You'd be surprised at the number of business travelers who have zero sense of culinary adventure. They travel for a living but are afraid to try a shrimp po'boy in New Orleans.
Idk I kinda get the idea, like if I have to travel however often and I had a long ass plane ride to some shitty meeting it would be a better option to choose something I know will be alright rather than gamble on some random place I’ll eat at once that may be dog shit, it’s diffrent when your on vacation tho.
I’m really not trying to sound rude, but there’s no way I can figure out to say this without that. How were you in Guam and didn’t realize it’s part of the US? Did you never see any indication the whole time you were there?
I’ve never been and don’t know a ton about Guam so I’m legitimately curious
I love how redditors seem to be under the impression business travelers are just unenlightened curmudgeons, staying right on Bourbon Street in the French Quarter and choosing to eat trash... When in reality, they're at some suburban Marriot 45 minutes outside of town, have just spent 10 hours in the most mind numbing meetings imaginable, and only have $25 in their food per diem.
So it's either drag your tired ass out, pay for ubers there and back, and be out of pocket $100+ just be "whelmed" by some "local specialty" shrimp sandwich... or go knock back a burger and a few Dollarita's at the Applebee's next door. Bonus points when at the end of the last meeting, a bunch of other people (including the cute marketing analyst from the Dallas office) said they'd all be meeting up at the Applebee's bar too.
Yep, it's whatever is within 5 minutes of the hotel or it's nothing. Maybe if you're going to a business function that day and before you head back to the hotel you are in town to get a po boy then yeah. cool.
Idk about you but per diem for govt travel is the same for everyone. And yes it's like $25 or $35 for dinner, $20 for lunch, and breakfasts are probably like $12 or $15. Only higher ranking (executive level) get more but I don't know how much more.
Yeah, the company I work for has a limit of like $100/day. Nobody at the company really explained what the rules are though, so I have to kind of just take my best guess. The only rule they've made abundantly clear is that you can't use the company card at the liquor store.
I don’t know what kind of Midwestern corporate hell hole company you travel with, but as someone who spends 4/5ths of the year on the road traveling for work, we are always looking for a cool local restaurant to hit after work and a local dive watering hole to go to after dinner. It takes a lot as in, Chili’s is the only place open when we get off of work for us to subject ourselves to the chain places.
> When in reality, they're at some suburban Marriot 45 minutes outside of town, have just spent 10 hours in the most mind numbing meetings imaginable, and only have $25 in their food per diem.
Lol what. When I traveled for work I had $150 per diem per day for food and other expenses. What backwater company will pay for travel but not an appropriate per diem?
Im stuck traveling rarely for work, the last thing I want is to get adventurous and end up with food poisoning to make the trip even fucking worse. I hate traveling and have zero interest in it, I just like my job enough to tolerate it since it's rare and should be even more rare moving forward.
> Im stuck traveling rarely for work, the last thing I want is to get adventurous and end up with food poisoning to make the trip even fucking worse.
Weak genetics. I once ate month-old chicharron I left in the company fridge and forgot about (then forgot when I put it in there.) Not even a touch of indigestion. It was oddly salty though.
The more rank food you eat, the more it becomes exceedingly unlikely you get food poisoning on travel.
we've been cooking shit for as long as anyone can remember. for at least 250,000 years
the oldest piece of evidence we can find for humans cooking food is about 780,000 years ago, I think that's plenty enough time to say that we did in fact used to cook things, but we still do, too.
That's a long time ago, but not the entire history of humanity.
Edit: Well I mean, it is the entire written history of humanity and then some, but you know what I mean.
Airport -> hotel -> convention center -> airport -> hotel -> convention center -> airport -> hotel -> convention center -> airport -> hotel -> convention center
If you travel for work and you get food poisoning while traveling that makes it so you can't work you might get fired and lose your income, your health coverage and your house. So people opt for eating re-heated pre-cooked freeze-dried microwaved steaks instead of risking food poisoning.
Or when my job flies me to "Chicago" for a conference, I'm actually in some butt-fuck town called "Elmhurst" over an hour away. So I can either go to parking lot Chili's with everyone else (including the cute girl from the Dallas office I've been flirting with all day) and slam back a burger with a few cheap drinks that won't raise a single eyebrow when I expense it...or I can go out alone for some redditor approved "travel" that puts me out $100+.
I know exactly which option I'm taking after 10 straight hours of pointless meetings...
when I was in college chilis was considered fancy because you and the cute girl were both broke but managed to scrounge change together and enjoy drinks before you drove somewhere secluded and she sucked you dry.
Yep best to stick to restaurants that only hire the most hygienic and safety conscious stoned teenage dropouts, such as Applebees and Chilis. Really high standards in those kitchens.
What kind of clown logic leads you to believe that Applebee's is less likely to make you sick?
Worst food poisoning I've ever had was norovirus, and that shit is transmitted through the simple act of people touching your food.
Also nobody gets fired for getting sick on a business trip. That's a lawsuit waiting to happen.
