Assimilate or starve: eat at Applebee's

Actually, that's all for now.

End-result: GOPers will plop their clogs faster than Democrats will.

Last time I was dragged to Chili's, my dad ordered the fajitas. They came out on their special plate, but I noticed something was missing. Dad started in, and I asked him if his food was hot enough. He grunted affirmatively. I then pointed out that the plate had been making that annoying sizzle that usually comes with fajitas, it being one of the loud foods and all.

We asked the waiter who sheepishly told us that they usually squirt a little sumpin-sumpin' on the plate to activate the noise and had forgotten to do so with my dad's plate. THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT'S WRONG WITH CHILI'S, APPLEBEE'S, ET. AL.

However, just the fact that every single one of these places is packed every Friday and Saturday night shows that I'm in the minority. After all, the most profitable single restaurant in my state is a Red Lobster out by the mall in North Little Rock.

When tourists come to an intimidating place like Times Square, they're comforted when they see something they recognize from their hometowns. The thing I hear most often from out-of-town guests - people from Kansas City, Chicago, California - is: "We didn't know you were here. We've been in New York over a week, this is our last day, and we're so excited we've discovered the Olive Garden." They say their experiences in other New York restaurants have not been friendly. When I'm doing the hiring process, I look for a lot of employees from out of town, so when the guests come in, they can relate. I don't feel that Times Square has changed much since I was a kid. It's always been bright and exciting, and it still packs the same energy. Corporations have made America strong; I don't see anything wrong with corporations coming into Times Square. The Olive Garden is just part of the neighborhood.

You can come visit me and find out what it's like.

x-post

(as I was writing this a page I had in the background gave me an Applebee's pop-up. It was fucking creepy.)

Jesus is this OTFUCKINGM.

I also don't object to the pandering aspect of the suggestion. What I find obnoxious is how Applebee's is treated a synecdoche for everything the Democrats don't understand. I bet the very same people they're trying to court would find this tactic condescending and trivializing that everything they stand for can, in a short-hand way, be embodied by a restaurant. (So maybe I am put off by the pandering.)

"We're going to eat at your Applebee's to understand your kind better."

"Uh, that's great...how about going to our churches instead?"

yes, i have seen the commercial, spencer. it really isn't pleasurable, though. friday's totally owns applebees. as does max and ermas.

I have a friend who, whenever she visits her Mom and sister in Michigan, goes to Applebees. The brand reminds her of meals with them. I guess I have a similar thing with Chili's and my parents. I just think it's harsh to condemn these restaurants. I understand how they might be considered part of "the problem" (not gourmet, chain, destroying mom n' pop), but at the same time, I think it's a mistake to criticize them in the way that many cosmopolitan types do - people often have a deep psychic investment in these (problem) brands and places which should not be ignored (or criticized too harshly).

1) Denny's
2) IHOP
3) Sizzler
4) Shoney's
5) Chili's

Wendy's is hands-down the best national fast food chain in America. They had a London one and I really miss it.

"people often have a deep psychic investment in these (problem) brands and places which should not be ignored (or criticized too harshly)."

This isn't about who eats where, and why - it's all about the symbolism, and what 'Applebees' is a code word for, because I don't think a bunch of strategists are really going to start eating at Applebee's. If they want to be 'unpretentious', why don't they eat at a diner, or a sausage stand?

I grew up in a blue-collar area, where if people eat at chains, they eat at McDonald's or Pizza Hut. But they also get tacos from the local Mexican joint, they eat Italian 'beeves', they get take-out Chinese. So this isn't really about snobbery, or maybe 'snobbery' has been redefined to 'prejudice against sprawlville' - quite deliberately, I think.

Spencer, if you are eating a square patty it feels like you get more burger! Also, it just plain looks more like one you'd make yourself (McD, yuck; Burger King, a munchkin is in the back striping the patties with a black Sharpie).

Wendy's seem to pay more attention to the quality of their ingredients without having to respond to public pressure first, keeps the salady bits cold, all that. I also like getting Frosties and further freezing them a la Malt Cup. Also, my mom used to get it for us as a Very Big Treat when I was little.

Ah, now I understand... I haven't been to Wendy's in ages, but I'll give it another go. I ate at Carl's Jr the other day which is hit n' miss (their grilled chicken breast sandwiches are good). Also, I don't even think of something like a Big Mac as a "hamburger" - it's in it's own food category. Also, I have a theory that everything at McDonald's is made from soy products (even the furniture).

Travelling through Wyoming and Colorado a few years ago - we were appalled to find nothing buth chain restaurants. We drove for three hours looking for a regular* place.

(*regular = doesn't buy all of its food from a food science warehouse. There IS a reason that most chain restaurants' food all tasted the same..)

sure, but that also goes w/ criticism of practically everything! i guess i just don't typically mind offending ppl in this fashion. or are you talking about the supposed political issue?

