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> He wanted the decor to be tacky, the portions to be enormous, the atmosphere to be boisterous. He figured it didn’t matter that he wasn’t Italian in the slightest. There were also almost no red sauce joints in Minneapolis at the time, so diners wouldn’t have anything to compare it to. This was a restaurant, he says, “that was intentionally in bad taste, but good-natured bad taste.” The kind of place where the average diner could feel superior, and not feel bad about being puzzled over a wine list, or not knowing what kind of fork is used for a salad.

The concept of a restaurant that people "look down on" seems both bold and mean-spirited. It also vaguely reminds me of an article I read about the Old Spaghetti Factory.

What are some other examples of American restaurants that followed this playbook?

"Dive bars" have always been popular.

A friend of mine in college opened a dive bar, which quickly became very very popular. This was the type of place where you could smell the ammonia from the urinal when you walked in the door. Spending more than an hour in there, and you left smelling like cigarette smoke and stale beer.

When opening his 2nd bar, he made the rookie mistake of "trying to finally do it right". His new bar was walking distance from the original, and had a beautiful wood bar, leather chairs, fancy plate glass windows with frosted lettering, etc (top notch plumbing too).

His 2nd bar never caught on and he eventually had to close.

The importance of "dive's" is that everyone feels comfortable. You feel you can do no wrong. Spill your beer...so what. Whereas if the place it too fancy, everyone becomes too self-aware.

These types of places like BdB aren't about customers "looking down" on the place, its about being in a place thats comfortable and where the average joe doesn't feel looked down upon.

The best part of the crappy, touristy cruise ships is getting the hell off the ship and finding a local pub where you can chat with the locals outside of the tourist/vendor relationship.

The second best part of those ships is finding the empty pub onboard where the crew will open up and share their own stories and experiences.

https://www.barstoolsports.com/barstoolu/dude-goes-viral-for...

I've always found CF to have decent service and good (but not outstanding) food, a ludicrously long menu being the main negative, plus the fact that it's always ludicrously crowded because they underprice for their appeal.

The decor is gaudy, but not what I would describe as terrible (or even unpleasant, just incongruous.)

It isn't going to impress folks who have a personal chef at home, but the food is pretty darn good, and you don't have to saw off your right arm to pay for it.

This is almost undoubtedly untrue.

There are many independent or local restaurants in most regions that cost the same (or less) than the chains you mention. Ethnic restaurants frequently deliver more bang for the buck. In all of these non-chain categories there are “nicer” options that deliver a better atmosphere, food, wine, whatever the citizen in question is looking for.

As for the chains, they should have at least one thing to offer: consistency. No one is faulting folks for having a guilty pleasure, or working a chain into their routine when they’re looking for a known quantity meal.

But some people never break out of the mundane that consistency brings. The types who are too afraid to try things because they’re supposedly “fancy.” Or because they don’t look like they 2nd generation immigrants who run the restaurant down the road. The kind of folks who go to a Buca in Honolulu or Applebee’s in Times Square; those places are expensive as shit, and living a life like that is truly terrible.

A good example is the Olive Garden in Times Square. It's _always_ packed despite there being better Italian places a few blocks away. Not to mention, if you're willing to hop on the subway there's significantly better Italian food available in the outer boroughs for much cheaper. Olive Garden isn't that cheap, that nice, or that tasty which makes it a mystery to a lot of people.

If you go to these restaurants a little more regularly, you also can stack up the rewards benefits, sometimes you can get discounted gift cards, etc. All of which you will not find at a non-chain restaurant.

Which is to say, if I can get a sirloin for the cost of a Whopper, it isn't much of a mystery why people go there.

Source: Yes, I traveled to the capital of a country known explicitly for it's exquisite food and did patronize a McDonald's.

I still remember getting a surprisingly nice pepperoni pizza at a McDonald's in the US many years ago. Undoubtedly the nicest thing I've eaten at a McDonald's anywhere in the world.

Yes, I traveled to the capital of a country known explicitly for it's exquisite food and did patronize a McDonald's.

Some of the, by far, worst restaurants I've ever eaten at have been in France so there's a chance that McDonald's wasn't the worst choice you could have made.

also: walmarts in mexico are a step up from the ones in the us.

