Posted: 7/18/2008 8:03:39 PM EDT
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Love em, hate em? Me, I hate them with a passion. Mediocre food with no unique flavors that stand out from the rest, but costs just as much as a real restaurant. They are nothing but ritzier McDonalds and Burger Kings IMHO. |
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Lemme 'splain. We had this WONDERFUL Italian restaurant north of San Antonio that was started by a restaurant visionary. The menu was authentic, the waitstaff sang opera, the ambiance was perfect. They even had their own wine brand, letting you serve yourself. Then it went chain. Menu cut, waitstaff dumbed down, and no more honor system on the wine. Yep, The Macaroni Grill. The Olive Garden beats it. Slightly. Same thing happened to his other restaurant, Fuddruckers. |
I've met people out here who consider the Olive Garden to be "Good italian" 
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| I had a good neighborhood restaurant, I was a regular, people knew my name. Applebee's bought the joint, tore it down and built a new franchise in its place. I went in when they opened, and gosh, it was like I'd never left. It was all Howdy! Welcome! It was generic and bland, I never went back. |
The last good Italian place I went to, I was welcomed by the owner and HE REMEMBERED ME the next time I went there. There was a bar for waiting customers and they brought out pizza for those waiting! The ONE CLUE that a restaurant is quality is when the OWNER spends more than 30 minutes a day there. Chains? It MAY have a great manager but he doesn't have the ownership rights to change the menu, to incorporate innovation and to ASSURE GUESTS WANT TO RETURN. |
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Chain restaurants are fucking horrible, and any chain claiming to be ethnic, is Americanized ethnic. What really mystifies me, is tourists who go to cities where there is really awesome food, I'll use New Orleans as an example, and they choose to go to fucking Applebee's for dinner. Lame.
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I ain't Gordon Ramsey. But I know quality. And while Chef Ramsey MIGHT be able to turn a restaurant around, he could NEVER straighten out a chain. You know what McDonald's has in its favor? A tight procedure and an attainable quality. But it will never be anything more, despite what they change the menu. If they ditch the fries and Big Mac, they are gone. |
No kidding. Lame. Anthony Bourdain has that ruggedness that we should all strive to achieve. Hell, I don't think I would chow down on an entire Durian. But I would try a bit. |
It's retarded but they do it for safety. I'm all about regional cuisine and kinky ethnic food. I go to lunch with out of towners in DC and we stroll down to Chinatown. There is a slew of awesome Chinese places, Vietnamese, Thai, some little one-off cafe's, even a decent Irish pub. Nope, they want to eat in Fuddruckers. |
that kinda shit pisses me off. If I travel anywhere new, I make it a point to ask some locals about where to eat and try something new. Even if the food sucks, at least its a new experience. |
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I hate the "dinner house" chains, such as Applebee's, etc. The food there is WORSE for you than the fast food chains, on average. That and the food isn't even that good. I also will always support the local economy instead of going to a national chain. Not only that, but the chains have destroyed the common American's "taste" in food. 90% of the time I go to dinner with friends, they suggest "Outback" or "Chili's" or whatever. It's really sad. The worst of it all... when we're in a foreign country... you have great local, foreign restaurants... and they want to find the nearest "Outback". Terrible. |
My family calls "Olive Garden" the McDonald's of Italian Food. That is precisely what it is. |
I always fight with family members who like The Olive Garden. They think its the best Italian restaurant.  They really hate it when I tell them it sucks compared to a real Italian place and that the chain has been going down hill for years. I remember when that place used to have GIANT MASSIVE Olives... When they stopped using those they began to suck bad.
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Neither are 99% of the other "Chinese" restaurants in America. You don't see too many of them serving chicken feet, jellyfish, or eyeballs, for example. |