= oil

Only if there are no restaurants at all to speak of. There's only one kind of restaurant in Lincoln, Kansas, and that's a truckstop. If you want to eat out, you drive to the next town where they *do* have an Applebees.

x-post Yeah the bar at Chilis ain't so bad. Beer and burgers. I have no complaints.

i've got an aunt and uncle who live in wyoming but i've never been, i'll have to ask about this because i find it difficult to believe unless you were driving on an interstate. it's certainly not typical in my experience for a town w/ a population of 2k or less to have any kind of chain restaurant.

maybe it's not like that further west; in NY i know it's similar (actually, a whole lot nicer) to here (here being IL).

I like the Outback Steakhouse. Chili's isn't bad as I recall. The disappointing thing to me is that every restaurant you go into these days turns out not to belong to a chain, there's nothing local anymore besides dive bars just about. OTOH this also means I can go just about anywhere in the country and know where to find a decent steak for $14 and Nukie Brown on draft. The nationwide concept eateries are not without their advantages.

it's not that far

i nearly got arrested at an applebees when i was 11.

BTW if you're ever cruising down I-80 and you want a good cup of coffee, there is a "Barista's" in downtown Kearney. About a five minute drive off the highway.

My dad is a lifelong republican and his favorite restaurant is Applebee's.

My brain, it is hurt.

Applebee's took down the Razorback.

The funny thing is that now that all of these chains, Red Lobster and Olive Garden, opened in Times Square I have absolutely no interest in going to them, because I walk past them and realize that they upped the prices a lot to put them in that space and you can get actual really excellent Italian seafood for either the same price or a tiny bit more somewhere else. Although I'm really not sure, thinking about it, if it'd fucking kill Pomodoro's or Frutti di Mare or wherever to stick some plastic shiny lobsters on their shit.

I refuse to defend TGIFriday's, OTOH. That is without any question the worst establishment on the face of the earth.

-- Kenan (fluxion2...), November 15th, 2004.

I think the term you are reaching for is "awfulsome".

"...with lotsa crazy crap on the walls!"

Anyway, I don't like Chilis/Applebees/TGIF/etc, but mostly because I'm allergic to food preservatives which they all seem to have in everything. Yech. So to go with that, seattletimes.com had a nice Blue State Snobby Elitest article on Seattle's best bistros:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/pacificnw/2004/1114/cover.html

which REALLY means that even blue staters can have shitty taste!

when ARE we gonna do a times square red lobster FAP, anyway? this has never actually come about and i am SO up for it!!

not sure about hawaii, tho. have been there, yet.

I watched a lot of CSPAN last week as a bunch of those election postmortem panel shows were held at various DC think tanks. I wish Alex in NYC had been on them.

So this isn't really about snobbery, or maybe 'snobbery' has been redefined to 'prejudice against sprawlville' - quite deliberately, I think.

Incredibly OTM. I just realized this. Almost all the elitist liberals I know at Unnamed Elite New England University (stereotypes exist for a reason..) are fans of fast-food chains and diners and dive bars and baseball and hockey and football... And here I was thinking the "elitist" worries meant we're snobs about that, and that we look down on people with less money. No, the "elitist" label means we're snobbish and disdainful of the middlebrow stuff liked by David Brooks and people who have more money than we do, but shit for taste.

(* -- said NYC franchise owned not just by jews, but by ISRAELI jews [especially beloved by the bible-banging set these (apocalyptic) days!])

Yeah, that's the most condescending part of the whole David Brooksian angle -- like, omg, Applebee's? What's that?!??!!! Wait, what are these "suburbs" of which you speak? Chain stores? Wot?

Brooks and his ilk seem to seriously believe that the 55 million people who voted for John Kerry all share one big Upper West Side co-op and never leave it. And anyway you don't even have to leave Manhattan anymore to go to Brooks' precious Home Depot. (And I guaran-damn-tee you I've logged more hours in suburban Home Depots than David fucking Brooks -- and I wasn't doing social fucking research either, I was fucking shopping! Buying screws and nails and countertops and shit. Gettin' my Red State on. Damn.)

x-post -- Chick-fil-a has excellent waffle fries. Probably fried in gizzard fat or something, but still.

