Food Chains, Good and Bad
Part of what I like about living in our little town is that there are no chain restaurants (or chain anything, for that matter). When we weary of night after night of homemade gourmet meals (right...) and deign to dine out locally, we have a choice of five or six pretty decent places, most of which we can walk to. Still there are some chains we like. High on the list are Bertucci’s and Macaroni Grill. Lowest on the list is Applebee’s. Then there is that vast middle ground inhabited by the likes of TGI Friday’s. Cut from the same (table) cloth as Friday’s is Houlihan’s. There’s one not far from us, although I’ve never been there. I used to like Houlihan’s a lot; I just got out of the habit of going there. Bennigan’s, which on the surface seems like a clone of Houlihan’s, was always far worse mainly because the service was uniformly glacial at every location I visited. Being so much alike, perhaps the two should merge and create a new chain. I’m thinking a good name would be, um... Hooligans!