As someone who frequents a lot of these restaurants, your experience can be entirely different depending on which location it is. It tends to depend on who's managing the place.
It *completely* depends on who manages the place. Problem is a lot of chain restaurants tend to be run by real-estate moguls who are just looking for steady earners and could not care or know less about the culinary industry. They leave the day-to-day to scuzzy managers who are just trying to maximize profits, or incompetent relatives/friends who got the job through nepotism.
Also, who serves you. At a Denny's I ordered a dish that supposedly wasn't going to cost you not more than $ 14.00, to my surprise, the same dish was charged $ 27.00 couple of days later at the same place, so it looked as if the waitress decided to use price gauging, telling me that prices went up, but I wasn't convinced and left the place unhappy.
@@phantomhiphop Wouldn't surprise me to see someone get mad either though. People make the most trivial things an issue on the internet, so nothing surprises me anymore.
Worked at a Denny's for a few years, and the amount of food waste is what astounded me the most. I'm sure it is the same at other restaurants but it isn't something everyone talks about. It just appalling how much food just gets thrown out on a daily basis.
Even if the food is good, in my experience they consider it theft if you, the employee, take it home. Starbucks went through a phase where it served wine. When I worked at Starbucks my coworkers told me when that Starbucks phased out alcohol they had to pour dozens of wine bottles in the sink as the company would consider it theft it they took it home. When I worked at Starbucks and Dunkin I would be told I had to toss things out and if I took it home they'd consider it theft. It's such a stupid waste.
Is the waste stuff they cooked and didn't serve, stuff that went bad, or stuff the customers were served and didn't eat? I imagine it's a combination of all three, but I'd wager the majority of the waste was customers not eating everything. Denny's is known for extremely large meals. Grand Slam Breakfast was, what, 2 eggs, 2 sausages, 2 toast, 2 pancakes, orange juice, and coffee, right? If I ate that much in one sitting, I'd be in pain, and I'm a fairly fat guy.
@@ryanwhite7852I think the reason why they consider it theft is cause they don't want employees to abuse the system and purposely cook extra food to take home still quite dumb though luckily my work (five guys) isn't like that here if somthing is out of date for five guys standards than employees is around take it home normal bread said for five guys standards bread only have a shelf life of 5 days so it's still good to take home
I can't even talk about food waste. It's so upsetting. Every place I've worked threw out so much food. But the kicker at every single job was, if you get caught with so much as a roll that's going to be discarded, you'd get fired. I'm going to stop there before I get my soap box out🤣
@@Jennithebaker "You took our garbage that was totally going to be hauled away and dumped in a giant hole. YOU'RE FIRED!" Seriously, that's the abusive boyfriend attitude, except with profits. "If I can't have it, no one can!"
I remember at a IHOP, I was with my dad as we were eating out that day. We went in and waited to be seated, then like 10 minutes later, another group came in and was given a table. We waited another 10-15 minutes before my dad spoke up and we got a table. The waiter who got us the table was really kind and apologized to us. In the end, we left that waiter a good tip.
Those moments like that,are becoming a rare. Moments like that are becoming too rare nowdays. Especially in situations like non-white American diners in predominantly white towns and cities, having Denny's restaurants in them,are exceedingly even more rare. Sexism. People being drunk at a Applebee's and getting rowdy is one thing. Witnessing fights just because they get fed up with crappy customer service or for some other reason is another. Thank goodness you all had a pleasant experience.
My wife and I have eaten at IHOP many time in Huntsville, TX. The service was really good and polite. The food was always good and the wait times were good! Of course this is not England!
COVID did in most restaurants. Their costs soared, supplies dwindled, portions got smaller, as did offerings on menus, and many dishes (recipes) were simplified. Employees left. It's no wonder that many restaurants declined. A major determinant of the quality and cleanliness of a specific location is the quality of management.
thank you for bringing up the point about ihop staff potentially not being treated well. i remember one time where i was sitting at my table and could very clearly hear a staff member being shouted at, F-bombs included, by who i'm assuming was a manager :( one of many awful things that happened at that location. i hope that person is doing okay now
That's not real genuine, decent customer service. Whether it's Applebee's (they're not as good as they used to be,compared as in the years past...) , Waffle House? We don't have them here in the southern part of south Texas. Or anywhere in Texas. Maybe in Alabama. And I haven't seen or experienced in being in - or witnessing - in restaurants like that. In places like that. In Denny's. In IHOP. In Arby's. In having standards whenever the employees and their employers at any Denny's restaurants behave like ADULTS. Not like teenagers or children.
I can confirm the insanely long wait times at IHOP, at least for my local area. I was a doordash driver, and was consistently made to wait upwards of 45 minutes for the food that they knew they needed to make well before I even made it to the restaurant. This was consistent across four different locations, regardless of how busy they were at the time. It was so bad I began just turning down any orders that sent me to IHOP simply because I was not willing to waste that much time, I got paid by how many orders I would do, not by an hourly rate, and that just was not worth the effort.
I tried a local iHOP last month around lunch time. The cookies and creme waffle I tried was good, and my friend who ordered blueberry pancakes said her's was good too. The staff was also nice there, even checking on us when we suddenly stopped talking, not realizing we had our food, I guess us being there made her day better somehow. Now to be fair, it was actually pretty empty inside, so we didn't have to wait long, but since we both in customer service and have disabilities, we were fine with waiting and more understanding if we had to wait longer times.