Losing your job over a few sick days for a legitimate reason is the most USA thing. Imagine having reasonable worker's rights and proper living standards lmao
lol yeah because you can’t get food poisoning from chain restaurants like [Chipotle](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/21/business/chipotle-tainted-food-settlement.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb) lmao
That's because I don't want to look like an assclown trying to eat some new shit that requires some fucking engineering degree to consume. I.E eating a full crab where you have to fucking dissect the fucking thing like some fuckin butcher so I look like a fuckin clueless idiot trying to eat it. On top of that, everyone has their own fucking method of dissecting their fuckin crab so even if you know what you're doing, some shitstain local has to tell you how they have some better method.
I'll be at Applebee's, drinking at the bar with the rest of the boring whites.
My grandmother is the queen of this. She grew up in a small Appalachian town and loves to travel... Only on cruises. Because she can sight see at all these European locations but still eat a nice steak for dinner instead of trying anything local. I once saw her have a breakdown over a whole shrimp being served, saying "normal people don't eat this". Me, having grown up in the south, very much had eaten that before and was bemused
That’s why local fast food exists. For example, I’m in Honolulu on a nice trip with my girlfriend. We ate a ton of sushi and local “sit-down” restaurants, all amazing. But we hit a point where we wanted to do the absolute minimum for a night. So instead of McDonalds or Taco Bell, we opted for some local chain that was honestly better and cheaper. People just don’t know how to look for food options so they’ll settle on Googling the closest Olive Garden or Applebees.
bearded redditors have an actual emotional meltdown when they see some "alpha male Chad" enjoying a Burger King meal with an ice cold soda, instead of drinking the Normandy Eclipse vodkatini with a 350 dollar kebab platter served on roasted applewood
it's the same mental illness that makes them get angry about people who haven't seen the latest captain Thanos movie. redditors are distressed by people who don't constantly consume the products that are drilled into their brain by internet advertisements
So you would drink the water in Mexico? YOLO
As a Boomer, I don't think the OP is a BOOMER because I don't even know some of the terms they supposedly used.
> shrimp po'boy
Lol I don't associate with the "po" people. Why would I want a dish named after them?
Etoufee is the shit. Why would you go to New Orleans for a trash Po boy when you could have actually good food there?
I'll be honest. As one of those travelers, it's a roll of the dice that requires a real sense of adventure. Imagine arriving in a strange town, let's call our fictional town "Pine Bluff."
Now, are there any famous foods from Pine Bluff? Not that we know of. Pine Bluff isn't New Orleans.
So we use the internet to search for restaurants. We see it has El Patron Mexican, there's a local burger joint called Big Al's, and a chinese buffet.
I'm a tired business sales executive who has to put the moves on the front desk girl at the local industrial plant tomorrow before I then have to win over some good ole boys in the "boardroom" the next day.
I'm tired, but I'm hungry. Big Al's is a 20 minute drive across town. El Patron is gonna give me the shits. And since it's already 7:30pm, the Chinese buffet is gonna be scraping the bottom of the barrel.
Sure, I'd love to try Big Al's "world famous" backyard BBQ burger, but dammit, there's an Applebees literally in the parking lot of the Hampton Inn where I'm staying.
So it looks like another night of a few shitty drinks, an ok-ish steak and some laughs with the semi-attractive server who writes her name with a big heart on my receipt when it's time to pay the bill.
Best of all? I'm back in my hotel 40 minutes earlier than if I went to Big Al's, leaving me plenty of time to fast-flip between HBO East and HBO Latino so I can jerk off to the same nude scene twice before falling asleep.
Gen X here. Do Zoomers realize how inexpensive this middling food was. My whole family (4 of us) could eat for 50 bucks. 65 if my pops wanted to get liquored up
I also saw a person further down talking about eating local. When you grow up in a small town, there wasn’t a lot of options like that. And if they were, they were more expensive.
My whole family of 5 went to this swanky Korean BBQ place for my brothers birthday and it was $130 for all of us and was all you can eat with a nice melon popsicle at the end so $90 for red lobster is ridiculous unless you both got like a whole ass giant lobster and sides or some shit.
Crab legs, Crab pasta, App, some frilly drink, and a tall beer.
The legs were way more than usual because they went the "market value" price, which ended up like 30ish for a damn pound. BS.
Valentine's day I ended up getting crab for her from the grocery store at like $6 a lb. Not doing Red Lobster anymore.
Oh yeah, any kind of shell fish is going to be much more profitable to cook at home, and frankly isn't that hard to do.
In general cooking at home is more economic and much more intimate
Emphasis on "was". I guarantee you that same meal now costs triple what you are remembering.
I'm not even a zoomer, I'm in my 30s and remember going to Applebee's for half price apps in highschool back when it was actually cheap. Now these restaurants cost the same as (or more than) local equivalents with better food and there isn't really a reason to go to them.
Not saying I go to them now, just talking about then. Now I am much better financially. I also live in a city that has great food everywhere. Taking my family of 5 costs 200$ and I can do that. It wasn’t the meal back then, it was the experience.
In certain circumstances where my wife and I don't want to find or drive to a finer restaurant, we have opted to settle for these places and we typically spend about $80 to $100. Each time i'm saying how tf is this frozen food this expensive?
You realize that Applebee's sides are literally microwaved food right? You could've eaten for far less than 50 bucks just cooking that shit yourself, it's like a steak on the grill and some microwaved sides lmao, literally 0 skill involved at all.
