Unless your managers are assholes you should usually be able to eat for free or cheap. I worked at a fine dining Italian place and my shift started with me eating a salad and gorgonzola and breadsticks every damn shift. Free. Fuck I love gorgonzola sauce.
Yeah, I would think cheap/free food is such a massive perk of working at a restaurant that it makes up for the hard, thankless work. One of my college roommates worked at Applebee’s for a short time (it was REALLY weird when he waited on us, especially since he didn’t do jack shit around the apartment) and said the best value for an employee was the kid’s grilled cheese - grilled cheese sandwich and a heaping portion of fries - for 99 cents.
He was also one of those servers who a) regularly steered people away from certain entrees and b) served sizzling brownies and blondies with gusto.
Worked a few years at an Applebee’s. Not to toot my own horn here but was a really good cook and they forced me to be a trainer. I didn’t want the responsibility at 20 years old. Then, fired me for not showing up to a trainer’s meeting on a weekend in summer when I wanted to go tubing instead. Spent the next few years at a thrift store driving truck picking up donations. Thrift store donation pickups was the best job of my life except the pay.
People bag on chain restaurants, but I’ve always been so impressed how you can always get consistent, solid food at these places and that people can learn to prepare the food quickly and generally pretty darn well. I mean, I’ve been cooking my entire adult life and I still overcook chicken breasts on the regular.
EDIT: The last time I ate at Applebee’s, which was a few years ago, they did totally fuck up my food, but to their credit, they gave me a free second entree and a bonus appetizer for my kid, even though I had already eaten most of my food (I didn’t want to be a dick, so I ate it, but was honest when they asked how it was).
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One thing I noticed when I managed and worked at non chain restaurants after the chain experiences is the training. Friday’s and Applebee’s have videos and tests and for example, you are supposed to have offered someone a drink within the first 2 minutes of them sitting down at those restaurants. There is no sense of urgency at non-chain restaurants (usually).
If you’ll only go to fancy restaurants maybe. Morons can claim it’s elitist to prefer local restaurants or street food over chain restaurants, but they’re morons. I mean, if you absolutely refuse to go to a chain restaurant because it’s too middle class for you or something, that is elitist, but just preferring to try something new and often better is not.
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What if you just don’t think the food is very good. Elitist or not? I need to know where I stand when the guillotines come.
The taste buds want what they want.
I don’t think it’s elitist to favor eating at local restaurants where you actually eat some chefs menu or the local pizza shop or greasy spoon. You are supporting a person or small business over a soulless corporate chain restaurant who ships 90% of their food in on a Sysco truck to be reheated in an industrial microwave in the “kitchen”.
And just to be clear I am not shitting on working there. I too was once a server. There absolutely is nothing wrong with that and we all do what we have to do.
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Call me elitist I guess. I won’t eat in the corporate establishments. I can cook better than that at home so I have no reason to spend more money for worse food.
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I don’t think that is elitist. I think it makes sense. The main reason my wife and I go out is mostly to eat food we can’t cook as well at home. So mostly ethinic food, sushi, etc. Sometimes we also just go out to wind down and have some drinks w/bar food also. I’ll never understand going to Applebee’s and pounding in some $15 select steak reheated by a teen in back when you could buy a prime steak for that and prepare it however you would like.
The people who really drive me nuts are people like my parents who travel all over and then eat at the same chains they have at home. I guess it feels risky to them to try something they aren’t sure about. When I tell them my #1 favorite thing about traveling all over the world is eating all of the local food, drinking the local wine/beverage of choice they look at me like I am crazy. When I tell them some of it is at markets or from street vendors they always lecture me on how unsafe it is. Unsafe is part of the fun though. Not that we don’t eat at some nice restaurants also but get a Hep A shot and eat that mystery meat you will likely be fine. Anthony Bourdain had it right when he basically said to try everything and throw away stuff that is bad.
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Yeah a giant +1000 to ‘why in the fuck would you eat at a chain restaurant in the US in 2020’ argument. The only chain restaurants that are even competitive for your business are the fast food drive through places who compete primarily on convenience. And in good food cities they usually lose that as well.
