this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2024
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chapotraphouse
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When I visited the US I was confused why there were so many dogshit restaurant chains and how they managed to stay open. Surely nobody is eating at these places.
I think that the average American's standard of what constitutes good food is pretty low by Asian or even continental European standards.
Not that the US doesn't have some standout cuisines and dishes, but the food the average American consumes is all corn syrup and chemicals to me.
My sister spent a year abroad in the US and my little brother asked her to buy him some American candy. (We're European)
When she got back, she had a selection of 6 different US candy brands for him. He tried all of them and, as a 10-year-old, deemed them inedible cause they were way too sweet and sugary.
The dogshit restaurants we have are a mixture of two actual good things that, like everything else in the US, was bled out of existence. The diner experience, and the inherent transient nature of American society. Being able to travel cross country has always been a relatively easy thing to do until recently, and eating while traveling is a no brainer. The food aspect used to be handled by large numbers of diners that had good quality food (relatively obviously) but has been replaced in large part by chain restaurants. Coincide this with the difficulty and expense of moving and you got a bunch of places that are almos comically bad.
The food aspect used to be handled by large numbers of diners that had good quality food (relatively obviously) but has been replaced in large part by chain restaurants.
This might be a bit rosy of a view of diners -- I'm sure plenty were mediocre or bad. Not exactly the same, but my dad told me about traveling before and after cheap chain hotels sprung up everywhere, and said a real benefit of chains was that even if the quality wasn't spectacular, you knew more or less what you were getting, which is itself valuable.
That’s probably true to some extent, I do be lovin a diner. But I would still argue that chain quality has gone down overall to the point that I genuinely believe Applebees straight up microwaves their food. Diners are and have always been a gamble, but I still stand behind the idea that the chain restaurant is essentially the diner concept mass produced across the United States in place of those diners.
Being able to travel cross country has always been a relatively easy thing to do until recently
Always?
cmon man the relatively was implied
No that's quite clearly stated but I always get pissed about anyone saying $country has done something forever because it's never true.
We're looking at like, what, 40 years of post WW2-time where that was true? That's a blip! A blip, I tell you!
Also there's still swaths of the country you can't visit as a black person with anything approaching relative ease.
It’s tru lol but still it’s not like it makes sent to talk about diners as we know them in like the 1800’s or something.
I don't think my great-grandmas birth-century is enough of a far fetched past to disregard. I met that woman.
The equivalent of a diner in the 1800s would be a tea house or something like that
Call me autistic but if your definition of "always" is "as long as diners existed" I'm thinking you don't actually know what always means. Or then still anything about history, if I go by like 1912 according to wikipedia we're still about a year out from the first intercontinental highway and about 50 from there being a giant star next to always saying only applicable to white males
I can’t tell if you’re being serious right now because yes I’m aware black people have not had a fair shake in this country since ever, no I wasn’t trying to get that deep. This conversation is ultimately about how bad chain restaurant food is. I’m not really sure what you want from me.
There are large chunks of the US where these restaurants are the only restaurants. So if you want to eat out, you're eating at a dogshit restaurant chain.
Also they have large parking lots and are located on major commute corridors, which feels welcoming to the average suburbanite, who thinks they're a car.
Cracker Barrels tend to set up shop near hotels. I assume that's the only way they stay open. Being slightly better than the free hotel breakfast. I know it works on me... We usually look at what food is near any hotel before booking.
Aw hell yeah, now we gays can have mid 
food feeling safe.
US eateries and food outlets all have the most bizarro names.
Like, IHOP. I thought that was a clothes shop for the longest time.
IHOP= International House of Pancakes
usa the home of Fuddruckers.
IHOP= International House of Pants
Wait til you find out about Soup Plantation
Eating exclusively at chic fil a because every other business is too woke. I get really hungry on Sundays though.
If applebees ever went woke it would start a "zombie" like apocalypse where chuds would start biting regular people because they dont know where to eat but the plague wouldn't spread.
when i was a kid i threw up at a cracker barrel cause the only seats were in the smoking section. the peg game is fun though
Cracker Barrel has fallen
Me and the theys on our way to cracker barrel immediately before
no crackers allowed barrel
What mob? Were the libs calling for cracker barrel to be "woke"?
Deeply unserious discourse.
Seriously this is about the most obvious cash grab out of all of them.
I don't know anybody who gets excited about cracker barrel this is literally just them going after an untapped market.
No minorities were pressuring cracker barrel to be more accepting and welcoming.
Also I barely rember the last time I ate at one, and it was in the south, but I'm pretty sure they had some straight up minstrel show level souvenirs in their "gift shop" pretty sure the bigots would still feel right at home
We are losing a culture war to these absolute dipshits.
another kkkrakkka down
The gays are comin' after your food poisoning, bucko.
THE PC MIND VIRUS! HAS RUINED MY COUNTRY . THESE DAYS I DONT EVEN KNOW WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON ANY MORE WHEN EVEN CRACKER BARREL HAS GONE WOKE
RIP Crackers
whoever this John W Mob is they should stop. seriously why do billion dollar corporations listen to this guy?
All my barrels, cracked
Can Tesla and Cracker Barrel switch CEOs? I think both would fare much better in relating to their new target audiences.
hell yeah, i bet the Texas Family Project offers a lot of really important takes.
anyway, the last time i ate at a Cramker Bargle was probably 2011. i had some friends who worked on this middle-of-nowhere ass farm, lived in an old double wide trailer on the property and would have these banger parties that involved a bunch of people from all over falling asleep on couches and floors and wherever by the end. in the morning, the guy who lived there (a former chef) would decide unilaterally, depending on available ingredients and his hangover, if he was going to make a big country style breakfast for everyone who stayed, or if we were all going to go to the CB up by the interstate for a greasy breakfast before slinking off to our various domiciles for a lazy day digesting and napping. it's never great, but it sure does fill the gut.
fun bit of trivia: there's a brand of grocery store breakfast sausage called "Purnell's Old Folks". the chubs are mostly white with a cartoon pig on them. anyway, the meat processing plant where those are made is the same one that creates the fat/oil base for every cracker barrel's sausage gravy across the nation. i have been there. i have seen the vats of oil with my own eyes and felt their warmth in the air.
if you're the kind of brand loyalist / food nihilist that has to have the exact sausage gravy of a Cramker Bargle but can't eat at one, you can just buy purnell's gravy mix. same with the sausage patties too. i can't imagine why anyone would, except as an elaborate bit to recreate the cracker barrel culinary experience at home.