Restaurant Blues

Packerjohn

Packerjohn

Packerjohn
Location
Canada
Went to 3 restaurants today & to put it bluntly, it was tough going.
1. Swiss Chalet - we set there for about 5 minutes. I got my own menu. No waitress approached us. We left.
2. Original Joe's - So dark in there I could hardly see my wife standing next to me. A lot of TVs on the walls showing gambling. We left.
3. Wendy's - I got the chips & burgers. Wife got a nice baked potato. The drink machine was strange because you never got what you wanted. The music was horrible; it sounds like a young girl in extreme pain of child-birth or a very sick cat about to die. We ate but were real glad to get home. I have said it all before: THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE HOME.
 

Here are three benefits of eating at home:

1. You don't have to wait for a menu or wait person.
2. You can adjust the light to exactly how you like it.
3. You can select the music you prefer or simply eat in silence.

There are many more benefits of eating at home but I won't go into any more of those.
 

TravelinMan said:
Here are three benefits of eating at home:

1. You don't have to wait for a menu or wait person.
2. You can adjust the light to exactly how you like it.
3. You can select the music you prefer or simply eat in silence.

There are many more benefits of eating at home but I won't go into any more of those.
Click to expand...
Also,
4. You know how clean your kitchen is
5. You know no one spit on your plate
6. It's much cheaper
7. You don't have to tip someone to do the job they're hired to do

Only problem is, you have to get off your butt and do the prep and cook the meal. I don't mind, I like cooking. :cool:
 
CarolfromTX said:
And cheaper, too! DH likes to eat out, but seriously, it's so freaking expensive and disappointing. Today we had a bagged salad with chicken tenders. All premade stuff, right? Still way cheaper than getting almost the exact same thing at, say, Applebee's. Very little clean-up, easy peazy.
Click to expand...
What is a bagged salad?
 
Oh wow I thought it was just me! My husband and I have been searching for a decent restaurant ever since we relocated to Florida and we’ve been disappointed every single time if not with the food then the service! We do enjoy Culver's which is a hamburger place near us the service is very good and the food is pretty good too the fries are awesome and the chocolate shakes rock! Other than that I don’t have too much in the way of good things to say about restaurants around here at all, I do quite a bit of cooking at home and have learned to make sweet-and-sour chicken and Mongolian beef as we love Chinese food, there are no good Chinese restaurants around here which is very disappointing.
 
Here I sit, with family, waiting for my Pad Thai Tofu that I could make, far better, at home. These days, I go to restaurants to be sociable. That's it.
 
We've tried many of the places around here. My favorite is the Sizzler. You walk in, tell them what you want, pay the bill, take your drink and salad and go sit wherever you want. Before long they bring you some cheese toast. Your dinner comes, you eat, leave a tip, and get up and leave. The food is decent, the background music not too loud, and the service good.

We used to have a place called the Plantation. It was actually a cafeteria, but the food was really good and reasonable. Unfortunately, it is now a Chinese restaurant.

Don
 
Packerjohn said:
Went to 3 restaurants today & to put it bluntly, it was tough going.
1. Swiss Chalet - we set there for about 5 minutes. I got my own menu. No waitress approached us. We left.
2. Original Joe's - So dark in there I could hardly see my wife standing next to me. A lot of TVs on the walls showing gambling. We left.
3. Wendy's - I got the chips & burgers. Wife got a nice baked potato. The drink machine was strange because you never got what you wanted. The music was horrible; it sounds like a young girl in extreme pain of child-birth or a very sick cat about to die. We ate but were real glad to get home. I have said it all before: THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE HOME.
Click to expand...

Cheap restaurants are like that. At good ones, you wouldn't find such a poor environment and service but the cost is mind numbing. I actually like to cook, so it's no biggy for me to skip restaurant food. Luckily there are nice affordable lunch places where I live so that's the perfect scenario.
 