The big national dine in chains have lost the supply chain advantage that made them crush for the first few decades of their existence. A few of them will do fine (I’m looking at you Pappadeux, Texas Roadhouse, and Chic Fil A) but a lot of them won’t.
Yeah, same. When I lived in NYC, I was walking in Manhattan once and overheard the cookie cutter midwestern family of four asking for directions to Applebees. I was shaking my head for like the next three blocks. Ever since then whenever I’m in a great culinary city and drive past a chain, I am reminded of it.
He’s probably the celebrity that had the most impact on my life, honestly. I moved in with two roommates in NYC who watched his show all the time, so I got into it. I went from an extremely picky, risk-averse eater (like my parents) to extremely adventurous. I’m not quite at try absolutely anything, but I’ve tried duck testacles in an Egyptian casserole at a hole in the wall place Bourdain went to - so I’m pretty far along the scale of what I’ll try. I was genuinely quite upset when he died, and usually celebrity deaths don’t move me that much.
There was some level of, “Holy shit, he was really truly living ‘the life,’ I can’t believe he wasn’t happy or ran out of hope.” I know anyone can be depressed for any number of reasons (or none at all), but it was hard to really think about how he always had new travels to look forward to and still felt hopeless. Intellectually I understand that’s not how depression works, but at a very basic level it still shook me.
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Chain restaurants are such a weirdly American thing. There’s fast food everywhere of course, but when it comes to things like Applebee’s, Arby’s, Red Lobster etc etc, there are no national chains like that I can think of here. There’s Grill’d I guess, it’s a burger joint that people eat in at more frequently than other burger joints and it’s typically liquor licensed (which fast food places are not). That’s all I got.
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Anthony Bourdain had a huge impact on my travel and culinary life. His show and attitude really taught me that just about everywhere is pretty awesome in it’s own way if you are willing to open your eyes a bit. And his takes on eating everything with an open mind and then deciding if you like it or not is absolutely the best attitude to have.
When he died I was stunned and it affected me as well. He was only human and had gone through a divorce and a subsequent tumultuous relationship. The last thing I think he actually filmed that aired before he died was this weird mini show sponsored by a car company. He drove around in their car with another guy. You can tell he is depressed as hell. He opines on how he personally has made the world a worse place (I disagree with him) because he has contributed to more tourists overrunning some of these lesser traveled to spots and subsequently turning it into an Airbnb hellscape the locals can’t afford anymore. Like all of us I think he lacked perspective on just how many peoples lives, like you and I, he appreciably made better.
ETA- Here is the link to what I am referencing. It looks like it was actually filmed 8 months or so before his death so I was likely wrong about the timing but I thought he was far more open about his general dissatisfaction in this than anything else:
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I travelled for 4 months at one point and didn’t stay in any one place for more than like 4 or 5 days. I can confirm that novelty itself becomes tiresome after a while. That sense of dissatisfaction which is a hallmark of the human condition returns, novelty is not a way of cheating that system.
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We have all the same places in Canada (or at least very similar knockoffs).
One trend I’ve noticed is that these places are few and far between in city neighborhoods but are ubiquitous in suburbs and off of interstates. So part of their popularity seems to have something to do with suburban culture. They’re certainly consistent with suburban culture - bland, soulless facsimiles of restaurants for people that live in bland, soulless facsimiles of communities.
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Not to the extent of the US, and I left some time ago so could be wrong, but my impression is they’re becoming very very common in the UK these days.
My first trip to the UK I got some very bad advice from a cab driver about going to Wetherspoons. Once I got in there and realized it was basically the British version of Applebee’s I got a good laugh out of it. He must have assumed that is what I was after because I was American. At least it was very cheap. Maybe I have this wrong but all of the best restaurants I have been to in the UK are Indian restaurants.
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Whenever I go back then that’s what I always want to eat.
(Well, along with a proper northern chippy but I won’t pretend that’s anything other than my upbringing.)