I think some of it is cultural. Like BdB, these restaurants cater to a little gluttony. Portions are generally HUGE, and there's no disdain for a person who wants a Bloomin' Onion or endless breadsticks. Darden knows how to do an upscale steakhouse; it also knows what draws in thrifty, hardworking people who want overindulgence without pity or scorn.

We recently got dragged to a local outpost of "The Pizza Ranch," a 250+ location chain that serves fried chicken and pizza with wagonwheel decor. The waiting line looked like a casting call for People of Walmart. And that's just it; it's a different market. It's not serving the middle-aged man who wants a well-prepared meal with fresh ingredients.

Kinda like how up to a few years ago Noodles & Company was pretty good cheap food, then they doubled all their portion sizes and their food unaccountably dropped to sub-frozen-and-boxed-food quality levels and they started calling themselves "World Kitchen" or something.

None of these are my favorite restaurants, but they'll do in a pinch.

None of the places you listed are cheap. The price of a steak at CF or Outback is about the same as the price of a steak at any "$$" restaurant. Olive garden is particularly expensive for what they offer (except lunch, which is a legitimately good deal as long as you're okay with eating 3 days worth of calories in breadsticks and can afford to be in a food coma all afternoon). And red lobster is just legit expensive and low-quality... you're better off on both price and quality with pretty much any other restaurant that has a fish menu...

Applebees, Chilis, and TGI Fridays, on the other hand, do have truly "economy" menu items. However, you still get what you pay for -- the key insight is that those places compete with bars, not restaurants, on price point. You can get sauce-covered chicken strips with frys for $10 at any mom and pop corner bar...

It definitely does make you feel like you don't need to impress anyone to be there - the real value that comes from making a place people feel socially relaxed is something I haven't thought much about.

I would argue Panda Express is spiritually similar in some ways.

The exhibits were both amazing and ridiculous.

They had paintings of Bill and Hillary Clinton drawn in Hamburger grease. They had a giant picutre of Bill Gates, but when you got close, the "pixels" were different colored keyboard keys.

Was it "high art"? I think not. Was I entertained? yes.

and I have to say the whole article reminded me a little of this onion "article":

https://www.theonion.com/european-men-are-so-much-more-roman...

(sorry)

Ones that I would argue don't want to be looked down upon (but are) are the likes of Olive Garden, Chili's, Applebees, Texas Roadhouse. They put on a facade of being fancy, but everyone knows most dishes served at these places were frozen and put in the microwave minutes before they are served. I could be wrong with the examples I gave though; it's been a long time since I've eaten out at any of them...

Chili's, for instance, serves not only freshly made salsa but freshly fried chips. The tortillas are pre-made and pre-cut and just need to be dumped in the oil, and you can make salsa in batches by dumping pre-measured portions in a blender. Panda Express is cooking everything on site throughout the day, too. Take the right bags of pre-cut vegetable blends, the meat, the sauce, stir it all furiously in a big wok, put it on a heat table. No microwave.

Most of the speed of "casual" restaurants just comes from doing a lot of prep work ahead of time, keeping everything from sauces to precooked vegetable mixes in warmers, and using the same ingredients across a range of dishes. (Prepare five grilled meats, six sauces, and put them on beds of rice, mashed potatoes, or pasta, and now come up with a name for each possible combination. Presto! You're a Cheesecake Factory.)

It's pretty common (perhaps dominant) with ethnic (or American regional, and some other strong themes) chains or single-location restaurants, because it promotes accessibility by making alien elements less off-putting. It's a way to make it so the restaurant doesn't seem to be looking down on the customers.

*the exception is vegetarians who have a lot of completely earnest love for the bean burrito.

On the other hand, it's probably just culture diverging and developing in different ways after migration, which is to be expected. So the problem is mostly one of identity: the same label - italian - means very different things to people across the world...

You're right on the label though, Italian American =/= Italian in the same vein that Chipotle/Taco Bell isn't Mexican. However, there are plenty of institutions in the states that do nail a more purist experience of Mexican or Italian or what have you.

Tex Mex or Cajun cuisine would be a more apt comparisons.

There’s something very unique about the US, which is that we’re taught from a young age that “culture” is something that other places have and the US is just a melting pot. But you can’t mix things together for 200+ years and still seriously claim you haven’t created something just as unique as the ingredients that went into it.

