69 replies to this topic

[CaliPoutine]

Mrs Hagerty is a honey badger.

What am I missing?

[IndyRob]

Yeah. I remember when my parents took me on a trip around Lake Michigan, probably '63 or '64. Most of the diner food was not so good. I remember my mother saying that it was worth stopping "at the place with golden arches." As I recall, she said something like the food was not very good, but not very bad either.

This is a good point. I think there was a time when consistancy was more valued than variety - for good reason. I think McDonald's capitalized on this big time.

[IndyRob]

Mrs Hagerty is a honey badger.

What am I missing?

I think http://knowyourmeme....es/honey-badger (Caution, bad words).

[haresfur]

I'll take an Olive Garden Salad and bread sticks over that any day.

Amen.

In my post that got eaten , I made a reference to a diner that had been reviewed by that couple (whose names escape me) who review "Roadfood" in various spots in the US. This particular diner is on historic Route 66 a couple of towns over from me. The authors had raved about the chicken fried steak, so we decided to stop in for lunch when we were in the town and try it out.

It was dreadful.

On the other hand I had a great chile relleno at the Club Cafe on Route 66 in Santa Rosa NM. When you find the great local meals they make the trip.

I agree as I mentioned above that independent isn't necessarily good. The point above about the difficulty getting good ingredients may be part of it. However, sometimes people without the right skills or temperament try to fill the culinary void.

[annabelle]

Oh, I wasn't trying to dog on Ma and Pa restaurants. I was just mad that this particular diner had been reviewed in Gourmetmagazine and raved about.

I felt betrayed. I could have gone a few miles up the road to the awesome Mexican restaurant that costs less and is mucho better.

[IndyRob]

Wasn't some iconic name made by reviewing road food in America? I thought it was Howard Johnson, but a quick read at his Wikipedia page doesn't appear to bear this out.

[gfweb]

Mrs Hagerty is a honey badger.

What am I missing?

This. There are a few not safe for work words.

Edited by gfweb, 11 March 2012 - 05:41 PM.

[gfweb]

Wasn't some iconic name made by reviewing road food in America? I thought it was Howard Johnson, but a quick read at his Wikipedia page doesn't appear to bear this out.

Duncan Hines was the guy. Salesman who travelled and made a list of good restaurants.

[annabelle]

The cake mix guy? Who knew?

[IndyRob]

Wasn't some iconic name made by reviewing road food in America? I thought it was Howard Johnson, but a quick read at his Wikipedia page doesn't appear to bear this out.

Duncan Hines was the guy. Salesman who travelled and made a list of good restaurants.

Thank you.

[gfweb]

I remember traveling as a little kid and seeing a Duncan Hines emblem on small town restaurants. A paleo-zagat.

[gfweb]

I live in Santa Clarita, CA. We're known for our chain restaurants, seriously, we have one long street where they are mostly all located( on the same street as Magic Mountain, gotta attract the tourists). My partner received a gift card for OG so we sucked it up and went. The restaurant was packed, there was over an hour wait on a Tuesday night. I DONT GET IT. The salad had the weirdest odor, like preservatives or something. It definately came in a big bag. I asked for breadsticks that were plain( no "garlic salt butter" brushed on top". I was told I had to wait for them. No one ever asks for them like that. Our meal ended up being comped because we sat at the bar and were ignored for 30 min. It saddens me that local restaurants that serve good food go out of business and yet there is an hour wait to get into these horrible chains.

Where we live there are plenty of chains and plenty of non-chains. The OGs are all backed up with lines at night and the owner operated are busy, but not jammed. I think that the Darden group has got it figured out. I've read that their formula is so loved by the customers that they can't change dinnerware without hearing complaints. Changing a recipe is even worse.

[heidih]

Mrs Hagerty is a honey badger.

What am I missing?

I had to google it as well - took it to mean she is a tough old gal basically

[Jaymes]

Wasn't some iconic name made by reviewing road food in America? I thought it was Howard Johnson, but a quick read at his Wikipedia page doesn't appear to bear this out.

Duncan Hines was the guy. Salesman who travelled and made a list of good restaurants.

