My Pledge To You, Gentle Reader
My brother came down south a few nights ago to check out the apartment I'm staying in, and maybe catch the Sox/Twins game over dinner. Well, the cable was up and running so the game wasn't going to be an issue, but food was scarce. We were going to have to leave The Waiting Room and eat out. He drove.
We hung a left onto RI Route 2 and looked for a restaurant. It didn't take long--on the first block there were two, a Ruby Tuesday's and an Outback Steakhouse. As neither one of us felt like eating at a chain place, we kept going. That's when we realized that, without noticing it, we had entered Hell.
One block goes by. Denny's and a Ninety-Nines. Another block. Appleby's, Lowe's, Guitar Center. Another. Chili's, Men's Wearhouse. Another. TGI Friday's, Home Depot, Ethan Allen Furniture. A mile and a half of major thoroughfare and not a single local business. Just a parade of national chains. And the above list is woefully incomplete. If you can think of a national chain, it was on that mile of Rte. 2.
My brother drove from my apartment to the immense mall down the road and we couldn't find a single place to eat that didn't serve some kind of cheese popper with signature margaritas. It was maddening.
In the end, the game was on and we were hungry. We capitulated. We gave in and allowed ourselves to be carried away by the tsunami of homogenization that had sanitized Rte. 2 of anything remotely original. We chose Chili's--the burgers aren't bad and the decor is less deliberately tacky than the other places.
Anyway, the game was torture (the Sox blew a lead in the 12th) and the food mediocre (the fries were so salty, they seemed to actually dehumidify the room). The company saved the evening, of course, but when I got home I thought about how, without driving miles away into a city I don't know, this was it.
Short of cooking (which I can do), these are my options. No Square One Dining, no Doughboys, no Cafe Angelino. It's laminated menus and spiral-bound dessert picture-books for the next six months.
Now, if that's how it's got to be, then that's how it is. But--if that's how its got to be, then I'm going to make something out of it.
I pledge to you, my faithful readers, that I will eat at every single one of these places between now and my departure. Every Rte. 2 chain between Exit 8 and the Warwick Mall is on the list. A tasteful, restrained review of each establishment will follow. I eat at TGI Friday's so you don't have to.
We start tomorrow at the Outback. G'day, mates.
We hung a left onto RI Route 2 and looked for a restaurant. It didn't take long--on the first block there were two, a Ruby Tuesday's and an Outback Steakhouse. As neither one of us felt like eating at a chain place, we kept going. That's when we realized that, without noticing it, we had entered Hell.
One block goes by. Denny's and a Ninety-Nines. Another block. Appleby's, Lowe's, Guitar Center. Another. Chili's, Men's Wearhouse. Another. TGI Friday's, Home Depot, Ethan Allen Furniture. A mile and a half of major thoroughfare and not a single local business. Just a parade of national chains. And the above list is woefully incomplete. If you can think of a national chain, it was on that mile of Rte. 2.
My brother drove from my apartment to the immense mall down the road and we couldn't find a single place to eat that didn't serve some kind of cheese popper with signature margaritas. It was maddening.
In the end, the game was on and we were hungry. We capitulated. We gave in and allowed ourselves to be carried away by the tsunami of homogenization that had sanitized Rte. 2 of anything remotely original. We chose Chili's--the burgers aren't bad and the decor is less deliberately tacky than the other places.
Anyway, the game was torture (the Sox blew a lead in the 12th) and the food mediocre (the fries were so salty, they seemed to actually dehumidify the room). The company saved the evening, of course, but when I got home I thought about how, without driving miles away into a city I don't know, this was it.
Short of cooking (which I can do), these are my options. No Square One Dining, no Doughboys, no Cafe Angelino. It's laminated menus and spiral-bound dessert picture-books for the next six months.
Now, if that's how it's got to be, then that's how it is. But--if that's how its got to be, then I'm going to make something out of it.
I pledge to you, my faithful readers, that I will eat at every single one of these places between now and my departure. Every Rte. 2 chain between Exit 8 and the Warwick Mall is on the list. A tasteful, restrained review of each establishment will follow. I eat at TGI Friday's so you don't have to.
We start tomorrow at the Outback. G'day, mates.
posted by Matthew at 4:38 PM
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