Friendly's Restaurant

For over 75 years, Friendly's has offered you a friendly staff, great value and a thousand sweet ways to enjoy your day. Find a convenient Friendly's in your community now!

The trouble with Fribbles...

http://www.friendlys.com/media/uploads/menus/submenu-breakfast.jpg

Even just looking at that picture i feel like i've been beaten unconscious with a sugarcane stalk and contracted a metabolic disease readily mispronounced by some oatmeal/life insurance hawker

Also, have you ever ordered cold cereal or oatmeal for breakfast at a diner? That always counfounds me, like isn't one of the major selling points of going out based on getting things that are too involved to prepare at home??

but they come in cute little boxes.

they closed the one friendly's here last year. now we are only a one friendly's town!

Every time we had a concert at school when I was little we'd all go out to Friendly's afterwards for Jim Dandy sundaes.

Dishwashing at Friendly's was my first job.

their crowning achievement:

http://www.doobybrain.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/friendlys-Grilled-Cheese-BurgerMelt.jpg

this thread is just my not-so-secret way of determining which of you grew up in the northeast

I love that they have a dessert called the Happy Ending Sundae, because once or twice a year the Friendly's sign will read

HAPPY ENDINGS $5.00

aw hells yeah

Also, have you ever ordered cold cereal or oatmeal for breakfast at a diner? That always counfounds me, like isn't one of the major selling points of going out based on getting things that are too involved to prepare at home??

thanks ma'am. i'll have the Kix. with lowfat milk. and a jar of sucrose on the side, if you will.

yes, and i'll have what he's having. but make mine 2% and throw in some crushed Body Buddies

"Sorry Sir, we're all out of Dinky Donuts this morning. Perhaps I can interest you in a bowl of Glazed Donutz?"

i should get a pin that says i have survived this place for 40 years. they should have a 40 year club.

like a lot of chains i feel like the food quality has just gone way downhill. but maybe it was always downhill. i always kinda liked the burgers for the butter-toasted buns. they have just kinda become obsessed with fat/cheese. everything is cheesy now. when we would go to the one here that closed i couldn't help but notice that a lot of the other customers looked REALLY unhealthy. like, it was hard for them to walk unhealthy.

oh dear.

yeah, when i was growing up i would invariably order the grilled cheese sandwich there, and I don't even like grilled cheese that much! wtf??

i was visiting family last wk and i almost convinced everyone to go there. i'd be curious to see if the food quality is much the same as i remembered it being. instead we went to ruby tuesday's. i feel fairly confident that i burned off some bad karma during dinner. their salad bar is like a Hieronymus Bosch painting

there was a lot of brown iceberg lettuce and canned peas

i always kinda liked the burgers for the butter-toasted buns.

^this! they were especially great for hot dogs, imo.

conehead owns--the only thing resembling a clown i can enjoy

Mecca of my childhood. Took my girlfriend there on a visit home last summer and wowed her with the Reese's Pieces Sundae. Five scoops, chocolate syrup, peanut butter syrup, marshmallow syrup. A crowning ice cream achievement.

haha awesome!

Elliot, I have what you people here on earth call "diabeetus"

One of my friends and I have twice finished the Giant Crowd Pleaser. 12 scoops & 6 toppings. I think we scared the waitresses and other customers.

fribbles were kinda great to 9 y/o me. sorta remember they were made with ice-milk? what does that even mean?

it is low-fat ice cream. like skim I guess? haven't noticed it around since I was a kid.

Also completely unfuckwithable (in my memory):

http://www.bakedbyrachel.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/IMG_3999_resize.jpg

dude, if you are enough of an adult to have a professional job marketing family restaurant fare, AND, your first thought of how to market ice cream treats involves Watermelon then you are completely fucked up imo

ice milk, if memory serves that was ned flanders' favorite dessert?

i used to kick it at friendlys all the time in high school

it was the nearest restaurant to my school

Slogans

"You're in for a nice surprise" (1979–1982)
"There's no place like Friendly" (1985–1989)
"Where ice cream makes the meal/I wanna go to Friendly's" (2008–Present)
"Oh, that looks good!" (2010–Present)

I love that they have a dessert called the Happy Ending Sundae, because once or twice a year the Friendly's sign will read

HAPPY ENDINGS $5.00

― Tarfumes The Escape Goat, Tuesday, March 6, 2012 9:58 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The happy endings was the upside-down ice cream cone in a dish wiht a smiley face, right? I used to love those.