But hey, what's wrong with homogeny, right? If everything is medocre, that's better than everything sucking, right? Highest standard of living in the world, baby.

x-post: Applebee's is American, but it's American crap! Not liking American crap doesn't make you anti-American, it just makes you anti-crap!

and WTF is it that my fellow moderate democrats embarrass me ALMOST as much as (what's left of) the stereotypical tree-hugging lefties? if THIS is the best idea that this bunch has, then this is gonna be a REAL long four years.

ah, me and like 12 people went there for a birthday party because we thought it would be really funny. it turned out to be a pretty expensive joke though. that shit aint cheap! i spent like $50 for shrimp scampi & fried shrimp platter, 2 lobsteritas (frozen margaritas), and then i had to take a real nasty shit just a few hours later. but i stole the salt & pepper & sugar caddy which is pretty cute and has lobsters and crabs on it. that sort of makes up for $50 hit to my bank account. also, it was a tuesday night and crazy packed. mostly black couples on dates and a few tourists.

so really, i wouldn't recommend a times square red lobster fap. there's hardly any tequila in those lobsteritas anyways

Or Starbuck's! Starbucks is monoculture incarnate, invading places all over the nation with guileless rapacity. But they're doing it with coffee, and they're doing it in urban places. This is where Thomas Frank's "latte libel" comes in -- all us urbanites are just effete, latte-swiggin' faggots, when actually, if we're latte-swiggin', we're more probably just successful targets of the marketing of a huge corporate food chain, just like people who eat at Applebees. No difference there, really.

Apart from any issue discussed here, I do not ever recommend Red Lobster food. It's frozen as a rule, sketchy as a broad guideline, and overpriced as an ironclad law.

x-post: Yeah, well that's the whole problem with people who think of capitalism as an ideology -- a role it fulfills very poorly. They've bought into this Ayn-Rand-for-dummies idea that pursuing their own short-term self-interest is actually the best way to do good for everyone else. Which is a very convenient way to look at the world.

Who'd like to be judged by a bunch of spoiled, middlebrow, unquestioning white-flighters as elitist? Exurbs are miserable, detached places: I like my psychogeography and when subdivisions with names such as Deer Path Woods have none of the above because they were bulldozed in 1970 before Phase One, that says volumes. My dad moved to a place like this in the mid-'80s; lots of 'townhouses', lots of people who'd grown up in the blue-collar inner northern suburbs and had reactionary views and HARD kids, etc, transferred techies (incomers and immigrants), the kind of place which triples in population in 15 years and goes all NIMBY when immigrants etc. need assisted housing in their area.

What I found most objectionable about the place was that nobody, not a child, not an adult, ever bothered to question a single aspect of their lifestyle (the closest they got was wanting to set off bottle rockets, drink beer and smoke pot without police interference, if underage). They were LAZY people who were convinced they worked SO HARD, and they got through life with little treats like 'their' shows, 'their' team and 'their' coffee to keep them going. They appear to want something for nothing: the houses stacked high with cheeeeeap Wal-Mart appliances purhcased on one of five credit cards, the LCD materialism, the cocooning in soft furnishings, the huge portions of terrible, bland, megafarmed food, the reductive views of the world outside the town to reinforce their own superiority, the need, largely, of the lower-middle-class to feel like members of the upper-middle-class because they have the same amount of new cars and televisions.

= oil

Sump oil?

You should go with David Brooks. Apparently, he had surf n turf for way under $20 there.
http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2003/09/05/opinion/brooks.75.jpg
I waded through enough surf-and-turfs and enough creamed corn to last a lifetime.

i was a victim of this "humor" last year, when a friend demanded his birthday party be held at the olive garden on 6th avenue. in addition to pretty expensive, it was absolutely disgusting. one of our group started to ask the waiter a question about the lasagna, and he cut her off by wearily saying, "look.. it comes in a bag."

You wacky urbanites, going to Red Lobster and Olive Garden as "a joke". I know of many suburbanites who would be very confused by this "joke". A joke? What's so funny about eating at Carrino's? It's good food at a decent price! That's funny?

I'm also enjoying this thread b/w the Steak & Shake thread. Fuck national chains unless they're serving chili fries!

On the rare occasion that I go to a coffe shop now, it's Caribou.

And maybe it was just an urban legend, but isn't Caribou owned by Saudis who gave money to Hamas? I'll stick with Domino's and Chik-Fil-A.

Actually, I go to Paul's up the street. I don't go to the national chains partly because of politics, but mostly because they're a great big fucking hassle to get in and out of. I assume that the waitress at Browning's is making enough money since she's been there since the Johnson administration. Guilt-free cheese dip, my friends.

yeah it was funny for a minute. "ha!ha! look at us! we're normal americans eating normal food with other normal americans!" but then soon realized that just for $20 more we could have each had the tasting menu at Le Bernadin. stupid stupid stupid

I once got in trouble at school for wearing a Fudpucker's shirt.

You Ain't Been Pucked 'Til You Been FUDPUCKED!