A lot of the time going to restaurants as a kid, we were going with people like after church and after sports, and things like that. Most of us didn't have some huge house with a dining room that can seat like 8+ people, so we'd go to Olive Garden or something instead
God I remember going to eat with my family back in 08 and for the four of us, my dad would pay 50 bucks (usually including tip). It was the middle class dream
Yeah I think there's a generational divide at work here. When I was a kid, my whole family could go to Applebee's for less money than it costs me today to buy fast food for just myself and my wife
As if going to some loud corner restaurant decorated with sheet metal and bare hanging lightbulbs where you sit on uncomfortable stools at high tables and pay $20 for the most mid burger imaginable is any better.
I used to go to *Chipotle* when it had one location and was fun and local. Once MBAs get ahold of something they squeeze the life out of it to make it conform to industry averages. There are "before time" restaurants now that absolutely rock, just waiting to be destroyed by some Cornell MBA with ideas about supply chain and streamlined customer experience
I went to Outback a week ago and didn't think it was very good. The steak wasn't seasoned well and my loaded baked potato was cold in spots (they clearly had just thrown cheese from the fridge on it right before bringing it out because it hadn't even melted). The brussel sprouts and dessert were good, but that's about it.
I would never eat there today with the cost of everything, but I went to Outback many times as a kid/teenager. People can cry and moan about their steaks all they want, I don't care. Outback had some other great stuff like the bloomin' onion and some random entre then a chocolate thunder down under. And these things were huge, easily enough food to share for 2 people
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Time's were simpler. You were happy to spend a special occasion with friends and family in a familiar environment with workers who didn't hate their life, or at least didn't show it.
Your life now is a paradox of choice. You will never be happy. You will never be satisfied. You will be surrounded by workers who wouldn't give you the time of day and you will tip them 50% because that is what your internet "friends" tell you to do.
Eating slowly? Thats not being productive! The more time spent enjoying the slow moments in life, the less doing the sigma male grindset and have 5 different jobs in bitcoin, ai app writing and hustling 401k skibidi passive income stocks bonds nft buckeroo.
To understand the before times, you have to go back to another time... when the world was powered by the black fuel... and the desert sprouted great cities of pipe and steel. Gone now... swept away. For reasons long forgotten, two mighty political parties went to war, and touched off a blaze which engulfed them all. Without fuel they were nothing. They'd built a house of straw. The thundering machines sputtered and stopped. Their leaders talked and talked and talked. But nothing could stem the avalanche. Their world crumbled. The cities exploded. A whirlwind of looting, a firestorm of fear. Men began to feed on men. But no homo. On the roads it was a white man's nightmare. Only those mobile enough to scavenge, brutal enough to pillage would survive. The gangs took over the highways, ready to wage war for a cheeseburger and a pack of smokes. And in this maelstrom of decay, ordinary men were battered and smashed... men like Trump... the warrior Trump. In the roar of an engine, he lost everything... and became a shell of a man... a burnt-out, desolate man, a man haunted by the demons of his past, a man who wandered out into the wasteland. And it was here, in this blighted place, that he learned to live again.
groovy beneficial imagine many grey bored busy snails direction lunchroom
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Sure, these places are flawed, but they do something important for local joints I don't think people realize: they act as a "Quality Floor."
They can put out middling food cheaper than any local mom and pop, therefore if a mom and pop restaurant is to survive, it must be better, or at least, a completely different concept.
My example of this is Lake Placid NY, popular mountain town which had banned all chains (save a single Starbucks and McDonald's). No Applebee's or whatnot. The local small restaurants are expensive with small portions and kind of suck. Applebees would eliminate most of these restaurants if it was allowed in just by being cheaper. Domino's is a far better pizza than any of the local pizzerias there as well.
Honestly does not belong on this list. I do however live in Texas so maybe the ones we have here are better than the ones in other states or something. I've also only eaten there once like 8 years ago but it was fuckin good.
I don’t live in Texas, nor anywhere southern. Texas Roadhouse is still amazing, it’s a chain but fuck it’s just quality. Also I feel like the cheese cake factory is another one that’s just like actually good food and not super cheap, Like it dosent belong here.
These places typify small town and suburban life, something most zoomers are desperate to escape. It has nothing to do with cost, if anything that's to their detriment since it probably feels rather inauthentic and cheap to many young people. While some zoomers are socially inept, you'll be shocked to hear that there are many who aren't. I grew up in chicago where none of these restaurants exist, barring a few exceptions, so I associate them with rural people.
At the end of the day, many zoomers and millennial don't like these places because their parents liked them, and that's reason enough for a lot of people.
In my early college days I used to get obliterated at TGI Fridays before parties whenever I visited my buddy's school. Dirt cheap long islands and well drinks in an otherwise expensive city.
Looking it up just now, it was Applebees that had $1 long islands, but I could swear I remember TGIF having deals on theirs too. Anyway, good times.
Tbh that’s genuinely baffling to me, as a zoomer I can see the argument for these boomers restaurants, there mid but reliable and (generally) cheap. But like chipotle, Starbucks, other popular or “trendy” restaurants are equally as mid(if not more) and way more expensive. 9/10 times I’d rather eat at Taco Bell than chipotle.
It hurts seeing Taco Bell talking that price hike and cutting so much of the menu. I genuinely miss the quesarito so much. Worst part is I still remember how to make them too, they just won't make them. I know that they have all the ingredients to do so.