And before Howard Johnson and Duncan Hines made their marks upon the world of dining out, there was Fred Harvey - a Brit credited with creating the very first chain restaurants, and therefore the concept, in the US. So all y'all can blame him.

My grandmother was Harvey House Girl back around 1910. In fact, she met her hubby while she was working at a Harvey House. He was a conductor for the Kansas & Topeka Railroad.

The Fred Harvey Company

[gfweb]

Fred Harvey was an amazing guy. All but forgotten now. He brought fine dining to small town America and civilized the place too. A great bio of him came out a couple of years ago.

[rotuts]

Ive heard that Harvey House Food was quite good, and rail service specifically stopped and let people off to eat.

[suzilightning]

this kicks up several things for me:

i like to patronize local non-chains. i have, however, had some perfectly dreadful food at them. and i know that with standardization i can get a pretty good chicken sandwich on whole grain roll with honey mustard dressing, banana peppers, black olives and some good greens at Subway.

my husband, the johnnybird, is an engineer who over the years has traveled to almost all 50 states. many times coming out of meetings they folks just want something that is reliably good to eat as many of those guys think of food as fuel, not a dining experience. sometimes the best option in some of the far flung outposts is a chain. if you ever meet him please have him tell you what it is like driving down the main road to Yuma Proving Grounds (Taco Bell, In 'n Out Burger, McDonalds, Wendys, Burger King, Taco Bell.....). On the other hand being married to a semi-worldly hooked in woman like me he has now eaten at Jaleo in DC twice and I haven't darkened it's doors once .

growing up off the east end of Long Island in the 1950's and 1960's there wasn't a lot available outside of our home kitchens. i ate at Nettie's Italian
Kitchen once. i never ate pizza again until i met my friend ,joyce, 19 years latef. it was that bad. the nearest McDonalds went in 30 miles from where i grew up in the very late 1960s. once coming home from a field trip we stopped there and considered it a treat. i did however get instruction from teachers when were were out on other field trips on how to behave and order in white tablecloth restaurants and found it an invaluable lesson throughout my life.

i'm glad that those folks have another possiblility for meeting and eating at, perhaps, a reasonable price for ladies who probably have cooked most of their life.

[Kouign Aman]

Oy. We had a little family owned italian place that had been open longer than the 30 years I've been in town. When we moved close to it, we tried and tried to like it. Three separate visits, with friends, to try many things on the menu, and the best it ever got was mediocre. Most of the stuff was worse than that - little flavor, overcooked textures, very salty in a plain-white-salt way. Olive Garden walks all over them. (As do many other independant italian restaurants in town).

[Jaymes]

Ive heard that Harvey House Food was quite good, and rail service specifically stopped and let people off to eat.

Oh, it was much more than that. Witness these excerpts from a recent Epicurious article about the Harvey Houses:

It was so well organized and operated… well, let me give you an example. When the train pulled out of a station, the conductor would announce the next dining stop. He would also announce that eating in the dining room at the restaurant was 6 bits and that the counter was paid from the card. At the next stop, a trainman would wire the orders into the restaurant so that the staff could be ready to accommodate all the passengers within their 1 hour stop. As the train neared, a Harvey employee would ring a gong that alerted everyone and put the final touches in motion. When the customers entered orders for beverages were taken quickly and glasses arranged on the table in a coded layout so that any waitress could tell who got what drink.

And as I said, my grandmother was a Harvey House Girl. One of the earliest things Fred Harvey decided upon was not to refer to them as waitresses. Waitresses were not held in the very highest esteem, and many good families back east would not have allowed their daughters to go west, unescorted, to wait tables in the rough towns of the wild, wild west. This was a time when, as one wag quipped, "there were no ladies west of Dodge City, and no women west of Albuquerque."

Fred Harvey knew that calling his waitresses "Harvey House Girls" put them in an entirely different light. His young women had to be single, "attractive," and of "good moral character." They lived in dorms governed over by strict matrons.

