:13:37 PM EDT

[#21]

Beer and sammiches are all I eat at them. Then I drink more beer at them.

Posted: 1/7/2008 5:02:59 AM EDT

[#22]

Quoted:
Used to go to TGI a long time ago. I loved the Pizzadia(sp?). My wife got something else, don't remember what. We went in one night and they had new menus. Our items were no longer on there. We got up and left never to returned.

+1. Loved the pizzadilla. They changed the pot sticker sauce at the same time. Never been back.

PF Changs is fresh, and they have good pot stickers too!

Posted: 1/7/2008 5:24:51 AM EDT

[#23]

I've noticed over the past 3 years they have all gotten worse and worse. I avoid TGI Fridays like the plague.

The only one I will eat at is Olive Garden, but that's about it, and it's rarely.

Posted: 1/7/2008 5:41:43 AM EDT

[#24]

I try and limit my restaurant habits to local places.

Posted: 1/7/2008 5:46:38 AM EDT

[#25]

Quoted:

Quoted:
There aint NO WAY illegal aliens can cook that good.Its all pre-cooked and then heated when your order it...

The biggest eye-opener is sneaking a peek in any of the chain restaurant kitchens.

Bathrooms can at least give you an idea-if a restaurant can't keep a relatively easy to clean bathroom looking nice, a far more complicated to clean restaurant kitchen is likely beyond their competence.

Posted: 1/7/2008 5:49:09 AM EDT

[#26]

I worked as a short order cook for a number of years and Sysco was our main supplier. For the most part a lot of the food that is served comes frozen but not necessarily pre-cooked.

Some of our soups, our meatloaf,and other items were made from scratch using supplied ingredients from Sysco and other suppliers. Things that perished quickly were often restocked and I'm sure people know about FIFO (first in, first out) with regards to stocking.

If you want meals made from scratch expect much longer waits in the restaurant and less people served (which means less profit for the chain).

Posted: 1/7/2008 5:52:00 AM EDT

[#27]

I can tell you from experience with Outback Steakhouse, that most of their items are made in house.

All salad dressings, sauces, croutons et al are made daily or every other day depending. Pretty much the only things that aren't actually made in the store are the bread, cheesecake, icecream and raspberry sauce that goes on the cheesecake.

I once worked at an Applebeez for 4 days, and ended up quitting due to more food on the walls than there was on the plate.

Posted: 1/7/2008 5:53:03 AM EDT

[#28]

Quoted:

Quoted:
There aint NO WAY illegal aliens can cook that good.Its all pre-cooked and then heated when your order it...

The biggest eye-opener is sneaking a peek in any of the chain restaurant kitchens.

Bathrooms can at least give you an idea-if a restaurant can't keep a relatively easy to clean bathroom looking nice, a far more complicated to clean restaurant kitchen is likely beyond their competence.

Bathrooms however are not made messy by the employees but rather by the customers. I've cleaned bathrooms at a restaurant and been told by the manager five minutes later that they were a mess. Kids, sloppy adults, and for whatever reason some women in the women's room tend to trash it rather quickly. The women's room seemed a lot sloppier than the men's room where I used to work.

Cleaning a kitchen is not that complicated and can be done quite efficiently if one was so inclined. You just need the time to do it since its really hard to clean and sanitize while you are trying to prepare food. We always had a professional company come in once a month to degrease the LEV system and degrease other parts of the kitchen. Trust me, where I worked if you weren't cooking you were cleaning or stocking.

Posted: 1/7/2008 6:01:40 AM EDT

[#29]

Im a cook at Mazzio's. All of the food is frozen. The sauces for the pastas are frozen, we just add them the the noodles and microwave them. The only 'fresh' things we make there are the dough for the pizzas and boil the noodles for the pasta. I will never eat there after seeing how long we go without making new noodles and how the employees handle the food.

Posted: 1/7/2008 6:02:56 AM EDT

[#30]

id rather eat good home cooked meals

Posted: 1/7/2008 9:19:30 AM EDT

[#31]

It should surprise no one that the chains have crap food that is loaded with fillers. Remember, at that level, it is NOT about quality, it is about money and ONLY money.

I worked at a chili's for 14 months when I was 19 years old. Most stuff came in bags or bottles except the protiens, which came in frozen and preportioned. ALL sauces came as mixes that you add the base liquid to and heat up, soups came in frozen, etc.
It was all too salty and so full of preservatives, fat and other fillers, it was NASTY.

If you want to eat good food, find local places. Your average decent locally owned Italian place will hand Olive Garden their ass without fail 99.9% of the time. Sure it might cost a few dollars more, but you will be getting a quality, fresh prepared meal that is nowhere near as unhealthy as chain food. I worked in the kitchen of a small Italian place like that, and to this day, no other chain "Italian" can match it.\

Bottom line is that people want cheap and big. You can't have quality with that without huge prices, so said quality suffers.

Posted: 1/7/2008 9:33:30 AM EDT

[#32]

For the record, I am a food snob, in as much as I like food that is actually delicious because it was prepared well from fresh ingredients.

Let it be known as well that here in foggy/smoggy China, one can eat a delicious meal for less than three dollars which consists of meat from animals killed that very day and never frozen, and vegetables picked locally and prepared by cooks who consider communion with god to be the consumption of delicious food.

Between the food and the women I may never come home

[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Chain restaurants..Applebees, Chilis, TGIFridays, Red Lobster, Olive Garden etc... (Page 2 of 2)

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