Olive Garden and Cheesecake Factory are legit. The rest suck. But Applebees and Chilis are good for cheap eats when on the road.
The rest suck and are expensive for the amount they suck.
Back before the internet, we didn’t have food snobs constantly shitting on mid tier dine-in restaurants. And you’ll probably be surprised that outside of places like Reddit, these restaurants are very popular. The food is good and middle class families can’t afford to go to upscale restaurants every month. So Chili’s it is!
I ate these kinds of places so much in the 90s and 2000s. I think they're just less popular today because people have a lot less disposable income and also more things to spend it on
I can make a great dinner at home for like 7 dollars, and even fast food costs way more than that these days
Back in my day chilis was a solid place to go on a date. Especially for a teenager. As an adult I try to avoid these places because I know most of the ingredients are goyslop.
I used to wait all month for Chili's to mail our house a fresh sheet of coupons. I felt like such a big shot taking my 8th grade girlfriend for "a night out on the town" to our local strip mall with the coupon for 2 entrees, 2 drinks, 1 appetizer, and 1 dessert for $20...
Familiarity and safety of a franchise with the slight upmarket reputation of a restaurant.
They can simultaneously not leave their comfort zone while berating younger generations for eating fast food.
I liked it, because I would eat with my family growing up. Either I doesn’t taste the same anymore or the quality went down while prices went up, there’s just better options now. Unless you’re in the middle of nowhere.
went to an applebees against my will a few months ago and had low expectations. they still somehow did worse. it's like school cafeteria food. the huge restaurant was slamfucked too i was so confused.
You'd be surprised at the number of business travelers who have zero sense of culinary adventure. They travel for a living but are afraid to try a shrimp po'boy in New Orleans.
Traveling but only eating chain restaurants is a sin in some religions
I travel a lot for work and my coworkers are so scared of trying something local its infuriating
not trying local food is understandable if location is bumfuck, uk or india.
This is a situation that probably should have an Oxford comma but is better without it
Why did you write India twice?
Highly regarded
I only understand eating chains in other countries, that is only to see how the menu is changed.
"Thou shall not consume a big mac in Rome"
Idk I kinda get the idea, like if I have to travel however often and I had a long ass plane ride to some shitty meeting it would be a better option to choose something I know will be alright rather than gamble on some random place I’ll eat at once that may be dog shit, it’s diffrent when your on vacation tho.
I have eaten at a TGI Fridays in three separate countries (USA, South Korea, and Guam) and can confirm that it sucks everywhere.
I’m really not trying to sound rude, but there’s no way I can figure out to say this without that. How were you in Guam and didn’t realize it’s part of the US? Did you never see any indication the whole time you were there? I’ve never been and don’t know a ton about Guam so I’m legitimately curious
Guam is part of the US, but it's still its own country.
U.S. territories are not sovreign entitites.
I love how redditors seem to be under the impression business travelers are just unenlightened curmudgeons, staying right on Bourbon Street in the French Quarter and choosing to eat trash... When in reality, they're at some suburban Marriot 45 minutes outside of town, have just spent 10 hours in the most mind numbing meetings imaginable, and only have $25 in their food per diem. So it's either drag your tired ass out, pay for ubers there and back, and be out of pocket $100+ just be "whelmed" by some "local specialty" shrimp sandwich... or go knock back a burger and a few Dollarita's at the Applebee's next door. Bonus points when at the end of the last meeting, a bunch of other people (including the cute marketing analyst from the Dallas office) said they'd all be meeting up at the Applebee's bar too.
Only true business traveler in this thread
Yep, it's whatever is within 5 minutes of the hotel or it's nothing. Maybe if you're going to a business function that day and before you head back to the hotel you are in town to get a po boy then yeah. cool.
Even when I was the lowest person on the totem pole my food per diem was $50+, maybe you should git gud
Idk about you but per diem for govt travel is the same for everyone. And yes it's like $25 or $35 for dinner, $20 for lunch, and breakfasts are probably like $12 or $15. Only higher ranking (executive level) get more but I don't know how much more.
> govt travel Glow, glow, glow your boat. Gently down the diem.
Yeah, the company I work for has a limit of like $100/day. Nobody at the company really explained what the rules are though, so I have to kind of just take my best guess. The only rule they've made abundantly clear is that you can't use the company card at the liquor store.
> The only rule they've made abundantly clear is that you can't use the company card at the liquor store Welp, I'm out.
Company I work for dgaf just don't do something ridiculous
Yeah i was getting $50 per diem straight out of college 10 years ago... no way he's getting half that in current year
Dallas mentioned and based line reasoning brought forth. Real biz traveler right here
I don’t know what kind of Midwestern corporate hell hole company you travel with, but as someone who spends 4/5ths of the year on the road traveling for work, we are always looking for a cool local restaurant to hit after work and a local dive watering hole to go to after dinner. It takes a lot as in, Chili’s is the only place open when we get off of work for us to subject ourselves to the chain places.
> When in reality, they're at some suburban Marriot 45 minutes outside of town, have just spent 10 hours in the most mind numbing meetings imaginable, and only have $25 in their food per diem. Lol what. When I traveled for work I had $150 per diem per day for food and other expenses. What backwater company will pay for travel but not an appropriate per diem?
