In real life, I do some work that isn't food-related. No, really. So it is that the other day, I found myself reading the latest issue of Fast Company. Tucked halfway through was an article about Darden Restaurants, the conglomerate that owns Olive Garden and Red Lobster, among others.
Despite my well-documented lack of enthusiasm for chain restaurants, I found the piece about Darden and its CEO, Clarence Otis, fascinating. The mathematical acrobatics it takes to run hundreds of outposts of a single restaurant boggle my mind, and I was pretty surprised to hear about the efforts Darden is making to encourage sustainable fishing. After all, it's a bit like Wal-Mart insisting on eco-friendly practices at its suppliers: when you control that much of the market, you can make a serious difference.
This is a hot topic right now; Ezra Klein's IFA post about Ruhlman vs. Alexander is a really interesting take.
How about you guys? Do you eat at a lot of chain restaurants? Why or why not?
5 comments:
There's something along these lines on Michael Ruhlman's blog about eating at the Cheesecake Factory. Kinda funny to watch him eat his words, so to speak...
Sorry, Queenie... I am a *total* dope because I hadn't noticed that you had already linked to Ruhlman's blog! I was just remembering the video with amusement, and didn't pay attention.
But to answer your question, *I* try not to eat at too many chain restaurants if I can help it. When I'm out with the family (2 small children included, 3 if you count the husband), it often can't be avoided unless I want some whine with my dinner.
I think that reading so many food blogs has helped enlighten me as to what good things can be found out there if you try looking, and that you *don't* have to be happy settling for pre-packaged food. Life's too short to eat something that's just meh. Make it count, you know?
Guilty. Macaroni Grill, Denver suburbs, on trips home, occasionally. This is about the only chain place my family goes to, since there are plenty of other options.
Here in New York, I avoid them like the plague. And I consider the Chevy's and other chains in Times Square to be insulting to tourists' intelligence...
@Sienka: Yeah, when you're dealing with multiple kids' and the differences in their palates, reliable and standardized - which is where chains excel - is definitely a good choice.
@Erin: Macaroni Grill is, in my opinion, leaps and bounds better than the Olive Garden. I ate there a couple of times when visiting my mom in Fresno, and it was pretty decent. In Fresno, your options are basically fast food, mid-level chain, or $60/head dinners at local spots. That, to me, is a problem - there is very little affordable good, interesting food in so many places. Luckily, in NYC, we have tons of spots in that category.
Chevy's scares me...
I've eaten at Olive Garden, or, rather, tried to. My daughter and I were in a small town, Olive Garden and Red Lobster were the only restaurants open other than McDonald's, so we went. We had a salad with some weirdly salty yet bland dressing, bread sticks that were inedible doughy fingers of blandness, and two plates of pasta with tomato sauce, both inedible, the pasta so overcooked that it almost disintegrated when we forked it, the sauce beyond terrible, how they removed the flavor from tomatoes is still a mystery to us both- we actually mention it to each other every so often, it was a fascinating thing, eating tasteless tomato sauce. I'm not exaggerating, the meal was inedible, we ended up going to a Wawa market and drinking V8's for dinner. FAR better than our meals. I still to this day wonder HOW people eat at the Olive Garden- it was really awful food.
Post a Comment