Oct 9
Despite being new to me, Taco Bell’s caramel apple empanadas are apparently old hat. At a few select Southern California locations, the chain has been experimenting with cupcakes, smoothies and milkshakes. It’s only a matter of times before they start serving Korean tacos.
Los cupcakes actually do exist in Mexico, or at
least chichi enclaves of the capitol city. And yes, they have red velvet. [Fast Food Maven via Eater]
Times are tough for a chain. Red Robin is only giving kids a two-pack of blue and red crayons now instead of the four they used to provide. Bye bye green and yellow.
And even though I know suburban chains in NYC are often disappointing and expensive, I still paid a visit to the Chelsea Olive Garden Wednesday night. I was curious if they were honoring the Never Ending Pasta Bowl promotion that lasts until the end of this week.
When this Olive Garden first opened, it was packed and waits were long. Now, the handheld beepers are getting cobwebby. No one was waiting out front or in the lobby, we were immediately seated and empty tables abounded. And they were out of everything, the advertised Oktoberfest Sam Adams, the pork marsala in the glossy tableside advertisements. A total sinking ship.
And as on my last NEPB spot check, there is no evidence of the promotion anywhere on site. When you consider that my seafood portofino (which I chose because it was one of the few pastas under 1,000 calories—I’m one of those oddballs whose ordering is influenced by calorie posting) was $20.50—what food at real restaurants cost—why they keep the Never Ending Pasta Bowl under tight wraps is obvious. When we asked about the $8.95 all-you-can-eat special, our cheery but exasperated waitress (the guy sitting directly behind me in the attached booth was giving her and his date a horrible time, total domestic abuser) just handed us her corporate cheat sheet with the list of pastas, sauces and request that servers suggest unlimited meatballs to customers for an additional $1.99. I should’ve snapped a photo—who knows when these trade secrets could come in handy?
In the meantime, I’m curious about the all-you-can-eat-pasta night in the works at Locanda Verde. I suspect it’ll be more than $8.95. Then again, you can get Spaghetti alle Vongole there for $1.50 less than Olive Garden’s seafood pasta.
Photo by Michael Schmelling/Details
Details has a slideshow of the top 25 best fast food items with the mildly odd qualification that candidates came from restaurants with at least five locations and one drive-thru. That still doesn’t make In-N-Out Burger, their opening shot, any more accessible to me.
Culver Dairyland’s cheese curds—I wonder how they stack up against the battered, fried cubes I had at Char No. 4?
And I was stumped by Taco Bell’s caramel apple empanada. I had never even heard of such a thing. I just decried fried fruit pies and wished they would come enhanced by caramel. Was someone listening to me?
When I first moved to NYC, I had a plan to eat at a chain restaurant for every holiday. This only lasted for one Christmas Eve at TGI Friday and the following Easter at Olive Garden. My genius has gone unfulfilled ever since.
One thing I never did was celebrate birthdays at a chain (ok, I did have my sixth or seventh at Farrell's along with the son of a family friend who was also born on July 25. His dad's name was Tom Sawyer, which was always kind of weird) of if I attended such a dinner for another, no mention was made to staff and no special songs were sung.
Now I can witness what I’ve been missing out on. Digital City has compiled a list of videos showcasing birthday songs from six chain restaurants.
Outback Steakhouse isn’t the only chain getting a revamp. 12,000 Burger King locations worldwide are getting a new look.
It’s up to you to decide if corrugated metal, TV screen menus and flame chandeliers qualify as, “so much more like an upscale restaurant,” as their CEO John Chidsey puts it. Maybe if you’re from Miami, which BK is.
There have been times when I’ve found myself starving and lazy at 4pm, so lazy that I can’t muster the energy to explore further than the corner Duane Reade downstairs. It’s tough finding a quick snack that’s not sugary or carby, which will just make me more sluggish. Nuts or jerky are about all there is.
So, I was curious when I was offered a selection of Duane Reade’s new DR Delish line to try. (Full disclosure, thanks, FTC.) The slant is no trans-fats, artificial colors and the like. Unable to eat all the treats myself, I shared them with my office to gauge reactions.
One thing immediately became apparent, normal junk food-lovers were wary of items like cholesterol-free baked chips and multigrain snacks while the calorie-counters still steered clear of the cookies and brownie bites, trans-fat free or not. I ate one cookie and yes, they do have more chocolate chunks than your typical store brand. There was also a honey-sweetened green tea. I do appreciate the absence of corn syrup in my beverages but I’m a staunch black coffee and tea drinker.
What I hid in my desk drawers and purposefully neglected to share were the two bags of trail mix crunch, pistachio and blueberry pomegranate. I often keep nuts on hand for a healthy snack, and though these are lightly sweetened clusters, they use rice syrup and evaporated cane juice. I’m ok with that. At two for $5 I would buy these in an afternoon pinch. For me, these were the winner of the bunch.
Wow, I thought Brooklyn’s Ikea hosting Wednesday Rib Nights was radical. Leave it to Iberia to create innovative tapas for their Swedish retailers’ cafeterias. Madrid-based, Australian chef, Adam Melonas, has developed a set of six “Swedish Tapas” that began appearing in 13 Ikeas in Spain and Portugal last month. A new half-dozen are promised every three months.
The first batch includes bizarre hybrids like the Hotdog Croqueta, pictured above, that incorporates mustard, ketchup, onion, bun and frankfurter flavors into a fritter. Other bite-sized nibbles include Swedish meatball empanadas and a Rice Krispie-coated croquette of Iberico ham and prawn mousse.
Huh, clearly I have no sense of what’s important. (It’s never been a secret that I get sidelined by minutiae and pointless anecdotes.) I didn’t think McDonald’s opening in the Louvre was a big deal, but it’s being written about like crazy. Culture clash, sure.
I’m still bitter about the July I spent as a French exchange student when one of the grandmothers kept promising to take me to “McDo” (I never asked—she just assumed McDonald’s would be a treat for an American teenager) and brought me to a French fast food burger joint that totally wasn’t a McDonald’s at all. I wish I remembered the name or took photos, but I wasn’t in food blogger mode in ’89.
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Why is this even a search string? And more importantly, why is my blog the first hit on Google?!
Non-shockingly, the New York Times’s dining editor doesn’t frequent McDonald’s with his kids and claims minimal television watching in his household. But when five-year-old Dexter, a budding mixologist who sleeps with vegetables instead of stuffed animals, starts hearing schoolyard rumors about the Golden Arches, Pete Wells acquiesces and they pay a visit (notably when his wife is out of town because Park Slope moms don’t allow such folly?)
And no, the world didn’t fall apart despite the cooking oil for the fries and McNuggets containing dimethylpolysiloxane, “…used as a lubricant, a dry-cleaning solution, an aquarium sealant, a component of the tiles that let spacecraft plunge through the atmosphere without burning up, a treatment for head lice and the thing that makes Silly Putty elastic.”
In the end, father and son make a tastier, more caloric fried fruit pie at home. (Strangely, I’ve never liked fast food fruit pies or the Hostess versions. My dad was the only one in the family who ever ate them. But now I’m totally dying for a fried pear pie, though I would work caramel in somehow.) And the most memorable part of the experience according to Dexter was the Hot Wheels car that came with the Happy Meal.
As I’ve often said, chains are about more than the food.
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