Grossest American Chain Restaurant

It is so cartoonish in my mind that I am certain if I ever end up there, I'll end up feeling a bit disappointed.

these are all the same restaurant

i like those breadsticks from olive garden, I could eat hundreds of them.

TGIF has made me the sickest over the years without question, lol college town. I wasn't having anything unusual and it didn't take as long to show up as real food poisoning would (ie the time it takes bacterial colonies to grow), but on several occasions it made me horribly ill a few hours after.

Cracker Barrel has pretty good food and belongs no where near this list.

I've vote Applebee's.

i think i've only been to chilli's and it was pretty goddamned bad - which is saying something, since i am generally a fan of terrible fastfood.

Chili's sucks.

The only one of these I've ever actually found gross is t.g.i. fridays, so that.

I thought Olive Garden was OK, but we were slightly tipsy and had an absolute gem of a waiter.

My brother likes Applebees best, so that's probably going to make me vote for them, because he's always wrong about food.

The only chain food that made me sick in my enormous US chain restaurant experience of four weeks in Florida mostly not eating in chain restaurants was breakfast at Ponderosa Steakhouse. Seriously, yow, not good.

The only time I've become actually SICK, not just feeling gross from eating this shit, was when our whole family stopped at a Bob Evan's while driving back home after a vacation. The entire family spent two days puking after eating there, it was the worst experience ever.

i went to some place called macaroni grill in el cerrito but i don't think it was called romano's? anyway, it was delicious and i liked that they put all their calorie info on the menu, so you could see that the cheesy past you were ordering was about 1500 cals in one serving.

I would like to order one cheesy past plz

lol whoops

I haven't been to any of these in +5 years, but I always enjoyed outback and olive garden and to a lesser extent chili's and applebees.

it actually made me order something ~reasonably~ low fat, and skip dessert

Ooh, Bob Evans, we went in one of them. I can't remember anything about it though. I think I might actually have passed up the opportunity to eat, having just googled their menu. BOBurritos looks like the grossest thing invented by man.

the Romano's in Macaroni Grill is hard to see on the sign/menu iirc

This Bob Evans incident was in like 1992 btw, still can't drive past one without hints of nausea.

Golden Corral anyone? grossest "restaurant" of all time by a long distance imo. its more like a trough, really. i think they might only exist in the south.

nope they def exist in the north!

ok i just checked: it was indeed a romano's i went to

these places have all gotten worse over the years, correct? because I ate at denny's when I was a kid (ie: the 70's) and it was fine, and I don't think that the change is just because my tastes have gotten so refined by living in the Gourmet Ghetto in Berkeley, because I will still eat crap if given half a chance.

I hear that, akm -- Bob Evans is an institution in the Midwest, we used to consider it good basic road-trip food. My mother knew she could feed us all there, approximately what it would cost, that we wouldn't turn our noses up at the menu, that the waitstaff would accommodate kids at 4 different levels of rowdiness/carsickness/crankiness, and so on.

Whaa happen?

Just looking at this Claim Jumper appetizer plate is making my stomach hurt:

http://www.poisonappleshirts.com/ohsofat/061609claimcombo.jpg

Also I am not gonna lie, a Cracker Barrel was the last restaurant I ate in before I spent 4 or 5 days hauling my ass along the Appalachian Trail in a rain/snow mix, only to find out that the person who loaned me her camping stove had accidentally given me the EMPTY fuel cannisters instead of the full ones, and I DREAMED OF CRACKER BARREL FOR DAYS AND DAYS.

T.G.I. Friday's

^this place is so, so bad

i'll eat denny's breakfast (wouldn't fuck w/ their real food in a million years tho)

chili's & macaroni grill are both genuinely good and i dine at both regularly

Cracker Barrel makes some pretty awesome biscuits, IIRC.

christ, that looks like several bowel movements.

xxxp

outback is also generally very good

i'll have a battered turd plate, please

Two words in defense of Denny's non-breakfast food:

Patty Melt.

The Cracker Barrel in Tupelo, MS is pretty bad, tbh. I voted TGIF.

i'll have a battered turd plate, please

― harbl, Tuesday, March 2, 2010 6:20 PM (32 seconds ago) Bookmark

which of our 8 different ranch sauces would you like with that, ma'am?

aside from dennys (maybe) there is something a lot of these places have in common. they are really not all that cheap! i mean, if you have a local halfway decent mid-priced italian restaurant near you anywhere and you go to olive garden instead then you should kinda be ashamed of yourself. and same goes with all the rest. eat local! sort of.

if you are in a big hurry or only have five bucks on you then i can see the point of going to mcdonalds and the like, but these places actually make you wait for food and its usually not great and no real bargain.

I would happily dine at at least half of these right now, given the state of my budget/grocery supply until Friday. I could kill a steak platter + anything else from Outback Steakhouse, any given pasta entree from Olive Garden...fuck, even Red Lobster I'm sure I could come up with something and it's possible I've never even been to one.