In my travelling days, I have found, generally speaking, the average US restaurants much superior to the average Canadian restaurant. Hats off to the USA! Sorry Canucks on this one! It used to be that you tipped in the USA but did not in Canada. That was years ago. Now, in Canada, they all expect tips & plenty of them. It irks me that when you pay with a credit card, there is a tip option on your bill in addition to the bill with the provincial tax & the GST. You end up paying BIG Money for some pretty bad food in some places. Then there is noise. Our national broadcasting corporation (CBC Marketplace) is now doing a study of noise level in restaurants. They are actually going into restaurants with decibel meters & recording the level. In some places it is so bad that you cannot have a nice talk with the person you are with. Blaring TV screens on every wall showing sports or advertising does not, in my humble option, make for a relaxing enjoyable meal. Furthermore, some of the restaurants have now got into some sort of OPEN CONCEPT where everything is out in the open. Therefore, while you are trying to eat & talk, you hear the pots banging & all the dishes being washed or stacked. It is so noisy that you have to see & hear it to believe it. It seems to me that since the minimum wages has gone up, restaurant prices have really risen but for some reason the service & your over all dining experience leaves much to be desired.
 
REMEMBER THE "GOOD OLE DAYS. You could walk into a restaurant & order toast & coffee for breakfast. No more. I have not seen toast & coffee on any restaurant menu for years. Now, its eggs (done in hundreds of ways), toast, hash browns (done in dozens of ways), sausages, ham & whatever else & a big fat bill to follow with a hardy tip too. Seems that the restaurants feel you need 1000 calories for breakfast. In the end I feel that people who eat too much in restaurants are playing dice with their health. The wife of a family friend used to go out to several restaurants each week. She gained a lot of weight, got diabetes, ended up in a care home & last week I learned that she passed away. Seems to me that eating out too often can have a real negative effect on your health. Best to roll up your sleeves, uncork that wine bottle. start cooking at home & enjoy a nice quiet candlelight meal with some Lawrence Welk or Guy Lombard just at nice comfortable level. Life can be good!
 
In Toronto, we have so many different ethnic restaurants, it's hard to choose just one as a favourite.
Today, we're going to a Japanese restaurant. Probably going for a Greek meal on the weekend. I've
got no complaints.

If a restaurant isn't up to par, food-wise or service-wise, word gets around pretty fast. Before going
to a new place, we always research it online.
 
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chic said:
Cheap restaurants are like that. At good ones, you wouldn't find such a poor environment and service but the cost is mind numbing. I actually like to cook, so it's no biggy for me to skip restaurant food. Luckily there are nice affordable lunch places where I live so that's the perfect scenario.
Click to expand...
Oh I’ve been to five star restaurants before that have been pretty bad as well, in one case the steak came out when it was supposed to be cooked medium and I swear the Steak was mooing, LOL! I give up!
 
This is my good review. There is a Chinese Buffet restaurant that I love. All Chinese places are not the same. ( I always wonder if the Asian -American staff has a true Chinese person on the payroll). I've been eating there for years. Most of what I eat has been through trial and error. I like wanton soup. There was a little kid in front of me on the line. He got some soup, then he added a spoon full of rice-TA DAH. Tried it and it was great. They have the best hot sauce. One taste and ,you clean up your sinuses, plus you start crying. I mean can life get any better?
 
This is my bad review. I went to a place in an old generator building in the 1990s.. Some frinds took us there, because they raved about the place. It was supposed to be one of those fancy, gourmet places.The first course was a salad. It consisted of ONE lettuce leaf with an oil & vinegar dressing. I thought calling it a "salad" was a stretch.Then the waitress brought us this one inch meat square. I thought it was some sort of appetizer. It was OK. We sat and waited for our meal to come. Then the waitress asked if we wanted dessert.???????? Turns out that one inch meat square was our dinner. I'm not exaggerating about the size. It was about the size of a US 25 cent coin. The "meal" cost me $35 , which isn't cheap today, but 30 years ago, it was outrageous. Then we went next door to a BurgerKing.
 
