Where Should I Eat With My Mom Tomorrow?

Do you have an Applebee’s nearby? Be well,

Now that I live in the south I have discovered Ruby Tuesday’s…love that place! Outback is awesome too!

Olive Garden! Damn, I wish there was one here…

Ew, I don’t know about up there, but our Applebee’s is disgusting and dirty. I’d choose the Mac. By the way, thanks for the layout compliment, and I’m laughing at the glow-in-the-dark vibrator – uh – the concept alone is hilarious. You’re not using it right if it needs to be glow-in-the-dark. It’s more than just a “personal massager.”

Oh yeah, and I miss Chi Chi’s too. What the hell, man, there are no good sit-down Mexican restaurants around here anymore. I could use a few good cheese and onion enchiladas.

Macaroni grill always pleases me. The bread is way better than Olive Garden’s… and the house wine, where they leave the bottle on the table and you just tell them how much you drank? Love it!

i like macaroni grill. went there for the first time a couple weeks ago with cousins lauren and joy and i got my entree for free cuz it didnt come out when lauren’s and joy’s did… some mixup or whatever. but it tasted damn good!! i also like olive garden. mmmhmmmmmm.

(but maybe the olive garden is cuz khail and i went there together the first time i was ever there and had a great time and yeah. anything with mikhail is better than it is without him).

Go to Outback!

This bad experience with actual fish… Was it a bad experience with actual fish on your plate? Or was it a bad experience with actual fish in a tank, lake, river or ocean? I’m kind of curious about what happened to you. Share? Please? 🙂

I mean, seriously, is there any non mediocre chain restaurants near you? Barring that, um. Er. I really don’t know. Olive Garden, I guess?

(Uh… please ignore the fact that I totally fucked up the tenses in that previous note.) Also, what kind of cookies do you want?

my vote goes to macaroni grill. But we like to draw while we eat.

RYN: Hey, I’m not saying I think Olive Garden is good. But I remember it being tolerable, the one time I went there many years ago. All chains aren’t innately horrible, anyway; they just tend to be so… homogenous. There’s no room for creativity or innovation or anything to hold my interest at all. Bleh.

Olive Garden fo sho. Breadsticks!!! And they have uber good salads.

i actually work as a cook at a macaroni grill. the food is pretty good most of the time. i suppose it depends who’s buying…. i mean, if it were me spending the money, i might be tempted to cheap out. (sorry, mom.)

RYN: Do you mean “Good food for Jess” or just “Good Food”? Realistically, when I can take off my epicurian goggles, I know that “good food” is something that satisfies and pleases the person eating it. That might be McDonald’s, if that person really really is craving a damn quarter pounder with cheese and some fries. I know I do, sometimes, and it tastes damn good on those yearly occasions.

If y’all really like the chain food there, well, far be it from me to say you shouldn’t partake of it. For me, though… most of the time, when I’m not on a yearly McD’s binge, I like food that really pays respects to the component parts. Food that is simple and authentic, that uses high quality ingredients (hopefully from local sources, for freshness). Food that respects the whole process.

I think good food is prepared with skill, never over cooked or over greased or oversalted. Those things hide the natural flavors that make up that which we’re eating. Creativity is good as long as it doesn’t obscure or confuse those flavors. You can find this in a little hole in the wall’s $2 taco as you can in a $20 per entree Indian restaurant… if you know where to look.

I want to be surprised when I eat. Like the little taco joint where I eat lunch, hidden out in banal suburbia, continually pleases me with their simple honest fare. They also offer the unexpected: like today when I went in a handmade sign announced that green tomatoes are in season, so they have some cilantro salsa verde for a couple weeks. YUM. I just don’t find this sort of thing at chains.

USUALLY. There are a few exceptions. We have this local fast food chain across the Northwest called Burgerville – standard burgers and fries and shakes place. But they use all local/free range ingredients and meat, and they have clever little “The Pacific Northwest Is Superior” ad campaigns, and their shakes change with the seasons and OMG MARIONBERRY MILKSHAKES SO GOOD.

They’re wacky and fun and very tasty, and treat their employees well, which is important to me. There is, of course, nothing that makes an independent place *inherently* better than a chain. They have to actually live up to these expectations. Faced with the choice of a really bad local diner and an Applebee’s, I’ll take the damn Applebees.

Applebee’s and Tuesday’s are my picks, though if you’ve got a lot of extra cash, Olive Garden is good.

Every time i’ve been to Chili’s lately it has sucked. Today my fries were cold and my cheese wasn’t even melted on my burger. So don’t go there.

I love Chili’s. I’d say either that or Olive Garden. Yerm. Panera’s nice too. More sandwichy though.

There are so many good restaurants in Morris County, your list is a shock. Try Black River Barn, Meadow Wood Manor, Top Notch, or Minado if you’re into sushi. If you dare venture further east,Morristown and Madison have about 20 restaurants I could recommend. Those chain places are total garbage. All they serve is frozen foods, fried.

Is there an Uno’s nearby? Otherwise, I would have to go with Chili’s. Olive Garden? Never!

*shrug* Nah. I wasn’t aware. I suspect there’s many things I’m not aware of. Chili’s or Olive Garden then. That’s me vote.

My GAWD, do you live in Strip-Mall Chain Restaurant Hell??? Don’t forget your “flair!” Why can’t you take a chance on a small, individually owned place? Branch out! Try some other country’s cuisine (other than Mexico, Italy, or China)! Come ON, man. Live a little!

Olive Garden – never heard of it, never been there but it sounds lovely!! So I’d choose that one! 🙂 RYN: Hmmm … to me all nookie is good nookie … for big nookie I think it’s just when I lost all sense of control and small nookie is when I’m more in control of my senses. I always O – sometimes it’s big sometimes it’s small so I guess the phrase refers to the ‘size’ of the o!! *shrugs*

Well, we have none of those here except Ruby Tuesdays, Cracker Barrel, and Red Lobster, so I dunno what to tell ya. RYN: I get decent porn from thehun.net, but it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. But if you have any you’re willing to share, by all means pass it on! 😉

So, lay it on us, man. Where did you go? I’m gonna check out that Web site Revolution left up there.

Sh*t, was too late here. Hopefully you ate at Macaroni Grill, unless yours is too noisy.