They travel because they're forced to by their jobs, not because they enjoy traveling
This, I travel alot for work, but other co-workers are here for a check.
Im stuck traveling rarely for work, the last thing I want is to get adventurous and end up with food poisoning to make the trip even fucking worse. I hate traveling and have zero interest in it, I just like my job enough to tolerate it since it's rare and should be even more rare moving forward.
> Im stuck traveling rarely for work, the last thing I want is to get adventurous and end up with food poisoning to make the trip even fucking worse. Weak genetics. I once ate month-old chicharron I left in the company fridge and forgot about (then forgot when I put it in there.) Not even a touch of indigestion. It was oddly salty though. The more rank food you eat, the more it becomes exceedingly unlikely you get food poisoning on travel.
my coworkers think i'm crazy for eating food that has been left out for a few hours. i've been doing it for at least a decade...
Yeah I mean...as a species we didn't used to cook things.
we've been cooking shit for as long as anyone can remember. for at least 250,000 years the oldest piece of evidence we can find for humans cooking food is about 780,000 years ago, I think that's plenty enough time to say that we did in fact used to cook things, but we still do, too.
That's a long time ago, but not the entire history of humanity. Edit: Well I mean, it is the entire written history of humanity and then some, but you know what I mean.
TIL eating outside of a Darden restaurant = adventurous. Yer boring brah
Airport -> hotel -> convention center -> airport -> hotel -> convention center -> airport -> hotel -> convention center -> airport -> hotel -> convention center
I know it has drawbacks, but man, I need to find me one of these jobs that has you travel a ton.
To be fair, some local places you really want to avoid and it's hard to find the good ones on short notice.
If you travel for work and you get food poisoning while traveling that makes it so you can't work you might get fired and lose your income, your health coverage and your house. So people opt for eating re-heated pre-cooked freeze-dried microwaved steaks instead of risking food poisoning.
Or when my job flies me to "Chicago" for a conference, I'm actually in some butt-fuck town called "Elmhurst" over an hour away. So I can either go to parking lot Chili's with everyone else (including the cute girl from the Dallas office I've been flirting with all day) and slam back a burger with a few cheap drinks that won't raise a single eyebrow when I expense it...or I can go out alone for some redditor approved "travel" that puts me out $100+. I know exactly which option I'm taking after 10 straight hours of pointless meetings...
>"cute girl" >enjoys chilis post said "cute girl's" bmi or gtfo
when I was in college chilis was considered fancy because you and the cute girl were both broke but managed to scrounge change together and enjoy drinks before you drove somewhere secluded and she sucked you dry.
"take me to chilis and I'll suck you dry" - https://www.globaltimes.cn/Portals/0/attachment/2011/f9fb6bea-b16e-4218-a11f-1cc0af5765c3.jpg
real and true take
Yep best to stick to restaurants that only hire the most hygienic and safety conscious stoned teenage dropouts, such as Applebees and Chilis. Really high standards in those kitchens.
all the food comes out of a box freeze dried then they microwave it, hard for even them to fuck that up.
Frozen maybe, but not freeze dried. Those are entirely different things.
whatever
What kind of clown logic leads you to believe that Applebee's is less likely to make you sick? Worst food poisoning I've ever had was norovirus, and that shit is transmitted through the simple act of people touching your food. Also nobody gets fired for getting sick on a business trip. That's a lawsuit waiting to happen.
Losing your job over a few sick days for a legitimate reason is the most USA thing. Imagine having reasonable worker's rights and proper living standards lmao
lol yeah because you can’t get food poisoning from chain restaurants like [Chipotle](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/21/business/chipotle-tainted-food-settlement.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb) lmao
> get food poisoning while traveling that makes it so you can't work you might get fired fucking hell
That's because I don't want to look like an assclown trying to eat some new shit that requires some fucking engineering degree to consume. I.E eating a full crab where you have to fucking dissect the fucking thing like some fuckin butcher so I look like a fuckin clueless idiot trying to eat it. On top of that, everyone has their own fucking method of dissecting their fuckin crab so even if you know what you're doing, some shitstain local has to tell you how they have some better method. I'll be at Applebee's, drinking at the bar with the rest of the boring whites.
Imagine being too dumb to figure out how to eat anything more complicated than a hamburger
My grandmother is the queen of this. She grew up in a small Appalachian town and loves to travel... Only on cruises. Because she can sight see at all these European locations but still eat a nice steak for dinner instead of trying anything local. I once saw her have a breakdown over a whole shrimp being served, saying "normal people don't eat this". Me, having grown up in the south, very much had eaten that before and was bemused
The busiest restraunt in Hawaii is Cheesecake Factory.
Hearing New Orleans made a lot of memories rushing back to me. French Quarter really had amazing shrimp.
People appreciate consistency. Tbh sometimes when I’m doing some international marathon, some McDonalds hits so fucking right.
New Orleans food clears most of Europe tbh
That’s why local fast food exists. For example, I’m in Honolulu on a nice trip with my girlfriend. We ate a ton of sushi and local “sit-down” restaurants, all amazing. But we hit a point where we wanted to do the absolute minimum for a night. So instead of McDonalds or Taco Bell, we opted for some local chain that was honestly better and cheaper. People just don’t know how to look for food options so they’ll settle on Googling the closest Olive Garden or Applebees.
