Hot take on chain restaurants: some are actually pretty good. I like the Olive Garden and the lunch soup, salad, and breadsticks is great value. $7.99 for a giant vat of salad and three or four bowls of soup? Nice. And their gnocchi soup and their potato and sausage soup is legit delicious.
Cracker Barrel is tremendous. You go to a Cracker Barrel and it’s better than like 95% of non-chain American restaurants. Outback used to be great but I feel like the quality has drastically slipped in the last 15 years. I think that Longhorn steakhouse has vastly outstripped Outback in quality recently and it’s not close. And I’m not sure why, it must be training of kitchen staff because they almost certainly use the same meat.
Grunching a little but 1) I love going to restaurants, mainly local places and rarely chains, although that had largely gone away since having a kid and 2) I spent my teens and early 20s working in restaurants and loved it. First job was a food runner for a local rib place where a couple of my buddies worked, we goofed off, ate good food all day, got paid in cash, and had a great time. However when they didn’t make me a waiter when I thought it was my turn I left to work at TGIFridays, where I was a busboy for a little bit but they pretty quickly turned me into a host, which was fine but not nearly as much fun as my first job (except for the literal wrestling matches between waitstaff outside on the grass during shifts). Then I spent a summer waiting tables at a bar & grill down by the shore, which was another fun and interesting experience. I gotta say throughout that time I remember very few customers treating me poorly, maybe just due to “being a white guy.”
Once one of my tables left a Lonestar steak house gift card for the meal they ordered at Outback and then left. They left a note saying “oops sorry wrong restaurant”. Fuuuuuuck. I had to drive across town to the Lonestar steak house and tell the manager what happened and luckily he redeemed the card for me and gave me cash. I even got to keep the balance as a tip. I think it was three dollars on a hundred dollar gift card.
Chain restaurants are mostly crap imo but some are decent to good. I’d put Outback Steakhouse as “actually good” and Red Lobster and Cheddar’s in the decent category.
When my buddy from Australia was visiting the United States he insisted on going to the Heart Attack Grill in Phoenix because it had been on the news there. Anyway we went and it was worth the experience of going once, he ate at triple cheeseburger and they wheeled him to his car in a wheelchair. I think they’ve all since closed.
I got sick after eating at Shoney’s when I was in travel camp and refused to eat the food thereafter even though we went there on every trip for the next several years.
I’ve been lucky to eat at some of the nicest/fanciest/trendiest places in the country but hands down the best service I ever received was a waitress who took care of me, the wife and two kids under 10 for breakfast at an IHOP somewhere in Pennsylvania.
I’ve only eaten at Longhorn once and haven’t eaten regularly at Outback since we stopped getting free gift cards like 8-10 years back so I’ll take your word on this, but yeah at some point it was legitimately good. I don’t agree that Cracker Barrel is better than 95% of non-chain restaurants though, it’s just greasy heavy crap.
I think it is more important to grade them against their direct competition. How does LongHorn compare to non-chain steak places? How does Cracker Barrel compare to non-chain restaurants specializing in breakfast and Southern comfort food? More importantly, how do they compare to such places at a similar price point? Obviously, LongHorn can’t compare to high-end steak places, but how does it stack up against a local casual dining steakhouse? How do they compare to non-chain steakhouses that primarily serve beef that has been graded USDA choice?
Sure, the chains can’t beat the solid, low-priced ethnic eateries that cater to working class immigrants, but sometimes I just want to eat straight-forward “American” food. Cracker Barrel is easily an above-average option for when I am craving something like country-fried steak.
There’s so few 25 dollar ribeye with sides and salad included steak places that aren’t chains that this isn’t really possible to do too easily. If they’re going to differentiate themselves from Longhorn and Outback it seems way easier to compete at a significantly higher price point. Competing with Longhorn and Outback in their own niche seems suicidal.
Southern comfort food is probably going to be either slightly better if it’s really great southern comfort food or way worse. I’m sure there’s a fair number of hole in the wall southern comfort food restaurants with amazing food. But for every one of those that beats Cracker Barrel there are many more that are way worse.
I think this depends on perspective. The chain restaurant food doesn’t exactly taste bad, but it has a very consistent and boring flavor profile - a lot if it is straight salt-sugar-fat flavor. Is that bad? Well, no, half the country is addicted to that stuff for a reason. But if you’re used to eating food that has some spice, some acid, some umami, then its really obvious when all of that is missing.
The other issue is that chains will make culinary sacrifices for corporate expediency. Overcooked chicken and fish is more dry than desirable, but preferable for food safety. Using ingredients that are less than 100% fresh reduces quality, but discarding food that is edible but imperfect is business suicide when you’re in a race to the bottom on price.