Another quote from Epicurious:

Now about those waitresses. Fred Harvey was amazing in this regard. His second contribution to American history was the Harvey Girls. Will Rogers once quipped that Harvey had “kept the West in food and wives”. Harvey hired young ladies between 18 and 30 and made them conform to a strict set of moral and ethical guidelines. Mrs. Harvey met each girl as she was hired. Paid $17.50 a month, this was a dream job for many who were unable to cope with the burgeoning populations of big cities like New York, Boston and Philadelphia. So many Harvey Girls, always respectable, became the wife to a customer. One railroad baron said “The Harvey House was not only a good place to eat; it was the Cupid of the Rails”. It is estimated that more than 100,000 girls worked for Harvey House restaurants and hotels and of those, 20,000 married their regular customers.

Like I said, my grandmother was a Harvey House Girl. Wish I had asked her more about it. I was just too dumb to realize how treasured those stories would be to me now.

But one thing I do remember. In her later years, I often helped her to prepare bounteous meals in her large country kitchen. And if we were having ham, she never failed to remind me, "Slice the ham thick, Darlin' - that's what Mr. Harvey always said. 'Slice the ham thick.'"

[IndyRob]

...And if we were having ham, she never failed to remind me, "Slice the ham thick, Darlin' - that's what Mr. Harvey always said. 'Slice the ham thick.'"

I might have to adopt that phrase as a general way of offering approving encouragement.

"Oh yes, my friend, slice that ham thick."

[PrivateTim]

Oy. We had a little family owned italian place that had been open longer than the 30 years I've been in town. When we moved close to it, we tried and tried to like it. Three separate visits, with friends, to try many things on the menu, and the best it ever got was mediocre. Most of the stuff was worse than that - little flavor, overcooked textures, very salty in a plain-white-salt way. Olive Garden walks all over them. (As do many other independant italian restaurants in town).

I find it pretty hard to believe that in a town the size of San Diego that a bad restaurant would stay open longer than 30 years or that there is any Italian restaurant in San Diego that is not better than Olive Garden's, high fat, high salt formula that keeps packing them in.

I found the story about Marilyn Hagerty charming on several levels. It was charming that an 85 year old was blogging. It was charming that she discovered Olive Garden at 85 and had good things to say about it. I don't invalidate her opinions just because I think Olive Garden is terrible, I evaluate her opinion based on her experience. In her life experience she found many things to like about Olive Garden. With my life experience, I have a different opinion. It doesn't make me wrong or her wrong, it just means the person reading our varying opinions has to evaluate for themselves whether or not they want to eat at the Olive Garden.

As to Grand Forks, it has many fine places to eat, The Toasted Frog, Sanders 1907, The Blue Moose B & G and Little Bangkok, but maybe are not the kind of places Marilyn or family frequent for any number of reasons.

[gfweb]

I find it pretty hard to believe that in a town the size of San Diego that a bad restaurant would stay open longer than 30 years

Seems odd, but I've known crappy restaurants to last decades on reputation and a loyal following of old ladies eg Old Original Bookbinders in Philly sucked for as long as I can remember.

[PrivateTim]

I find it pretty hard to believe that in a town the size of San Diego that a bad restaurant would stay open longer than 30 years

Seems odd, but I've known crappy restaurants to last decades on reputation and a loyal following of old ladies eg Old Original Bookbinders in Philly sucked for as long as I can remember.

Eh Bookbinders wasn't great when it closed, but it did have a loyal following and a steady stream of tourists. I probably ate there the first time in the mid 60's and continued to stop in on occasion when I was in Philadelphia on business through the early 2000's. It was better than "sucky" even if it wasn't great.

[annabelle]

It sucked.

There are plenty of sucky Italian restaurants in San Diego that are more than 30+ years old, have waterfront views and crappy food. They were there when I lived there in the 80's.

[PrivateTim]

It sucked.

There are plenty of sucky Italian restaurants in San Diego that are more than 30+ years old, have waterfront views and crappy food. They were there when I lived there in the 80's.

Really? Name three "sucky Italian restaurants in San Diego that are more than 30+ years old, have waterfront views and crappy food", since there are plenty. If that is a too much of a challenge, name one.