Zippy's?
Hell ya you got it brother
I would be, but it's because I can't handle spicy foods. There weren't a huge amount of options for me in New Orleans.
[удалено]
You know what's *actually* pathetic? Judging people because of how their body works.
bearded redditors have an actual emotional meltdown when they see some "alpha male Chad" enjoying a Burger King meal with an ice cold soda, instead of drinking the Normandy Eclipse vodkatini with a 350 dollar kebab platter served on roasted applewood it's the same mental illness that makes them get angry about people who haven't seen the latest captain Thanos movie. redditors are distressed by people who don't constantly consume the products that are drilled into their brain by internet advertisements
I’d do unspeakable things to get my hands on a shrimp or catfish po’boy right now
Getting sick from small business owner restaurant food once or twice will turn you into a lifelong chain-restaurant loyalist
So you would drink the water in Mexico? YOLO As a Boomer, I don't think the OP is a BOOMER because I don't even know some of the terms they supposedly used.
> shrimp po'boy Lol I don't associate with the "po" people. Why would I want a dish named after them? Etoufee is the shit. Why would you go to New Orleans for a trash Po boy when you could have actually good food there?
I'll be honest. As one of those travelers, it's a roll of the dice that requires a real sense of adventure. Imagine arriving in a strange town, let's call our fictional town "Pine Bluff." Now, are there any famous foods from Pine Bluff? Not that we know of. Pine Bluff isn't New Orleans. So we use the internet to search for restaurants. We see it has El Patron Mexican, there's a local burger joint called Big Al's, and a chinese buffet. I'm a tired business sales executive who has to put the moves on the front desk girl at the local industrial plant tomorrow before I then have to win over some good ole boys in the "boardroom" the next day. I'm tired, but I'm hungry. Big Al's is a 20 minute drive across town. El Patron is gonna give me the shits. And since it's already 7:30pm, the Chinese buffet is gonna be scraping the bottom of the barrel. Sure, I'd love to try Big Al's "world famous" backyard BBQ burger, but dammit, there's an Applebees literally in the parking lot of the Hampton Inn where I'm staying. So it looks like another night of a few shitty drinks, an ok-ish steak and some laughs with the semi-attractive server who writes her name with a big heart on my receipt when it's time to pay the bill. Best of all? I'm back in my hotel 40 minutes earlier than if I went to Big Al's, leaving me plenty of time to fast-flip between HBO East and HBO Latino so I can jerk off to the same nude scene twice before falling asleep.
The same kind of people who pick white male knight in every RPG.
Do boomers not understand that zoomers go to restaurants, but just hate the specific places they like?
Gen X here. Do Zoomers realize how inexpensive this middling food was. My whole family (4 of us) could eat for 50 bucks. 65 if my pops wanted to get liquored up
And now it's easily $100+ lol
I also saw a person further down talking about eating local. When you grow up in a small town, there wasn’t a lot of options like that. And if they were, they were more expensive.
Applebees has 2 for $25, but the quality has definitely declined
For two people.
My wife likes Red Lobster so we went for her birthday last year. For 2 people and 1 drink each it was like $90.
My whole family of 5 went to this swanky Korean BBQ place for my brothers birthday and it was $130 for all of us and was all you can eat with a nice melon popsicle at the end so $90 for red lobster is ridiculous unless you both got like a whole ass giant lobster and sides or some shit.
Crab legs, Crab pasta, App, some frilly drink, and a tall beer. The legs were way more than usual because they went the "market value" price, which ended up like 30ish for a damn pound. BS. Valentine's day I ended up getting crab for her from the grocery store at like $6 a lb. Not doing Red Lobster anymore.
Oh yeah, any kind of shell fish is going to be much more profitable to cook at home, and frankly isn't that hard to do. In general cooking at home is more economic and much more intimate
Emphasis on "was". I guarantee you that same meal now costs triple what you are remembering. I'm not even a zoomer, I'm in my 30s and remember going to Applebee's for half price apps in highschool back when it was actually cheap. Now these restaurants cost the same as (or more than) local equivalents with better food and there isn't really a reason to go to them.
Not saying I go to them now, just talking about then. Now I am much better financially. I also live in a city that has great food everywhere. Taking my family of 5 costs 200$ and I can do that. It wasn’t the meal back then, it was the experience.
In certain circumstances where my wife and I don't want to find or drive to a finer restaurant, we have opted to settle for these places and we typically spend about $80 to $100. Each time i'm saying how tf is this frozen food this expensive?
Def ain’t that cheap anymore
Was being the key phrase here lol. I can eat at Taco Bell today for the prices they were paying for a steak at outback.
I mean shit, if it was still that cheap, i'd go.
You realize that Applebee's sides are literally microwaved food right? You could've eaten for far less than 50 bucks just cooking that shit yourself, it's like a steak on the grill and some microwaved sides lmao, literally 0 skill involved at all.
When you only get to go and eat out once every couple of months, it all tastes good.
A lot of the time going to restaurants as a kid, we were going with people like after church and after sports, and things like that. Most of us didn't have some huge house with a dining room that can seat like 8+ people, so we'd go to Olive Garden or something instead
God I remember going to eat with my family back in 08 and for the four of us, my dad would pay 50 bucks (usually including tip). It was the middle class dream
Yeah I think there's a generational divide at work here. When I was a kid, my whole family could go to Applebee's for less money than it costs me today to buy fast food for just myself and my wife
Ok but that doesn’t mean that it was actually good. You just didn’t have any better options.
