Editorial: What's For Dinner?

[Editorial]

I was an article this morning in the Hartford Courant and I realized that they got it wrong.

Where Will We Eat When the Middle-Class Restaurant Is Gone?

The boom in American sit-down chains has come and gone. What replaced them isn’t so great for human connection. 

And I take exception to the article the article says that the family restaurants are closing… Pizza Hut, TGI Fridays, Red Lobster, Outback, Olive Garden, and Applebee’s all are struggling from going belly-up. But are they really family restaurants or are they chain restaurants?

It may seem counterintuitive to speak about these large chains as essential aspects of the social fabric. For decades, they were cast as invasive predators in American dining, displacing or devouring the small restaurants that came before.

But I think that the family restaurants still are plentiful… just not the ones that all had cookie cutter food. I’ve been to just about all of them and there really aren’t any differences between them except for the cuisines. That was what made them unique… you knew that their menus were all the same wherever you went…  Olive Garden; Mediterranean, Red Lobster; seafood, Outback; meats, etc. etc.

But also the same… Chicken and Shrimp Carbonara from each and every Olive Garden were also the same. The same proportion, the same cream sauce, same number of shrimp… all the same!

A bunch of senior friends go out to lunch once a month, we pick a different restaurant each time but we avoid Noon – 12:30… Why? Because they are too busy!!!! 

“They are the ruination of American food,” said Jane Stern, who has dedicated roughly the last half-century to chronicling the nation’s foodways. Alongside her now-former husband, Michael Stern, she crisscrossed the country writing the canonical “Roadfood” guides.

I agree! But they are a traveler’s delight because of the cookie-cutter menus.

I see more and more restaurants opening up… but they are not chain restaurants!

What I do see the demise of are the fast food places, and the restaurants with the high;y processed foods. When I bit in a nice juicy hamburger, I want to see texture in the patties… not something that looks like it was extruded from a machine like something out of Soylent Green novel.

“The things that Olive Garden and Applebee’s and TGI Fridays do for people is provide a reliable meal that will please most people,” she said. “All of those needs and desires are really pedestrian things, not distinction-gaining things.”

Great for the traveling public, but… Going out to dinner before a date?

Just look at Pizza Hut pizza, they are a cookie-cutter pizza… uniform thick, uniform diameter, the same amount of sauce right down to a fraction of an once. The same amount of cheese, the same amount of processed sausage! The pizza joint down the street, the small is about, with about so much cheese… they are all unquiet.

Yeah, the chains are going down the tubes but the mom & pop restaurants are taking over the void, the best sub… at the corner store deli! And the guy knows that I like a lot of cheese on that sub so he adds a little extra cheese because he knows it will bring me back Italian sub

America is giving up on cookie cutter processed meals and in favor unique individually made to order meals.

[/Editorial]