My favorite were the peanut butter sundaes though. SO GOOD.

Friendly's memories:

* ate the hell out of many Wattamelon rolls, used to have a special method for ensuring even distribution of pink and white sherbet
* ate my first "chicken finger"
* was forced to go to Friendly's with my parents while clothed in my pyjamas after being picked up from the babysitter's, I was 10, it was totally humiliating
* in a gravely serious moment, my mom told the counter girl that she should check the restaurant for rodents because she (mom) had spotted droppings in many places on the counters and floors of the restaurant. They were sprinkles.
* my childhood Friendly's is still there, but I haven't been there since 1991 or so (?)

i have definitely had the forbidden hunka chocolate lava cake sundae thing.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_XmWwk_DYndU/TSUydTz7x6I/AAAAAAAACGc/ygUSeOwkcIg/s1600/friendlys_forbidden_chocolate_lava_cake.JPG

My friend Kate's favorite food is the New England Clam Chowder. From Friendly's. I have always found this very suspect.

lol u know a culinary trend has run its course when it shows up a friendlies xp

These things are pretty good. They're also ridiculously bad for you given their small size:

http://www.friendlys.com/media/uploads/products/61_jpg_270x255_q85.jpg

"You're in for a nice surprise" (1979–1982)
"There's no place like Friendly" (1985–1989)
"Where ice cream makes the meal/I wanna go to Friendly's" (2008–Present)
"Oh, that looks good!" (2010–Present)

slogan creepiness starting high, dipping down from 1985-2010, then jumping back up again

seriously is there a creepier slogan than "you're in for a nice surprise"? sounds like a catchphrase from a horror movie

i don't know what the hell this is supposed to be. looks goatse-esque.

http://feeds.columbuscrave.com/content/blogs/crave/Images/2012/02/childhood_friendlys_sundae.jpg

'eat me i want to die'

this is where my dad used to take me and my sisters for divorced dad outings. i always got that conehead sunday! it was less sinister in person. there were a ton of reese's pieces at the bottom, which was genius.

sundae i mean, but often on sundays, before he dropped us back at our mom's

lol god bless this thread. frankly shocked that it hasn't been done yet, but maybe i fucked up wrt search function

lol u know a culinary trend has run its course when it shows up a friendlies xp

yeah they are still tweaking the sundried tomato ice milk even as we speak

For all the times I went to Friendly's, I never ever once ordered a sundae. I think they're kind of gross!

That's the happy ending sundae you guys!

But the whole point of Friendly's are sundaes! Also, grilled cheese but mostly just sundaes.

this is where my dad used to take me and my sisters for divorced dad outings.

yeah- ate many peppermint twist ice cram cones on saturday afternoons in the eighties

I find this thread fascinating.

no happy ending looks different!

i thought the happy endings sundae was an adult sundae (lol)! the conehead sundae was on the kids' menu! did i make up the name conehead sundae?

I'm pretty sure that's what a happy ending looked like on Long Island?

satan sundae

http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l8hoeplqhK1qa0rvr.jpg

Friendly's was like, our neighborhood hangout because it was right next to the high school and the staff was 90 % students. Until '94 or '95 or so, we'd hang around, order carafe's of coffee and smoke and get obnoxious. I think it was one of the first places in our town that banned smoking, probably because it was supposed to be a family restaurant, and so the locus of activity moved to Bennigans. God, I just remembered a few acid trips that made their way through there - what the fuck?

wife and i were just talking about this horrible cesspool of a restaurant and how good the reese's sundaes were omg

yeh when i was at/in high school we congregated at a perkin's restaurant. http://www.perkinsrestaurants.com/

purely by accident of birth it was located just so, equidistant from prob five different school districts. so you would end up chatting up randoms from the other side of the tracks while you were ordering unlimited refills of herbal tea and no food. sheez in retrospect i was just about the worst seventeen-year old ever.

god, this is making me want a reese's sundae. the melted peanut butter in there was p amazing.

xpost

The reese's sundae is totally doable at home.

yeah specifically, we were talking about when you got to the bottom and there was the peanut buttery/ice cream/chocolate sludge. damnnnn.
had some horrible experiences in friendly's though, tbrr

grilled cheese bread was also v heavily buttered.

I am dying for a reece's sundae right about now.

