Benjamin Kepple

The Conundrum of Chain Restaurants

SO I WAS BORED last night and was watching the Red Sox beat Baltimore when, much to my amazement, I saw a commercial for the Applebee's chain of restaurants that didn't make me turn white as a sheet and sweat in dreadful anticipation of the horror to come. This event so stunned me that I wondered if it might not be a turning point for the modern middle-class atrocity known as the chain restaurant.

Like most arrogant and over-educated young sophisticates, I have long regarded Applebee's with contempt and disdain. This chain, among all chains, has been the most egregious offender in the $70 billion industry's campaign to trick Hard Working, God-Fearing Americans from Working Families into believing the overpriced, processed industrial slop set before them is indicative of quality, upper-middle class dining. But much to my surprise, the commercial did not go down this route. Instead, it focused on the fact that it had a lot of cheap specials that tasted good, and for good measure slapped its rivals over at Ruby Tuesday's and T.G.I. Friday's in the closing.

What? No pseudo-celebrity chef? No supposed culinary masterpieces? No lame-o attempts at conveying the chain is hip and with it? And I can get a meal for like $10 plus tax and tip? Truth in advertising? What an idea! True, it will take me a long time before I'm ready to actually return to an Applebee's, but I'm not going to say this didn't open the door just a crack to the idea. Plus, I have to admit I kind of liked seeing them stand up for themselves. You tell those bastards over at Friday's who's boss!

Now, I should note that despite my remarks above, I am not opposed to chain restaurants. Why, I even ate at one this evening. I ate at this particular restaurant, part of a regional chain, because they have this calamari dish I like, their advertisements don't insult my intelligence, there is no nonsense about premium-this and featuring-that, and the staff are sharp. When I was done eating, my waitress brought me my check quickly, I left a nice tip, and the mission was accomplished. That's all I wanted, and it was done. Why other chain restaurants have problems with this boggles my mind.

For instance, take the Olive Garden. I am not fundamentally opposed to a casual Italian restaurant chain. They make a good basic salad. The food's not bad. I will never dine there again if I can help it, and I am proud to say it has been five years since I have. This is not simply because every time I think of the Olive Garden, I think of Joe Queenan placing a shroud over the "zuppa toscana," but because the place is a mockery of all the values that make Italian restuarants wonderful. (Also because it reminds of a relationship which I completely screwed up, but that is neither here nor there).

Consider: has anyone ever visited an Olive Garden where you haven't had to wait an unseemly long time for a table? I certainly haven't. Every time I have visited, there has always been an annoyingly long wait, even if the restaurant was half-empty. I once had to wait even though I turned up at like four o'clock. Such waits would be understandable if I was at, I don't know, Gino's East in Chicago, or Chez Jay in Santa Monica, or The Baricelli Inn in Cleveland. It is not acceptable at the fucking Olive Garden, which I would note is most certainly not Le Bec Fin. And what the hell are they doing anyway, making me wait? It's uneconomic! Get me in and out as quickly as possible and give the table to the next revenue source, I mean, customer.

Also, there's the whole rigamarole involving the Peddling of the Crappy House Wine, which Prof Doug Shaw has so eloquently denounced on his Web site. I mean, for Christ's sake -- the Olive Garden, at least one of them here in New Hampshire, has Riunite on its wine list. Riunite!

God! I thought I was a heartless capitalist, but I couldn't sleep at night if I served up Riunite or Sutter Home and passed it off as something worthy of drinking while enjoying a fine meal. I'm just not that cold-hearted.

Don't get me started on TGI Friday's either. Although I've eaten there recently, primarily because it had the good idea of selling reasonably-sized portions of food at reasonable prices, this latest ad campaign of theirs with that spiky-haired supposed chef makes me recoil with horror. For one thing, no grown man should have a haircut like that. For another, the guy comes off -- as the kids say these days -- as a complete douchebag. As such I have transferred my extreme dislike of him to the chain as a whole.

Still, there is hope. It may be that people will respond to Applebee's latest venture, prompting the company to realize it has a winning idea, and chain restaurants everywhere will dump the fraudulent bozoism that for years on end has oozed like a pustulent wound from their operations. Alternatively, T.R. Brennan's here in Manchester -- my old neighborhood watering hole that burned down in a fire on Christmas Day -- will rebuild and I'll finally have a good place to get breakfast again.

I can only hope.

Posted by Benjamin Kepple at June 12, 2008 11:11 PM | TrackBack