I think it’s a pretty good chain restaurant.
The trick is not to order the steak. Great burgers that you can get as rare as you want, French dip sandwich, good shrimp, steamed veg, and consistently great salads. And the molassesy brown bread is highly addictive. Again…stay away from the chewy flavorless steaks and you’ll be happier.
Oh and one bloomin’ onion is enough to last me the rest of my life - yuck.
+1
Is that like going to Red Lobster and avoiding the fish?
Yes. This is the trick to any of the mid-tier chain restaurants. If I have to eat at one, which sometimes you just can’t avoid, I always stick with burgers or sandwiches. It keeps my disappointment to a minimum.
Cheddar Bay biscuits, baby!!!
Make them yourself. My ex worked there 20+ years ago. It’s Bisquick and cheddar cheese.
Bloomin Onion — a cardiologist’s nightmare:
A whole Bloomin’ Onion with an average serving of dipping sauce contains about 2210 calories. Ouch, ouch, ouch! (Comparable fried onion appetizers at other restaurants will have comparable calorie totals.) Most likely you’ll share this appetizer with one to three other people, but the calorie total is still likely to be nearly 1000 calories per person, and that’s before you’ve even started your meal. Not to mention that the total fat content is 134 grams, meaning that if you ate one half of the onion you’d have consumed more than your daily recommended fat intake for the entire day!
There was a local news report here in Philly about the UPenn dining hall when they started putting in much healthier selections of food. The most popular item on their menu remained the fried onion! A good start for all those whiz kid Wharton MBAs.
Reductive argument, but… yes.
You’re all correct.
My wife and I were once in a rain storm so unreal that we ducked into Appleby’s five blocks from our apartment out of sheer survivalist necessity. I was flabbergasted at how bad it was despite thinking the worst, I thought, going in – much like Brian, the OP.
But these places do serve a purpose AND you can order well and do okay. I defend Cheesecake Factory like crazy and wonder why it gets so much grief. But I get a cheeseburger and a salad and a beer. So what do I know? I don’t get the cold vegetable medley, nor the gloppy mashed potatoes, nor the gloppy cheesecake. Those do indeed suck.
O__________________________O
Man srsly the only reason to go there are those biscuits
Ingredients:
2 ½ cups Bisquick baking mix
Chef’s Table: Jerk Grilled Lobster Watch Video
¾ cup cold whole milk
4 tablespoons cold butter (1/2 stick)
¼ teaspoon garlic powder
1 heaping cup grated cheddar cheese
Bush on Top:
2 tablespoons butter, melted
¼ teaspoon dried parsley flakes
½ teaspoon garlic powder
pinch salt
Directions:
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Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.
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Combine Bisquick with cold butter in a medium bowl using a pastry cutter or a large fork. You don’t want to mix too thoroughly. There should be small chunks of butter in there that are about the size of peas. Add cheddar cheese, milk, and ¼ teaspoon garlic. Mix by hand until combined, but don’t over mix.
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Drop approximately ¼-cup portions of the dough onto an ungreased cookie sheet using an ice cream scoop.
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Bake for 15 to 17 minutes or until the tops of the biscuits begin to turn light brown.
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When you take the biscuits out of the oven, melt 2 tablespoons butter is a small bowl in your microwave. Stir in ½ teaspoon garlic powder and the dried parsley flakes. Use a brush to spread this garlic butter over the tops of all the biscuits. Use up all of the butter. Makes one dozen biscuits.
If you want to se WHY these sort of places suck so bad, get someone in the biz to show you a trade magazine or two and maybe a Sysco catalog.
Chock full of “cost reducing alternatives” to actual normal food: fish “filets” made of liquified fish and thickeners for precise portion control, scores of things you think you should eat fresh that are frozen, freeze dried or worse then reconstituted to order and that have “waste reducing shelf lives” of months.
Way back I used to play cocktail piano type gigs and during breaks I’d browse those catalogs at the bar or back in the kitchen. It was depressing. Places good enough to have live piano, but every steak dinner was frozen solid when it hit the grill and lots of stuff was coming out of those catalogs with sales pitches like Roberto is describing. The opposite of cooking as we like to think about it.
edit: I can’t believe I typed “good enough to have live piano.” Please let that go by. Pretty please.
Friday evening I drove by the Outback in Lakewood, CA
There was a HUGE line of people outside… I slowed down, stuck my blackberry out the window and snapped a photo with the intention of posting it here… but it came out all blurry. sorry. I suck.
There were SO many people waiting to eat there.
Boggles the mind don’t it? 
You go to the Cheesecake Factory at Stoneridge Mall? That’s across the street from one of our sales offices. There is always something redeeming about any chain restaurant. If the Factory can’t get a cheeseburger and a beer right, they would deserve to disappear in a sinkhole. That being said, the main reason I absolutely hate the Cheesecake Factory is that they have ads or sidebars look like ads in their menu. No thank you.
How bad could Applebys have been? Did they mess up even the cheeseburger? (I have never eaten at one, but it’s always busy)
Applebees messes up the basics like salad dressing, bread, hot wings… they are so bad.
Not everybody in America is a wine and food snob. Some people don’t fly Flannery beef cross country just to wash it down with a $200.00 California Cabernet. ![[soap.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/a/a7ea1fffd3ef237e8f19d17a83270ad8452218ca.gif "soap"){kind=small}
No more than the line that winds around the block to get into a certain Denny’s in San Diego every weekend morning.
it’s not about being a food snob though, just about caring if your food is decent.
I always marvel at the restaurants who can’t make the basics - grilled steak, roast chicken, etc - in a decent, competent manner. In the case of chains, they don’t care - they’re after a mass produced, cost-efficient ‘experience’. I’d rather find some neighborhood place where they want to serve good, basic stuff at a reasonable price than eat somewhere where they order food out of a Sysco catalog.
I’m pretty openminded when it comes to these places and don’t automatically discount one just because they have multiple locations. My kids seem to like them more than I do so we’ll hit one occasionally. I don’t like Applebees at all and avoid them. Not much of an Olive Garden fan either. I do like the Cheesecake Factory and think they do pretty good job overall. Legal Sea Foods is another good chain and some locations have a pretty good wine list as well. I haven’t been to an Outback in a long time, but don’t remember it being all that bad. That said, I will most always look for the local place first as I tend to enjoy them more. I’m also just the kind of guy who ships Flannery across the country and pops a $200 Cab/Bordeaux to wash it down.