Mediocre chain restaurants

[Etienne]

At what age do your children start choosing where you go? We've not reached that point yet, but she's only just four!

I'd second Levin's nomination, Giraffe was really unappetising.

[Jah Womble]

Not whilst Aberdeen Steak Houses still exist...

A chain for Brits from elsewhere to patronise while visiting London. You never see discerning foreign tourists in those wretched places.

If memory serves, we had our college leaving do at a Berni Steak House. It was similarly pretty ropy, but this was the 1980s and far too many students wouldn't go near anything more interesting.

[Kevin S]

Etienne, you're nearly there then. Our 5yo daughter will have no hesitation in pointing out that's there's a McDonald's, F&B or whatever and she's getting hungry. Again, yeah, it's the convenience. The other week we went to one because we were doing a 9 hour drive and when it gets to the evening you just need somewhere to stop, sit quickly, and get on with it. I find the F&B salmon, pesto and jacket potato is edible enough and more filling than the burgers fwiw. Nothing you couldn't easily knock up in the oven at home of course but as others have said, you go for the convenience (I paid using their website last time so didn't even need to wait for the bill) and to keep the kids happy. Colouring in, three courses and a balloon, they won't complain.

Café Rouge is my chain of choice, if there is a choice. But a better meal out with the kids recently was when we stopped in a village in Norfolk on the way to Sunny Hunny and got a pub lunch. Sitting in a conservatory in the sun rather than a retail park, freshly cooked food and the satisfaction of spending your money somewhere independent. It was lovely, but you always feel like it's a bit of a gamble.

[Moonlight Shadow]

Miller&Carter and Tampopo are two places i regularly go back to...

[Flynnie]

I'd rather have a McDonald's than most UK chain restaurants. At least with a MickyD's you're getting it cheap and with a certain amount of nostalgia. Bite into a cheeseburger and I'm sitting with my dad on the beach in 4th grade, sharing a McDonald's and promising not to tell mom.

Wahaca, I like. Sorry.

Wahaca is good. Mexican food in the UK was absolute toilet before they showed up, and they have a large amount of responsibility for it not being toilet. I've known a few real Mexicans/Mexican-Americans who turn their nose up at it, usually on the rather silly basis that it spells Oaxaca phonetically (Expats living in a bubble is very much a thing in London, anybody who knows real British people would point out why Tommi Miers did that), but their preferred choice of Mestizo on Euston Road is overpriced and frankly not that much better.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Frankie and Benny's near us is the weekend birthday party venue of choice for all the little b**tards going to this week's Pixar film afterwards. So you get the double joy of several tables full of unruly kids, and them doing that bloody "happy birthday song" thing where all the staff come out and sing every ten minutes. Which is why we don't go. We've got two or three pubs near us that are now pretty decent Italian gastropubs (don't know why Italian is so popular in Central Lancashire, probably because for most people here it's taken them 30 years to pluck up the courage to try a bolognese on holiday).

[Sits]

Are Harvesters still a thing in the UK? On my 27th birthday, the day after my son was born my best mate took me to Harvester in Cookham, and I remember eating so much I was in pain. It was the all you can eat salad cart starter that did it. Well OK that just set the tone.

Over here the the lines are blurred between food court and chain offerings. Crust Pizza and Zeus (basically Greek fast food) are both big in Sydney, and both pretty decent. There are a number of really good pizza chains, or at least chains wwithin the Sydney region, but I guess if they’re good they don’t belong on this thread.

[Simon G]

The salad remains the best reason to visit a Harvester.

[ad hoc]

I don't think there are any chain restaurants in Romania. None that I am aware of anyway.

(there are McDonald's and KFC and so on, but I wouldn't put them under the heading of restaurant. Luckily there are none near us too)

[NHH]

Wahaca is great. Our family’s happy place.

[slackster]

I’ve still never eaten in a Nando’s, though others tell me the food’s decent enough. I like piri-piri chicken but don’t like conveyor belt convenience restaurants unless desperate.

[Jah Womble]

The salad remains the best reason to visit a Harvester.

On my only visit to a Harvester, the attentive waitress told me that I could help myself to the salad bar.

Fifteen minutes later, I'm going at it with a spanner when the police arrive.

Try the soup.

[WOM]

In Canada I haven't minded Swiss Chalet when not going to the millions of excellent Asian restaurants.

Swiss Chalet never hits a home run, but they're so consistent with their triples that you don't shy away from going. Do one thing...do it well.

[Snake Plissken]

On my only visit to a Harvester, the attentive waitress told me that I could help myself to the salad bar.

Fifteen minutes later, I'm going at it with a spanner when the police arrive.

Try the soup.

Have you tried going into B&Q and saying that you want decking?

[diggedy derek]

It's probably more interesting to discuss actually decent chain restaurants, I imagine.

I like Nando's. The chicken is good, even if the fries aren't. It's egalitarian, it's simple, it's hearty. Pizza Express are no great shakes but they do think about their pizzas and are inventive without descending into novelty. Their current vegan pizza with harissa is delicious.

I actively like Côte Brasserie. I don't mind Wahaca, they do breakfast in the Oxford Street one, and I'd happily eat there anytime although it can be a bit bland on occasion.

[Ginger Yellow]

How small a chain are we allowed? I like an Honest Burger, for instance. Actually, looking at their website, they're not that small a chain any more. Crikey.

[Snake Plissken]

Nandos is OK, but expensive for what it is. But it falls into that subcategory of "mediocre but occasionally has good value offers at lunchtime". Like Pesto.

I do like GBK and occasionally go in there and just buy L&P for the Mrs.

[Paul S]

For really grim chicken takeaways, are we allowed Morleys in South London?

[Ginger Yellow]

I'll admit to eating Morley's occasionally. It's better than KFC, or any of the other local shops (that are open at 10pm after a night on the piss, anyway). I wouldn't order anything but the fried chicken though.

[caja-dglh]

You know what is great? IHOP. If you ever think that, maybe, you ought to go to IHOP, it is unequivocally 100% the correct action.

Admittedly that only seems to happen maybe once every six or seven years...

[ursus arctos]

This is true, though the range of what they do well is not as wide as it is at Denny's

[WOM]

Toronto used to have the best chain of non-chain type fast food burger places: Licks. The woman who started and runs the chain built it from nothing, and then slowly ran it into the ground through utterly shit management. The last one, right by our house, closed a couple of months ago.

[Patrick Thistle]

Americans seems to laugh about IHOP but I once had a transcendental sugar high followed by the mother of all crashes on the Las Vegas Strip after IHOP pancakes and it's one of the best worst decisions I ever made in my life. (Not so much the pancakes as the jugs of syrup I doused them in)

[Patrick Thistle]

Toronto used to have the best chain of non-chain type fast food burger places: Licks. The woman who started and runs the chain built it from nothing, and then slowly ran it into the ground through utterly shit management. The last one, right by our house, closed a couple of months ago.

I went to the Pickle Barrel in a mall outside Toronto. I think that's a chain, right? Anyway, they had good pancakes too. Better than IHOP.

[WOM]

Of all the US food joints I miss, I miss Howard Johnsons the most. Breakfast joint...gift shop....funky architecture all rolled into one.