Grossest American Chain Restaurant

I have never even heard of Claim Jumpers until this poll. I guess that's a good thing?

I voted for Applebees because I remember them having terrible service. Even if a restaurant has wonderful food I expect them to have halfway decent service, so when it is bad at one of these chain restaurants it seems especially egregious.

I did miss that one! I wasn't trying to bag on anyone in particular, just feeling guilty for piling on myself.

c.a.d. - I just pulled Applebee's out as an example, but I think you get my point.

I seriously wonder if people who say that honestly believe that the middle-aged woman in the next cubicle at work seriously goes home to her kids and says "what's up, my niggas, we're having Applebee's tonight!"

-- nabisco (nabisco)

no i get that it's an example but it seems like even w/in this category there's room enough to choose wisely, y'know?

this thread reminded me that Macaroni Grill had really good tiramisu the last time I went. now i want tiramisu.

i would kill for a place where i could go with friends at 10-11pm and get some drinks and some cheap non-disgusting food in a chill atmosphere where everybody knows my name, but that place just doesn't exist, at least not round these parts. any local place that attempts something like this is basically ripping off the 'bees business model and has the same kinda food but can't afford to do half off appetizers so its not as cheap. its a bummer.

As much as I can agree that some of these choices are totally disgusting and represent the worst of American eating habits, I do think this thread smacks a teeny bit of elitism. I mean, remember there are some areas of the country that aren't overwhelmed with little mom and pop places to go and, as much as it may suck, going to Applebee's really is a treat night out for a family on a budget.

― you gone float up with it (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Tuesday, March 2, 2010 10:53 PM (22 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I mean, I have sympathy. I frequented all these places until I was like 21. Like a year of human food in New York pretty much made me realize this shit is inedible across the fuckin board.

Now when i visit my mom, I always try to get her to try all the local restaraunts we never went to when I lived there.

Voted Chili's, but that's because the last one I was in would have had to be cleaned before the health department could condemn it.

Moogs OTM re: buffets being in their own circle of hell.

Jeff's 2010 high-end chain steakhouse 'kill your per diem in one sitting' rankings: Fleming's, Capital Grille, Morton's, Ruth's Chris.

some areas of the country aren't overwhelmed w/lil mom n pop places cause they've all been overwhelmed by gross-to-mediocre chain places! they are the gastronomic walmarts.

I thought that said "Clam Jumpers"

that's what they switch over to after 10pm

the local restaurants around south jersey are often a step below the chain restaurants! no fucking way am I going to pat's pizza again

some areas of the country aren't overwhelmed w/lil mom n pop places cause they've all been overwhelmed by gross-to-mediocre chain places! they are the gastronomic walmarts.

― hope this helps (Granny Dainger), Tuesday, March 2, 2010 10:22 PM (3 minutes ago)

THIS. It really pisses me off, too. In every little town in the south you used to be able to find a good meat-and-three anywhere you looked, but now it's just the same line of KFC-McD-Wendys-TacoBell-Sonic-etc stretching out to infinity.

some areas of the country aren't overwhelmed w/lil mom n pop places cause they've all been overwhelmed by gross-to-mediocre chain places! they are the gastronomic walmarts.

Agreed. I wasn't saying this lack of choice was by any means a good thing, just a sad fact of life in some areas.

The corporations are to blame for this, as are the people who never bother to frequent the good independent places.

I've eaten at all of these (except Claim Jumpers, never heard of it) and Chili's is far and away the grossest shit ever developed by mankind. Most of these don't make me hungry thinking about them, but Chili's makes me want to vomit.

anyway, next time I'm back home, should I try out THE BONEFISH GRILL y/n

I mostly avoid all of these places because I am vegan. Sometimes I used to get the veggie burger from Applebees and pretend it doesn't have egg white in it, but yeah, vegan + chain restaurants = fail, unless you're content with fountain beverages and french fries. Fridays literally has NOTHING vegan, not even salad (their breadsticks are also deep fried)

Holy shit, A) your'e in south Jersey / B) you don't like Pat's??