fuzzybuddy said:
This is my bad review. I went to a place in an old generator building in the 1990s.. Some frinds took us there, because they raved about the place. It was supposed to be one of those fancy, gourmet places.The first course was a salad. It consisted of ONE lettuce leaf with an oil & vinegar dressing. I thought calling it a "salad" was a stretch.Then the waitress brought us this one inch meat square. I thought it was some sort of appetizer. It was OK. We sat and waited for our meal to come. Then the waitress asked if we wanted dessert.???????? Turns out that one inch meat square was our dinner. I'm not exaggerating about the size. It was about the size of a US 25 cent coin. The "meal" cost me $35 , which isn't cheap today, but 30 years ago, it was outrageous. Then we went next door to a BurgerKing.
Click to expand...
At those artsy-fartsy restaurants, the more you pay the less you get. You're just paying for the ambiance. 😹
 
fuzzybuddy said:
This is my bad review. I went to a place in an old generator building in the 1990s.. Some frinds took us there, because they raved about the place. It was supposed to be one of those fancy, gourmet places.The first course was a salad. It consisted of ONE lettuce leaf with an oil & vinegar dressing. I thought calling it a "salad" was a stretch.Then the waitress brought us this one inch meat square. I thought it was some sort of appetizer. It was OK. We sat and waited for our meal to come. Then the waitress asked if we wanted dessert.???????? Turns out that one inch meat square was our dinner. I'm not exaggerating about the size. It was about the size of a US 25 cent coin. The "meal" cost me $35 , which isn't cheap today, but 30 years ago, it was outrageous. Then we went next door to a BurgerKing.
Click to expand...
Seems to me you were royally ripped-off. Too bad! I don't like "artsy-fartsy" restaurants or those that call themselves "gourmet". I stay away from them like the plague. The type of restaurants I like & trust are the places where truckers stop to eat. Truckers like fast service, big plates & they don't go for nonesense. I have never been disappointed in restaurants where truckers stop to eat.
 
I do get tired of cooking at home so we do go out sometimes and on special occasions like birthdays. Usually Jack Astor's, Pickle Barrel or Applebee's. If service isn't good, I don't tip as big. We also have a few places where we can go for breakfast and can order just toast and coffee if we want but the rest of the family likes eggs or pancakes or a cheeseburger. As for 'fast' food, McDonald's and Tim Horton's have passable egg and bacon sandwiches for breakfast.
 
911 said:
What is a bagged salad?
Click to expand...
788b82673b28ecebaa0f93196815e185--salad-ideas-retail-merchandising.jpg
 
fuzzybuddy said:
This is my good review. There is a Chinese Buffet restaurant that I love. All Chinese places are not the same. ( I always wonder if the Asian -American staff has a true Chinese person on the payroll). I've been eating there for years. Most of what I eat has been through trial and error. I like wanton soup. There was a little kid in front of me on the line. He got some soup, then he added a spoon full of rice-TA DAH. Tried it and it was great. They have the best hot sauce. One taste and ,you clean up your sinuses, plus you start crying. I mean can life get any better?
Click to expand...
All the Chinese restaurants and take-aways here in my area, have authentic Chinese staff..as do the Thai and Indian restaurants....still, tho' some are Bad...
 
Packerjohn said:
REMEMBER THE "GOOD OLE DAYS. You could walk into a restaurant & order toast & coffee for breakfast. No more. I have not seen toast & coffee on any restaurant menu for years. Now, its eggs (done in hundreds of ways), toast, hash browns (done in dozens of ways), sausages, ham & whatever else & a big fat bill to follow with a hardy tip too. Seems that the restaurants feel you need 1000 calories for breakfast. In the end I feel that people who eat too much in restaurants are playing dice with their health. The wife of a family friend used to go out to several restaurants each week. She gained a lot of weight, got diabetes, ended up in a care home & last week I learned that she passed away. Seems to me that eating out too often can have a real negative effect on your health. Best to roll up your sleeves, uncork that wine bottle. start cooking at home & enjoy a nice quiet candlelight meal with some Lawrence Welk or Guy Lombard just at nice comfortable level. Life can be good!
Click to expand...
Come to the UK you can have toast and coffee/tea anywhere you like without feeling pressured to buy more. You can also sit for hours with your tea and coffee if you so wish , and not be pressured to vacate the table. All because the waiting staff get paid a proper wage and don't rely on tips to make a living wage..so no need to turn tables super quickly
 

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