Being trapped in a foul exurb every other weekend as a teenager probably has coloured my impressions of those places slightly, but like Aimurchie I have seen the staff manuals written by chain-restaurant overlords. I worked for a day at Perkins once - my mom went apeshit when she saw that they ruled that you had to turn up to work actually wearing the uniform. "Wait, they're trying to dictate your appearance at times they're not even paying you to wear that thing? No sale!"

also, xxxpost, the ground round is absolutely foul. it's like fucking friendly's with drinks.

Pwned by IHOP.

Evolve or die:

Ms. Stewart acknowledges that Applebee’s has not aged well, and that it has become indistinguishable from the other “apostrophe-s” restaurants like Chili’s or T.G.I. Friday’s.

Above all, she and industry analysts agree, the menu has grown stagnant. Ms. Stewart is trying to steer Applebee’s into more adventurous waters.

It would be hard to imagine a more challenging time to do that. Food and fuel costs are up while the amount of money customers are willing to spend is down.

In recent months, Bennigan’s and its sister restaurant, Steak & Ale, filed for bankruptcy. Almost half of the people who own chain restaurants think things are going to get worse in next six months, according to a recent survey by the National Restaurant Association.

“It’s been a disaster,” said Sharon Zackfia, a restaurant analyst with William Blair & Company, an investment firm. “There’s been nowhere to hide.”

But Ms. Stewart loves a challenge, and she believes that small but important menu changes that will be introduced in the coming months will lead her to victory.

That sassy-talking apple RIP

small but important menu changes

Haven't they been making these every month since like 2005?

I'll be impressed only if Applebee's makes themselves worse than Shari's

Serious question: in what way was Applebee's formerly distinguishable from Chili's and TGI Friday's? And are the latter two distinguishable from each other? I mean, all are easily distinguishable from Denny's, which is more IHOPPy, and from Bennigan's, which is the same kind of restaurant but has much worse food. OK, I guess Chili's is a little more Southwestern. But seriously, explain to me what the difference between the ideal Applebee's and the ideal TGI Friday's is -- I've eaten plenty at both and have no idea. For bonus points, is the ideal Ruby Tuesday supposed to be a different thing again?

Oh, I had Ruby Tuesday's on vacation and it was really good, normal (no gimmicks) restaurant atmosphere and snooty foodstyles like you urbanites eat! Texas Roadhouse is really good too, they are vegetarian friendly and have a non-obnoxious atmosphere! Chili's has the least menu options and a more fast food atmosphere. Applebee's isn't bad but the plates are enormous.

I judge them by healthy options, like how many vegetables or salads you can get. Some might have a lot of calories but you are getting more vitamins at least.

OK. This thread belongs in the First Reply Hall of Fame.

Chili's bottomless chips rules all other family restaurant-style places imho.

i nearly got arrested at an applebees when i was 11.
― latebloomer (latebloomer), Monday, November 15, 2004 2:46 PM (6 years ago)

This never got explained! lb, what is the story?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2017/08/11/applebees-is-done-trying-to-win-over-millennials/?utm_term=.ff0e7b2c07b8&tid=sm_tw

Now the company is taking items off the menu, including a turkey sandwich with sriracha chile lime sauce and a pork-ham-bacon sandwich. And it is bringing back old favorites, Lenow said, though he declined to say what those were. (“We wouldn’t want to tip off our competitors,” he said.)

Applebee’s is also assessing “whether the brand truly gets credit for hand-cutting steaks in the restaurant and whether we should continue with this approach,” Cywinski said.

Applebee's riblets are good

does the bar serve single malt scotch

Imagine the inherent corniness of Applebee's is gonna be significantly more attractive to the millennial market than embarrassing attempts at hipping it up.

a turkey sandwich with sriracha chile lime sauce

i think the turkey might have been the problem here, not the millenial sriracha

Applebee's should have called it "millennial sriracha" imo

why aren't the kids purchasing this turkey sandwich? what, you're telling me they don't like turkey now? you know what, i have had it up to HERE with these millennials

i actually ate at an applebee's a couple weeks ago for the first time in god knows how long. arrived at the knoxville airport, was driving into town and just wanted a square meal since i was going straight on to a party. it was okay, slightly better than i might have remembered actually but mannnn did they make it hard to stay with the plan of ordering something kind of not-gross and semi-healthy. everywhere you turn are seductive combo deals with big glossy pictures of the delicious-looking fried junk. or platters where you pick two sides from a list but only one item on the list is both a vegetable and appealing-sounding so you're back onto the loaded baked potatoes and beer-battered mac-n-cheese fries or whatever. the place did not look to me as if it had been renovated since the 1990s, though there were dumb bar trivia electronic gadgets at the tables so maybe that was part of the "millennial" maneuver. nothing else about the entire experience seemed as if it had been engineered to appeal to my elite east coast metrosexual ivory tower needs. and that's okay.