Also I hear great things about Bonefish Grill and P.F. Chang's.

well my family lives there stevie d, I will return home in the summer. don't like pat's or, uh, venuto's? btw the bonefish grill I am talking about is the one by the deptford mall

That's the one my mother just pointed out to me and said was delicious!! I loooooved Venuto's when I went (once on South St. in Phila, once on Rt. 45 in or near Woodbury), but the fact that their sign and menus were in Papyrus sort of turned me off.

lorenzo's is better on south st. imo

Oh, well obviously! I haven't been there since like '05 or '06 but last I checked you could still get a (fucking enormous) slice and a Coke for $3- ? Of course now I just go to Gianna's on 6th or Govinda's on Broad.

PF Chang's is bullshit fwiw

used to steal mugs from denny's. wish i still had one

i have heard of claim jumper, but i think they're only a southern calif. thing. could be wrong. i see their monstrously huge frozen dinners at the supermarket a lot.

Claim Jumper is a restaurant chain headquartered in Irvine, California with 45 locations in Arizona, California, Illinois, Colorado, Nevada, Washington, Wisconsin and Oregon. Founder Craig Nickoloff opened the first Claim Jumper Restaurant in Los Alamitos, California in 1977.

i hadn't heard of claim jumper until tonight--their menu is completely terrifying

I mostly hate these kind of places because I've lived too long in places without tons of restaurants (even chain ones) and I just get mad when I go to a bigger city with tons of new and interesting things to eat and I see a line out the door at the goddamn Cheesecake Factory.

There's got to be a better place to eat within a reasonable distance, or else I'd rather just suck it up and get a fast food burger and fries for less money, less disappointment, and probably fewer calories. Sitting down and paying like twenty bucks to eat focus-grouped microwaved/deepfried stuff is like the worst of all options.

xpost i had a friend who used to steal the cloth napkins from Marie Callender's. whenever they got a new color/patterned napkin in, the waitstaff would bring it over and be like "another one for your collection!"

oh and that reminds me of that other West Coast suburban abomination, Cocos. I think I spent most of my childhood eating at terrible chains.

my girl is chinese and has lived in canada a mere three years, and she still really gets into these places. sociologically, it's kind of a mindblowing thing, authentic canadian white people watering hole and shit, she's still impressed when we go to red lobster and the menu is full of weird shit she's never tried: clam chowder! cheese biscuits! baked crab lasagna! deepfried coconut shrimp!!! and the waitresses are always nice and you get free refills on your drinks and the bathrooms are usually clean. we moved to vancouver about a year ago, so there's less interest but...

nowadays, even legit white people restaurants are basically rip-off copies of kelsey's neighborhood bar and grill or boston pizza. olive garden ripped off italian american restaurants or whatever, but now you get the local italian restaurant giving you some olive garden-esque bullshit ('cause that's what they prob grew up eating), and if you go to your neighborhood bar&grill, you're getting a rip-off of kelsey's or montana's or some other bullshit ('cause that's what everyone likes to eat, right?). if you go to a regular old white people restaurant (ie. any restaurant not identified with a specific cuisine-- so, like the ukrainian restaurant or the polish place or the greek place are sometimes still fighting the keeping it real fight: personality, creativity). these days you basically get zero creativity, assembly line meals, but without the corporate quality control. these chains squeeze out regular ol places and the ones that survive or spring up in any market gaps just start biting the massive-heaps-of-bland-shit-and-crazy-crap-on-the-walls strategy.

Moe: If you like good food, good fun, and a whole lot of...crazy crap on the walls, then come on down to Uncle Moe's Family Feedbag.

Announcer: At Moe's, we serve good old-fashioned home cooking deep fried to perfection.

[Moe submerges a whole tray covered with food, utensils, etc., in the deep fryer]
[he takes the fried tray to a couple, who break off pieces and give him the thumbs-up]

Moe: Now that's Moe like it! So bring the whole family. Mom, Dad, kids -- er, no old people. They're not covered by our insurance. It's fun! And remember our guarantee: if I'm not smiling when your check comes, your meal's on me: Uncle Moe! {[smiles right into the camera]}

Singers: {Come to Uncle Moe's for family fun, it's good, good, good, good, good good-good!}

Homer: Mmm. Sounds good.