My girlfriend in awed contemplation of her first reese's pieces sundae

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v335/gypsyfrocksbedlam/Reeses.jpg

damn damn damn, that sundae!

tho beachville is right, how hard would it be to make it at home? or is there a lil friendly's magic that you just can't re-create?

wowowow!

Actually we have made them at home, and you can get pretty close if you use Reese's peanut butter syrup. Including ending up with a goopy pool of peanut butter/chocolate/marshmallow sauce at the end.

that sundae is really cute

something not so creepy

friendlys is one of those things that i LOVED as a kid growing up in the US then we moved to canada and so it has always been awesome in my mind and i missed the inevitable depressing decline, or possible upgraded taste standards of my adulthood.

see also:
- ihop
- that stripey gum with the horses

lol i just realized thats probably a zebra

Yup, zebra:
http://www.candycarrollton.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/fruit_stripe.jpg
and apparently his name is Yipes. When the fuck did that happen?

I LOVED that gum.

The peanut butter sauce is really the thing that makes the Friendly's sundae imo. Man, that one looks so good too.

As a child, I think I would order something called the "fishamajigwich." Could that be correct?

There was a Friendly's within walking distance of my house when I grew up, so we went there frequently, especially as teenagers-mostly for coffee, but I also had cheese sticks, quesadillas and ice cream.

Now all the Friendlys in my hometown are closed.

all yr friendlys are gone

wait slocki r u american ???

my mom used to take us to friendly's when i was a kid. the food was pretty bad and the service was incredibly slow but i was too young to notice.

ice cream was/is still good though

also there's now something called a "friendly's express" in brookline that as far as i can tell serves the exact same food as a regular friendly's but as fast food instead of making you sit down and wait half an hour

wait slocki r u american ???

― lag∞n, Wednesday, March 7, 2012 10:06 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

no we moved to the US when i was 1 and moved back shortly before i turned 8.

my brother on the other hand was born there so he gets to be dual. dammit.

also there's now something called a "friendly's express" in brookline that as far as i can tell serves the exact same food as a regular friendly's but as fast food instead of making you sit down and wait half an hour

― ciderpress, Wednesday, March 7, 2012 10:10 AM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I was in Coolidge Corner a couple weeks ago and I think that place closed down already.

ah yeah fishamajig! totally forgot those! blech.

I won't miss this shithole

I tend to feel a bit sad when I hear of the closings but thinking about it, I haven't really eaten there since I was a teenager, I don't eat most of their menu items anymore (vegetarian), and it's really not good at all, anything I could eat there I could get better elsewhere. I guess it's just nostalgia but even that would be missing if the place were still around.
Fishamajig...ridiculous isn't it, how could I have ordered that with a straight face?

Is it Denny's that had/has a dish called "Moons Over My Hammy?"

I was goin to say that

"Butts!"

i atke delight in odering ridiculous things

It was a good place to go pig out on ice cream sundaes though, I know of no similar place. but its cheaper if you just buy all dah good SHEIET at the market and make it yerself at home. I still remember that episode of teletubbies were these two kids were making ice cream sundaes with grapes on them and jelly - what the hell ?

last time i ate at friendly's i got talked into a fribble by the waiter. it tasted kind of rancid and gave me runnybottom within the hour. fuck a friendlys.

i'd much rather have an awful awful from newport creamery

I do kind of want an ice cream now. Maybe I will have to stop at the store.
They still make Magic Shell, right?

Magic Shell has palm oil in it, if you give a fuck about orangutans and shit.

Not only do they still make Magic Shell, but there's a Reese's chocolate/peanut-butter hardening topping dealie, too.

Okay, too bad about the palm oil :(
(I don't think Magic Shell lives up to my childhood love anyway)

magic shell is magic shit

anyway when I eat a ice cream is makes my molars hurt and then I ask God " why you do this to MEE!!"

no grapes in ice creams- reaffirmed

driving on the mass turnpike over the weekend, thought it was time to introduce the kid to friendly's
https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/552344_4764786318080_2106685818_n.jpg

aw.

Dishwashing at Friendly's was my first job.

― beachville, Tuesday, March 6, 2012 9:54 AM (7 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Afterhours, we would sit around for a while and just get bizonkers on the propellant from the whipped cream canisters.

great pic tyler. i have so many friendlys memories.

it was a pretty typical friendly's experience, capped off with a mentally handicapped woman giving my daughter a balloon.

Your daughter has diabetes now sorry.

D:

Awww!