Mediocre chain restaurants

[seand]

I have kids aged 8 and 10, and we all like to be out and about and eat out. Inevitably we end up in chain places from time to time. I’ve always found Wagamama to be pretty excellent, in greater Dublin anyway. Certainly no lack of flavour or variety, but I take the point about the menu overstretching at this stage. Great for introducing the kids to something beyond the usual. GBK is great too and I certainly enjoyed my one visit to Wahaca.

The pizzas in Pizza Express (or Milano as they quite hilariously brand themselves in Ireland) are pretty good but very overpriced. Generally only go there with a fistful of Tesco vouchers (Tesco clubcard points gets you €20 worth of vouchers for €5.) Been to TGI a couple of times, again the pain was eased by Tesco vouchers taking most of the pain. The food was good but outrageously expensive. I have a vague recollection of being in F+B once and the food not being as good.

A couple of times a year we’ll bow to pressure and go to McDonalds or KFC, but it’s a fairly grim experience and the food is dismal. Due to severe lack of options and time I ate in Burger King once fairly recently. It had me pining for McDonalds, shudder.

[ursus arctos]

This is America, Jah

[Jah Womble]

I know, and I've lived over there, but even so...

[Greenlander]

'All-you-can-eat pancakes' sounds like a huge error of judgment from the off.

I mean, good as they can be, how many pancakes would a person plan to eat, let alone need to eat?

It was two, two pancakes. When I say stack my eldest who was eleven at the time has just reminded me it wasn't really that at all. Two was all I could manage. He, on the other hand, loves pancakes and ate a good six.

[Patrick Thistle]

It's all you can eat, not all you do eat, so once you feel a bit full, keep ordering them and just stick them in your pocket for later. After all, you could eat them... you've just chosen not to.

[Jah Womble]

It was two, two pancakes. When I say stack my eldest who was eleven at the time has just reminded me it wasn't really that at all. Two was all I could manage. He, on the other hand, loves pancakes and ate a good six.

That's good work.

Were these the 'standard size' pancakes? I was once hit with a stack of four - replete with maple syrup, sour cream and various berries - and just about made it through.

[ursus arctos]

Must have been.

The "Silver Dollar" variant is rarely served with fewer than eight or ten.

The sour cream is not canon, btw. An IHOP will use whipped cream (from a pressurised tin)

[Amor de Cosmos]

The "All-You-Can-Eat" come on says a good deal about North American culture (I've never come across it elsewhere.) There used to be an old-fashioned ice-cream parlour on fourth avenue here. The highlight of it's menu was a fruit bowl full of multi-flavoured ice-cream. It was listed as being enough for twelve people. But if one person ate the entire thing themself (presumably under supervision) then they got it for nothing. Weird. Really weird, like hot dog eating contests.

[ursus arctos]

Very much so.

This is also a thing with 60 plus ounce steaks and "heart attack" burgers.

I have episodically seen all you can eat offers at industrial sushi restaurants in Germany, and it is also exists on some overnight ferries in Europe.

But nothing like its ubiquity here.

[Jah Womble]

I dread to imagine just how much food wastage there is with all this ‘all-you-can-eat’-malarkey. (That kind of thing is a complete anathema to me.)

The "All-You-Can-Eat" come on says a good deal about North American culture (I've never come across it elsewhere.) There used to be an old-fashioned ice-cream parlour on fourth avenue here. The highlight of it's menu was a fruit bowl full of multi-flavoured ice-cream. It was listed as being enough for twelve people. But if one person ate the entire thing themself (presumably under supervision) then they got it for nothing. Weird. Really weird, like hot dog eating contests.

One of our (now closed) local bar/restaurants used to offer what they rather glibly described as their ‘famous burger challenge’ - a giant 12-inch hamburger with all the trimmings that you’d get for free if you ate the whole thing. I don’t think I ever saw anyone attempt it, let alone actually do it: if they’d put their hands in their pockets and offered free drinks or a meal (for a later date), then maybe one day it might have become ‘genuinely’ famous.

[ursus arctos]

The one thing I can say in partial defence is that we have developed a pretty good infrastructure for repurposing excess food through organisations like City Harvest

[Reality Checkpoint]

I can remember back in my student days (at least 40 years ago) a pizza place near the Angel tube that did an all-you-can-eat offer one evening, needless to say we all starved ourselves for the day and had a competition - it was served as 1/6 slices of a 12" and I bailed out at 15, I think the winner got up to 20. They didn't repeat the exercise.

[Hot Pepsi]

The steak-eating challenge was featured on The Simpsons.

There was a popular show about these "eat something massive and get your picture on the wall" sort of things. The popularity of the show inspired the creation of a lot more such challenges, even outside the US.

The whole show wasn't about eating 10,000+ calories in a sitting. It was mostly about the same kind of places on Guy Fieri's shows - well-loved local mom'n'pop places. I went to one in Annapolis, the name of which escapes me. I also don't recall what the challenge was. I got a normal sized omelette. I just remember that they had pictures on the wall of the day they were on the show.