So what's left in the line of authenticity? NJ diners?

lol dylann my parents who are chinese love going to red lobster because of unlimited bread rolls

and unlimited breadsticks at the olive garden

and unlimited rye bread with butter at outback steakhouse

in fact, a visit to any of the above will usually involve us ordering another order of the bread right after we finish the main course, and then we will wrap the bread in th provided napkins (free!) and leave (after only tipping 10% of course)

I mostly hate these kind of places because I've lived too long in places without tons of restaurants (even chain ones) and I just get mad when I go to a bigger city with tons of new and interesting things to eat and I see a line out the door at the goddamn Cheesecake Factory.

there's a cheesecake factory in SF?

yeah, i went there and the valedictorian of my class was waiting tables

haha

As much as I can agree that some of these choices are totally disgusting and represent the worst of American eating habits, I do think this thread smacks a teeny bit of elitism. I mean, remember there are some areas of the country that aren't overwhelmed with little mom and pop places to go and, as much as it may suck, going to Applebee's really is a treat night out for a family on a budget.

― you gone float up with it (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Wednesday, March 3, 2010 3:53 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

No elitism here. I started this thread because I was totally bummed out that all of my favorite ma & pa joints were closing up in my hometown while all of the chains out by the highway/mall were thriving. Also, the place I took my wife serves the world's most awesome potato skins - crispy on the outside, soft in the center, covered in mounds of AMERICAN cheese, bacon bits and sour cream. The trick is that the cheese is not melted. And American. Anyway, less culture war talk and more blooming onion/jalapeno popper merit discussion.

I think the SF Cheesecake Factory I was recommended was on the top floor of Bloomingdales? Somewhere in the Union Square area.

Mom and pops fail while chains prosper because they're reliable. It's rare to hear about one Red Lobster being really good and the another terrible - they're getting their supplies from the same trucks and kitchen turnover is high so it's not like the cooks imprint a personality on the food over time.

Independent restaurants are more of a dice roll (and, realistically, often no better than a chain).

No way any of the chain restaurants are making better BBQ and catfish sandwiches than the 30+ year mom & pops that I like (although I get your point).

FYI if you like bread rolls at Red Lobster, this recipe is a very good approximation of them (my sister's made them several times, they're great if you're about to get drunk and watch football):

http://www.kayotic.nl/blog/?p=4431#more-4431

http://e-lacrosse.com/blogs/lifeinthepros/files/2009/03/wafflehouse.jpg

i think reliability is part of it. but when you get beyond the denny's level, there's the spectacle of the whole thing: it's not just dumb shit on the wall, but... a western theme! glossy menus! or, sports memorabilia and crisp as fuck flatscreen tvs and an aquarium with a shark in it! dolled up waitresses in clean uniforms! mango daquiris that come from a slurpee machine! waitresses are writing upsidedown on a tablecloth that i can also draw pictures on with crayons! there are 58 kinds of cheesecake! that's what i dig, at least.

i spent four years in moose jaw, saskatchewan (pop 30,000), where local restaurants consisted of thick leather bound menu joints that served crappy doughy pizza piled high with mennonite sausage and canned mushrooms, pasta sauced with cream of mushroom soup (see: houston pizza, wayne and laverne's pizza, rodo's, the mad greek, cordova bistro). chains coming in and fucking up their game was the coolest thing that ever happened. and slowly, the old places got shut down and were scavenged by asian/etc. migrants, who opened a vietnamese place in a dusty old greek restaurant, best thai restaurant on the prairie's in an old polish/german bar/dive, a malay place in an abandoned grocery store, an indian joint in a failed steak house. the only good mom and places that lasted into the 2000s were... well, the chinese restaurants, that had been there from the start, and one place that ran out of an old carwash and had its menu up on hubcaps on the wall.

but the fact that their sign and menus were in Papyrus sort of turned me off.

Most elitist post itt

Anyway I fucking love Pizza Hut, I loved it even when there WERE local ma' and pa' options (I don't think Big John's is even a chain, there's just the one). I HATED Big John's, they made a thin and crispy crust and put green olives on the pizza. Disgusting.

Thank god for the Book It reading program that forced my parents to spend probably a couple hundred bucks taking us out to Pizza Hut.

think it is def a going with the enemy you know thing, particularly for out-of-towners passing through. hmm maybe Aunt Putsy's Country Kitchen is awesome...but maybe it's awful and plus they'll bludgeon me and put me in their meat cooler...better play it safe and get the QUESADILLA EXPLOSION SALAD at Outback. I know that's about the only time I eat at chain restaurants now, on road trips.

red lobster why bcuz u should hot have seafood in iowa