[annabelle]

Since I haven't lived there since 1989, all I have is Tarantino's. I don't know if they are still there or not. Thnere were a couple of others further into town, but on the water by the Star of India.

San Diego was not a destination foodie town then. All of the "good" restaurants were in La Jolla and Del Mar and I can't remember their names, either. I know they were very expensive, $200 and up for a couple, and that was 25 years ago.

[gfweb]

How bad does a place have to be to rate a sucky judgement? I'd say that depends on how much it costs and how much it misses the mark.

IHOP isn't much but they do what they set out to do. A $45 entree place that has gloppy sauce and overdone lobster sucks even though if IHOP served it for ten bucks you'd be happy.

We ate recently at a Delaware stalwart, Vincente's. Been around for ages. Vincente has a schtick where he designs your meal based on what you say you like. Charming old guy. But the food is badly seasoned and boring and overcooked. It doesn't come out as he described. It sucks cause it missed the mark he set.

[Jaymes]

I found the story about Marilyn Hagerty charming on several levels. It was charming that an 85 year old was blogging. It was charming that she discovered Olive Garden at 85 and had good things to say about it. I don't invalidate her opinions just because I think Olive Garden is terrible, I evaluate her opinion based on her experience. In her life experience she found many things to like about Olive Garden. With my life experience, I have a different opinion. It doesn't make me wrong or her wrong, it just means the person reading our varying opinions has to evaluate for themselves whether or not they want to eat at the Olive Garden.

As to Grand Forks, it has many fine places to eat, The Toasted Frog, Sanders 1907, The Blue Moose B & G and Little Bangkok, but maybe are not the kind of places Marilyn or family frequent for any number of reasons.

I don't know if you have ever lived in a small town (and, by small town, I don't mean a suburb of a major city, but a small town a couple-hundred miles from any sort of major population center), but I have.

And perhaps you have as well, and perhaps my experience just differs from yours, but I find your comments not only incredibly condescending, but lacking any insight whatsoever into what isolated small-town living is like. Let alone "Marilyn or family."

I would absolutely, definitely, bet the very last dollar I have that "The Toasted Frog, Sanders 1907, The Blue Moose B & G and Little Bangkok" are not only "the kind of places Marilyn or family frequent for any number of reasons," but that they are exactly the kind of places that Marilyn and family have frequented, "for many reasons," time and time again. And again. And again.

And that Marilyn has written about in her column time and time again. And again. And again.

And further that absolutely every single soul that lives in Grand Forks and possesses the wherewithal physically and financially to go there also has frequented time and time again. And again. And again.

And has read about in Marilyn's column time and time again. And again. And again.

I'm sorry you find Olive Garden so loathsome. But for the residents of Grand Forks, I feel pretty sure that any new restaurant whatsoever is of interest enough to be worthy of a writeup in Marilyn's column. And at least a few sample tries. And the benefit of the doubt. And a change of pace. And several hopeful perusals of the menu in search of something, if not Four Star Fabulous, pleasing.

I don't know how long Marilyn has been writing those reviews, and I don't know if she's required to write a new one every week, or every other week, or what, but I think it's easily possible that, over the years, she has written more columns about restaurants in Grand Forks ND than there are restaurants in Grand Forks ND.

So, you find it "charming that she discovered Olive Garden at 85"? Really? When she specifically mentions having visited an "older one in Fargo" several years back? Or perhaps her son took her to one elsewhere, maybe even New York City, since he works for the Wall Street Journal.

And you find it "charming," do you, that some old Midwestern woman, who seems capable of earning a living with her writing, actually manages to do that with a computer, and online, perhaps having given up her trusty Underwood with the coming of the new millennium?

Interesting.

Because that's exactly what I find you.

Charming.


.

Edited by Jaymes, 13 March 2012 - 11:07 PM.

[SJMitch]

The WSJ article about her by her son is very cool. There's a fun photo of her on the back of a motorcycle with whom? The owner of Sanders 1907.

[rotuts]

thanks for the WSJ ref. I bet her book is an interesting read.