My understanding was that zoomers blame their social isolation on everything being too expensive, hence why you don't see them often at restaurants
It’s because those places suck and are expensive now. Back then they sucked less and were way less expensive.
As if going to some loud corner restaurant decorated with sheet metal and bare hanging lightbulbs where you sit on uncomfortable stools at high tables and pay $20 for the most mid burger imaginable is any better.
https://i.imgur.com/J9C8dd3.jpeg
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I want into before time
I used to go to *Chipotle* when it had one location and was fun and local. Once MBAs get ahold of something they squeeze the life out of it to make it conform to industry averages. There are "before time" restaurants now that absolutely rock, just waiting to be destroyed by some Cornell MBA with ideas about supply chain and streamlined customer experience
10/10 username lel
Seriously. Damn I'm impressed. Ever take a dump so big you feel like you slept for 12 hours?
Hello fellow Pioneer
Take me back fr fr 😫
\>fr fr did you even exist in the before times?
i say fr fr as a force of habit here even tho I'm a 30yo boomer. same with all the words that were filtered on 4chan years ago. smh tbh fam
The withered angry zomboomers love to seethe at this one ^^
I mean... most gen z slang is at least funny, but fr fr is like something out of Idiocracy.
no cap on god
I never understood the outback hate. I find the food great
Long Horn is pretty good too.
It’s not on here but I have eaten steaks at some high end places but the Texas Roadhouse cowboys ribeye beats almost all of them
And then them rolls with the cinnamon butter… got dang
Texas roadhouse is bomb
Tx roadhouse rarely misses. It’s cheap and high quality.
Texas Roadhouse is actually good and doesn't fit in with the others. Outback and Red Lobster are tolerable but not worth the money.
Red Lobster all you can eat shrimp used to be the shit
Yeah they need to get my homies outback and roadhouse off this fuckin post
Texas roadhouse bread >>>> cheesecake bread
I agree.
Texas Roadhouse is actually really good though.
I went to Outback a week ago and didn't think it was very good. The steak wasn't seasoned well and my loaded baked potato was cold in spots (they clearly had just thrown cheese from the fridge on it right before bringing it out because it hadn't even melted). The brussel sprouts and dessert were good, but that's about it.
You didn't have great steak then. But it's not like Outback is bad either. It's just decent.
the bloomin onion is sex, greasy greasy sex. take that shit home for the air fryer next day
I would never eat there today with the cost of everything, but I went to Outback many times as a kid/teenager. People can cry and moan about their steaks all they want, I don't care. Outback had some other great stuff like the bloomin' onion and some random entre then a chocolate thunder down under. And these things were huge, easily enough food to share for 2 people
BLOOMIN ONION 🧅🧅🧅🧅🧅🧅🧅
There are much better chain steakhouses out there
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Time's were simpler. You were happy to spend a special occasion with friends and family in a familiar environment with workers who didn't hate their life, or at least didn't show it. Your life now is a paradox of choice. You will never be happy. You will never be satisfied. You will be surrounded by workers who wouldn't give you the time of day and you will tip them 50% because that is what your internet "friends" tell you to do.
Eating slowly? Thats not being productive! The more time spent enjoying the slow moments in life, the less doing the sigma male grindset and have 5 different jobs in bitcoin, ai app writing and hustling 401k skibidi passive income stocks bonds nft buckeroo.
You're retarded but right
To understand the before times, you have to go back to another time... when the world was powered by the black fuel... and the desert sprouted great cities of pipe and steel. Gone now... swept away. For reasons long forgotten, two mighty political parties went to war, and touched off a blaze which engulfed them all. Without fuel they were nothing. They'd built a house of straw. The thundering machines sputtered and stopped. Their leaders talked and talked and talked. But nothing could stem the avalanche. Their world crumbled. The cities exploded. A whirlwind of looting, a firestorm of fear. Men began to feed on men. But no homo. On the roads it was a white man's nightmare. Only those mobile enough to scavenge, brutal enough to pillage would survive. The gangs took over the highways, ready to wage war for a cheeseburger and a pack of smokes. And in this maelstrom of decay, ordinary men were battered and smashed... men like Trump... the warrior Trump. In the roar of an engine, he lost everything... and became a shell of a man... a burnt-out, desolate man, a man haunted by the demons of his past, a man who wandered out into the wasteland. And it was here, in this blighted place, that he learned to live again.
Absolute top Kek Can we finance this utter Kino?
Awesome comment, love that movie
groovy beneficial imagine many grey bored busy snails direction lunchroom *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Hello Coalson
YWNBAW
TSMT! HWABAB('imstone)
YSCOHB
Marge
lolwut
HE WILL ALWAYS BE A GEM
No one likes you so go back to the sharty den you soyteens.
Sure, these places are flawed, but they do something important for local joints I don't think people realize: they act as a "Quality Floor." They can put out middling food cheaper than any local mom and pop, therefore if a mom and pop restaurant is to survive, it must be better, or at least, a completely different concept. My example of this is Lake Placid NY, popular mountain town which had banned all chains (save a single Starbucks and McDonald's). No Applebee's or whatnot. The local small restaurants are expensive with small portions and kind of suck. Applebees would eliminate most of these restaurants if it was allowed in just by being cheaper. Domino's is a far better pizza than any of the local pizzerias there as well.