Maybe those things are conflated in places with no direct connections, but any Italian American with ties to Italy knows that the two are very distinct cultures.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-capicola-became-ga...

E.g. many staples of Chinese restaurants in America (General Tso's chicken, chop suey, sweet and sour whatever) are not found in China except at super touristy places.

Since it's early morning as I write this, I'll use Hong Kong-style macaroni soup[1] as an example: it's literally macaroni in broth with a slice of processed ham on top and some white bread on the side. Not Chinese in the least, but now it's as much a local breakfast staple here as congee.

Also, an aside: sweet and sour pork is a legitimate Cantonese dish and it's in every Canto restaurant in China. I really miss crab rangoon sometimes, though...

1. https://medium.com/@xinwenxiaojie/in-praise-of-hong-kong-mac...

Or any country's cuisine any other country. 'Thai' food tastes different in different parts of Europe for example.

They're "sperm-to-table" and a treat to dine with. I'm there too often.

[0] https://www.mensjournal.com/food-drink/10-best-steakhouses-i...

May be, but lost my appetite with that "sperm-to-table" thing there!8-)) Not quite the same as caviar!

It's tough to feel proud of what Buca di Beppo has done to popularize Italian-American culture in the same way it's tough to feel proud of the movie The Godfather. We aren't all mobsters and we don't all have giant busts of the Pope and cherubs in our houses. Some of us are just computer scientists who like basil.

Both of my parents are half Italian-American, and that's the tradition in which I was raised.

My relatives who actually came off the boat loved Buca di Beppo. And Olive Garden, etc. (Of course we all know it's not as good as home cooking, but who cares when you just want something fast.)

Honestly, Italian-Americans have no one to blame but ourselves for exalting gangster culture and caricatures. We love that stuff.

No, but I still eat at every single one of them all the time.

If I'm in flyover country, nothing beats the $19 Tuscan Steak at Olive Garden. Maybe some day I'll go to Italy and then never eat "fake" Italian food ever again, but I doubt it.

Welcome to an Italian-American kitchen at dinner time. I think this is what they're aiming for.

[0] https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/06/d7/fd/30/...

My mom passed away many years ago, but I'm pretty sure she would have found it funny. She loved that kitschy stuff!

Exactly!

I think Italian-Americans see "cultural appropriation", caricature, non-Italians portraying Italians in movies, etc as part of the process of integration.

If someone with no Italian heritage wants to open up a pizza shop or sell pasta and put a big statue of Mario in front, go right ahead! If it's good, we'll eat there.

You know who made the best pizzelles in my family - by far? My mom's Irish-German stepfather.

Well, you can open a restaurant named "Computer Scientists Who Like Basil" but I ain't gonna be one of your customers until I see lines queuing up!8-)

tpolverini says>"respectful"? "bordering on offensive"? "proud"? "it's tough to feel proud of the movie The Godfather", "I grew up in communities where the Italians could proudly go to other restaurants that were more respectful of a 3,000 year old culture."

Heck, that's nuthin'! I grew up in communities where you could proudly go to restaurants serving food that _was_ 3,000 years old, judging by the taste! I'll take Italian-American any day!

Jeez! Lighten up a little bit! The economy runs on entertainment. And if we can't laugh at each other and at ourselves then we're lost. That's the original and cheapest entertainment.

[Later: Hey! Hey! Why the downvote? You guys got no sense of humor? C'mon, help me out here, I'm dyin'!]

Interestingly, if someone was criticizing the appropriation of an indigenous or asian culture, there is little chance it would be this highly upvoted on HN. I think this is a worthwhile lesson for the community.

Whereupon we had one of the best and most welcoming meals I remember. That was my introduction to Buca di Beppo, and no matter what anyone says about it, I will always be fond of the place because it saved our lives that cold winter night.

My most favorite and memorable meals ever were little, low quality places that I hate after coming back from long treks through the wilderness, or even the meals cooked while on those treks. As well as many places my wife and I ate on our honeymoon.

And I have been to a fair number of excellent restaurants including michellin starred ones.

It seems unlikely that those places were actually that good (probably the same as your buccas experience). And I have returned to some of them under different circumstances and not found them particularly amazing.

I'll pass thanks.