The host, Adam Richman was a struggling actor, not a competitive eater. He would eat very little but drink a lot of water before every challenge. He gained wait during the four year run of the show, but he says he ended the show because the premise was worn out and he wanted to start a new food roadshow, not because he was unwell. But surely, he couldn't have gone on like that much longer.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

I can remember back in my student days (at least 40 years ago) a pizza place near the Angel tube that did an all-you-can-eat offer one evening, needless to say we all starved ourselves for the day and had a competition - it was served as 1/6 slices of a 12" and I bailed out at 15, I think the winner got up to 20. They didn't repeat the exercise.

Pizza Hut still did that in the 1990s, in Southampton. I think my record was 24 (1/8) slices of their 14" thin crust.

[Guy Profumo]

Well I go to Cosmo once a week for lunch and I'm more than happy.


So there

[Hot Pepsi]

The one thing I can say in partial defence is that we have developed a pretty good infrastructure for repurposing excess food through organisations like City Harvest

It's still a big problem.

A lot of all-you-can-eat places are buffets, which does lead people to eat too much, but maybe waste less since its up to the individual to pick what and how much they'll eat. Even though buffet is, I assume, a French word, I don't know if they're popular outside North America.

Maximizing food-volume for the dollar has long been a major preoccupation of young men. I know it was for me and my friends. It was mostly about the journey rather than the destination. The anticipation of going to La Tolteca was better than actually eating there.


For better and worse, mostly worse, so much of American food culture is about efficiency and maximizing the calories for the dollar. It's not just the restaurant or grocery business, but federal policy. The government chose to promote the cultivation of cheap corn - used for corn syrup, shitty animal feed, among other things - from horizon to horizon.

That probably seemed like a good idea 100 years ago, but now obesity is now a disease of poverty and a lot of obese people are malnourished.

[Guy Profumo]

It's still a big problem.

A lot of all-you-can-eat places are buffets, which does lead people to eat too much, but maybe waste less since its up to the individual to pick what and how much they'll eat. Even though buffet is, I assume, a French word, I don't know if they're popular outside North America.

Maximizing food-volume for the dollar has long been a major preoccupation of young men. I know it was for me and my friends. It was mostly about the journey rather than the destination. The anticipation of going to La Tolteca was better than actually eating there.


For better and worse, mostly worse, so much of American food culture is about efficiency and maximizing the calories for the dollar. It's not just the restaurant or grocery business, but federal policy. The government chose to promote the cultivation of cheap corn - used for corn syrup, shitty animal feed, among other things - from horizon to horizon.

That probably seemed like a good idea 100 years ago, but now obesity is now a disease of poverty and a lot of obese people are malnourished.

Richard Nixon's fault.

Apparently.

[WOM]

I remember the glory days of the chicken wing roadhouse where they'd happily do 10 cent chicken wings. We'd order 200 at a sitting between three or maybe four of us. God damn do I miss those little wings. The ones you get now are like KFC sized, and 10 or 12 fill you up.

[Hot Pepsi]

I get the impression that KFC is massively more popular outside the US than in it. I don't know where the nearest KFC is to here. There used to be two, but that kind of fried chicken just doesn't seem to be "in" right now.

[Bored Of Education]

I've had one meal at Outback and their appalling Fake Australian advertising matches the quality of the food. Their feature product seems to be a deep fried onion served looking like a flower. The amount of grease is overwhelming.

I seem to remember that, when we first went to Orlando 25+ years ago, Outback was the restaurant I enjoyed the most - especially the deep-fried onion. They also served draught Fosters which was a revelation after weeks of drinking Budeweiser

They somehow manage to make things on their menu sound appealing, only for it to arrive at the table and have 4 times the amount of food you'd want to eat if it was good, and 8 times what you want to eat as it's terrible .

Basically my experience with the rest of the restaurants in Orlando that year. I remember that every portion was so enormous that we used the, to me, hitherto unencountered items that were doggybags. Now that so many of the UK's restaurants seem to have followed in the same quantity>quality direction, doggy-bags are almost as common here.

[Lang Spoon]

Mongolian barbecue all you can eat buffet is a pretty dismal experience. Not least for the hygiene issues (sneeze guard buffets kinda freak me out).

[Bored Of Education]

Has anyone ever been to a TGI's when it isn't someone's birthday? Every time I've been the waiting staff come out with a cake with sparklers and some kid is scarred for life by the embarrassment of a half-hearted rendition of Happy Birthday To You.

Yes, I have. TGI's is open on Christmas Day. I will just let that sink in.

My entry for the list is Giraffe, anywhere that tries to do so much on one menu cannot do any of it well.

See every single one of those cuisines-from-around-the-world all-you-can-eat atrocities.

[WOM]

I get the impression that KFC is massively more popular outside the US than in it. I don't know where the nearest KFC is to here. There used to be two, but that kind of fried chicken just doesn't seem to be "in" right now.

It's all about Popeyes now. They seem to have grabbed the baton and run with it.

[WOM]

You know what a typically awful; those Rainforest Cafe types of places. You're just going to pay too much for dodgy eats, all to sit underneath mechanical monkeys in fake trees. Doesn't even sound like a good idea now that I've written it.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Mongolian barbecue all you can eat buffet is a pretty dismal experience. Not least for the hygiene issues (sneeze guard buffets kinda freak me out).

Hereabouts it was Chinese Smorgasbord (a cultural interaction I could never quite get my head around.) Fortunately they're long gone, replaced by bubble tea cafes and nail bars for the most part. Whether they're run by the same people though I'm not sure.