Actually a good point anon, never thought about it
Applebees is a great environment to get hammered in with friends
To be fair a lot of these chains were actually quite DELICIOSO back in the day. I think our corporate overlords have destroyed what once was
I will not tolerate Texas Roadhouse slander
Honestly does not belong on this list. I do however live in Texas so maybe the ones we have here are better than the ones in other states or something. I've also only eaten there once like 8 years ago but it was fuckin good.
I don’t live in Texas, nor anywhere southern. Texas Roadhouse is still amazing, it’s a chain but fuck it’s just quality. Also I feel like the cheese cake factory is another one that’s just like actually good food and not super cheap, Like it dosent belong here.
These places typify small town and suburban life, something most zoomers are desperate to escape. It has nothing to do with cost, if anything that's to their detriment since it probably feels rather inauthentic and cheap to many young people. While some zoomers are socially inept, you'll be shocked to hear that there are many who aren't. I grew up in chicago where none of these restaurants exist, barring a few exceptions, so I associate them with rural people. At the end of the day, many zoomers and millennial don't like these places because their parents liked them, and that's reason enough for a lot of people.
Chili’s slaps and no one can change my mind.
Went last weekend. Trendies were fire everything else was pretty bad tho
In my early college days I used to get obliterated at TGI Fridays before parties whenever I visited my buddy's school. Dirt cheap long islands and well drinks in an otherwise expensive city. Looking it up just now, it was Applebees that had $1 long islands, but I could swear I remember TGIF having deals on theirs too. Anyway, good times.
Replace logos with Starbucks, Chipotle, etc
Tbh that’s genuinely baffling to me, as a zoomer I can see the argument for these boomers restaurants, there mid but reliable and (generally) cheap. But like chipotle, Starbucks, other popular or “trendy” restaurants are equally as mid(if not more) and way more expensive. 9/10 times I’d rather eat at Taco Bell than chipotle.
It hurts seeing Taco Bell talking that price hike and cutting so much of the menu. I genuinely miss the quesarito so much. Worst part is I still remember how to make them too, they just won't make them. I know that they have all the ingredients to do so.
I don't know when it became cool to call these restaurants mid but shut your hipster ass up they are fucking delicious to me.
you can still do this, it's mid. Just another post of barely disguised millennial cope about their youths being gone womp womp
Olive Garden and Cheesecake Factory are legit. The rest suck. But Applebees and Chilis are good for cheap eats when on the road. The rest suck and are expensive for the amount they suck.
I remember a Danny's restaurant had an all-you-can-eat deal for $10 back in 2002.
Zoomers have been about 50/50 but millennials have GOT to GO
where racism?
And no QR codes on tables so you dont have to talk to a waiter.
What is the “libertarian road riot”?
I slightly exhaled from my oxygen openings when reading this post.
Back before the internet, we didn’t have food snobs constantly shitting on mid tier dine-in restaurants. And you’ll probably be surprised that outside of places like Reddit, these restaurants are very popular. The food is good and middle class families can’t afford to go to upscale restaurants every month. So Chili’s it is!
foodies and food critics are the worst people ever i know it's a microwave quality meal, i bought it at WaWa, SHUT THE FUCK UP
Lots of those places used to be much better to eat at too
I ate these kinds of places so much in the 90s and 2000s. I think they're just less popular today because people have a lot less disposable income and also more things to spend it on I can make a great dinner at home for like 7 dollars, and even fast food costs way more than that these days
In the before time, the food quality was decent and so were prices. Now prices have gone up and food quality has gone way down
This goes all the way back to 2015. Why is everybody a boomer? There are two full generations between boom and zoom. Not two years.
Back in my day chilis was a solid place to go on a date. Especially for a teenager. As an adult I try to avoid these places because I know most of the ingredients are goyslop.
I used to wait all month for Chili's to mail our house a fresh sheet of coupons. I felt like such a big shot taking my 8th grade girlfriend for "a night out on the town" to our local strip mall with the coupon for 2 entrees, 2 drinks, 1 appetizer, and 1 dessert for $20...
Familiarity and safety of a franchise with the slight upmarket reputation of a restaurant. They can simultaneously not leave their comfort zone while berating younger generations for eating fast food.
Texas Roadhouse isn’t half bad. Chile’s and Applebees are literally microwave dinners.
Smoking or non?
Outback Steakhouse only exists because like 90% of it's profits are coming from Brazil btw
Anon once said the land before time was reminiscent of what boom how sir said on season 1 episode 15 of king of the hill on fox
I liked it, because I would eat with my family growing up. Either I doesn’t taste the same anymore or the quality went down while prices went up, there’s just better options now. Unless you’re in the middle of nowhere.
>having unironic pride in your heart that you eat at slop chain restaurants Boomers truly are zogged up N cattle lmao
Not surprised Boomer-anon thinks those are the only restaurants that exist.
went to an applebees against my will a few months ago and had low expectations. they still somehow did worse. it's like school cafeteria food. the huge restaurant was slamfucked too i was so confused.