Ditto. None of these places are world beaters, obv, but when you consider where and what I normally eat, well...

PS, if anybody in Northern Calif (but outside the Bay Area) wants a decent steak, there's a smallish chain called Cattlemens, 8 locations, that I thought was really good when I lived in Redding.

ctrl+f, nabkin, no matches found

Olive Garden in particular is ridiculously overpriced AND their food sucks. They can't even get their soup and salad right. Unfortunately, I have a $25 gift certificate that I got from a relative for x-mas. I guess I'll use it on booze. Maybe they have decent wine there or something.

Two words in defense of Denny's non-breakfast food:

Patty Melt.

four more:

Moons Over My Hammy

Olive Garden in particular is ridiculously overpriced AND their food sucks.

This

my friends and i tried to get some drunken late night grub at Denny's a few months ago and it smelled so bad we left before our waiter took our drink order (which was taking long enough to give us a chance to decide to gtfo.)

the restaurant smelled really bad. seriously. like dirty baby diapers.

of course after i posted what i posted i am reminded that i DO kinda like the friendly's chain. they are older and have their diner menu down pat. i guess they aren't everywhere though. for 10+ bucks or whatever i can get a decent hamburger and fries and a coke and a hot fudge sundae and i rarely feel ill afterwards. but maybe its just nostalgia. i've been going to them since i was a little kid.

Ruby Tuesday - pretty average but I used to go to it when I lived in Richmond because they had probably the best veggie burger in town (not saying much in Richmond). I don't know why their veggie burger was so delicious, it was thicker than a boca burger or whatever and juicy and tasty.

Chili's - I kind of love Chili's for two reasons: being able to substitute a black bean burger into any of their burgers, and the fact that they have a menu item called the QUESADILLA EXPLOSION SALAD, one of my favorite consumer food item names (it's pretty good too)

Applebee's - average, I get it mixed up with TGI Friday's

Red Lobster - I haven't eaten here since I was a kid and even then I didn't like seafood so I'd just order the child's hamburger or whatever

Denny's - it is gross but gets a pass for being pretty much the only place open late in my college town. Just treat it like any gross diner and stick to cheese fries.

Romano's Macaroni Grill - never heard of this place

Outback - doesn't seem particularly gross but it's not very veggie-friendly. I'd always get the french onion soup and try to convince myself it was made with veggie broth and not beef broth.

T.G.I. Friday's - average, get it confused with Applebees

Olive Garden - again in college, this was like the one "fancy" place you could go that was still affordable, so my wife (then my gf) and I would go there for special dinners and it seemed great. We ate at one again a few years ago out of desperation (we were out of town and very hungry) and it was so disgusting.

Claim Jumpers - never been there.

shocking that a steakhouse isn't veggie-friendly. you should yelp that!

EW, that Claim Jumper appetizer photo!

Cheesecake Factory - food is horrible and expensive, decor is horrifying

Yeah, I would have voted for that if it had been on the menu ballot.

the chips were good at chili's, but the chicken burger i ordered tasted like it had been soaking in a rancid vat of animal fat for about a week.

tried p.f. chang's for the first time last weekend - they must put a ton of msg in their food but dang it was good.

i went to some place called macaroni grill in el cerrito but i don't think it was called romano's? anyway, it was delicious and i liked that they put all their calorie info on the menu, so you could see that the cheesy past you were ordering was about 1500 cals in one serving.

this is the only macaroni grill I've been to also and it is pretty decent and really cheap. went w/ my friend from bakersfield, who apparently used to go to the one in bakersfield all the time w/ her family. I've never seen in anywhere else in california though...anyone know what the geographic spread is?

Denny's has been doing that for a few years now, still makes me lol

Moons Over My Smaugy

This is old and I think was probably posted in a Marilyn Hagerty thread, but it deserves to be memorialized herein:

http://www.theawl.com/2012/03/our-week-with-marilyn

one egg to bind them

nice

Chili's has food that tastes like the crap you'd shovel in your mouth while playing Twisted Metal back in 1996

what were you doing in a Chili's

slowly drifting away

ROSCOE DINER RESTAURANT
Where People Eat Like Kings

Accommodations to over 300 People

So this means the place can seat 10,000, right?

arena style banquet seating

Need to read a Hagerty review of Chili's.

"diner restaurant" reminds of a a funny place i've stayed (twice!) in memphis: The Gen X Inn Hotel

are their flannel robes in the closet

Build your own Hobbit Slam

Build your own Hobbit Slam

Build your own Hobbit Slam

iirc Applebees has better bars

you know, I can actually back you up on that one.

(But not babyback you up.)

I once read a fascinating long form article about the granddaddy of all of these, TGI Friday’s. At least for the first couple decades they cooked their food in house, while their competitors like Applebees or whatever just Microwaved literally everything.

history of TGIF pretty interesting. memphis had the first one outside of the og in nyc. was considered the hotspot. maybe big star gigged there? they certainly drank there.

Applebees had those $2 Long Island Iced Teas for a while, you could get incredibly wasted for ten bucks