I have to say that bad experiences happen everywhere at times. I know that the server is not in charge of making the food and it is not their fault. We need more sympathy in these situations because nobody's perfect ❤
When you see them put the food up at the window and the servers are all standing around gabbing, and then you get your food cold, it's absolutely their fault.
👍. Damn right they do. Nobody's perfect. It happens from time to time. Australians are quite different dining out at Outback Steakhouse than we Americans do. Not that I would know. (I've never been to Australia.) I stupidly thought they'd serve kangaroo steak or crocodile grits. Or well...umm....Ohhh.. forget it.
Oh wow! Just last week my brother and I went to an Applebees, and unfortunately he did end up vomiting after eating a chicken sandwich. I thought it was maybe just car sickness as we were traveling for a while (which it still could’ve been), but I had no idea that there was a real reputation of food poisoning. That’s awful! Love these videos so much! Always so informative and kind and well-researched. I still think you’re one of the friendliest YTber’s out there. Thanks for being you, Strider!
Never had a bad experience at IHOP; always great food and service. I tried to go to Applebees once but we were ignored by two different waitresses for 45 minutes before I told them where they could stick their restaurant. The 30 people waiting for tables didn't seem to mind though.....🥴 On the flip side, I loved Cracker Barrel!
I remember one time my dad worked for Applebee's. I won't say where as he no longer works for them. Roughly fifteen years ago my dad worked for them and the power went out. I remember we had to drive to his work and Pack A Bunch of the Food in my Dad's Car and Left the windows down overnight Just to try to keep them cold. The very next day we come back to Applebee's. To return the food back to the fridge after they fixed it. I don't hold my dad responsible as he was just following orders. But I no longer eat at applebee's and neither does my dad. I may have grown up being fed applebee's, but i'm old enough to know it's not the same as it used to.
I can confirm things about Golden Corral myself. The one I always used to go to in Florida was decent a few years back, but fell off HARD a few years after. The staff was terrible, ALL of the food was either cold and or missing. Literally half the containers you get the food at was empty and there werent even that may people in the resturant. The excuse we got from the main manager there was "it's most of ours, and my first day here" which I honestly didn't believe for a second.
Every time I go to Golden Corral I get sick...and not the ate too much kind of sick but the some rando put their head under the sneeze guard and sneezed all over the food sick.
@@evilrollo "Every time?" Why did you return? Damn! Is it that hard to figure out? If I got sick _one time_ after some restaurant (which has never happened) I'd never return.
Honestly, I am a big fan of breakfast and also a night owl. IHOP has been a life line. All of the IHOPs in my area are clean, remodeled, and look contemporary. During the pandemic & lock down, my local IHOP changed out two windows at different ends of the restaurant and turned them into pedestrian walk up windows: 1 to take the order and pay, the other was for order pick up when ready. They remained open 24 hrs the entire time and never disappointed. All the grocery stores, Wal-Mart's, etc in my community reduced their business hours down to 1 shift (8hr to 12 hr) a day so when I was up at night time if I hadn't had the opportunity to go grocery shopping IHOP was really the only place I was able to get something to eat until I made it to the grocery store (Frankly Speaking - I felt like it was safer to go to IHOP and get food to-go than actually spend an hour in a grocery store walking around in an indoor closed environment.) I'm not going to say that I've never had a bad experience at an IHOP but the good definitely outweigh the bad times experiences.
Josh I can honestly say I wish I had your optimism and bright personality. It’s always nice to see someone so happy and friendly and with a sense of humor
We had lunch at Outback in Naperville, IL. The server was very good and got our orders to us in a timely manner. Unfortunately, our steaks were over seasoned with salt, garlic and some type of hot spice. We took them home and fed them to our dogs.
It does really depend on who you get. Imo it’s my favorite place to get fried chicken, it’s so crispy and juicy. For the service, yeah… if you’re in a trashy area, expect that for the service. I’m sorry your experience was bad.
I have had varying experiences with iHop. The one by my college was always delicious with amazing service. The one in my hometown on the other hand, once accidentally served me scoops of butter instead of ice cream.
Wow, the local Popeye's is pretty good. I mean, sure the actual style of food is something of an acquired taste to my town's more northern palate, but it's definitely higher quality than whatever trash KFC is serving (except coleslaw, the one thing the local KFCs, yes we have multiple, beat them on), still prefer Church's Texas Chicken though.
I think Popeyes chicken is just plain garbage. Apparently so did most of my town because a Popeyes has opened here twice and both times they closed down at least the second time it lasted over a year and a half. KFC is barely hanging on but that's what happens when a local place blows them out of the water. Our local mom and pop grocery has a world class deli that serves the best fried chicken. They've been voted best so many years in a row everyone else stopped trying
I think Dennys is the championship fight circuit of restaurants! Over here in Oaktown the Dennys in the bay area is notorious for having outbreaks of groups brawling. I think it's because of the ' all you can eat waffles ' dinner. First of all, everyone probably needed ' more waffles ' and there were too many butts ❤😂
I worked for a smaller local sit down restaurant for 23 years. I did everything short of bartending and management. I've been more tolerable for some mistakes when I do go out. I love these videos keep up the great work.
I’ve been to IHop and I haven’t seen anything of the sorts of any of the bad stuff mentioned, also I’d recommend not going to Buffalo Wild Wings since you can’t even hear yourself think, also I don’t feel sick after being at Applebees, also one time I went to Denny’s in Strasbourg, me, my father, his father, my fathers uncle, my uncles two sons at the time, and my uncles wife went to Denny’s but nobody even bothered to take an order of what we wanted to drink and I think it was around half an hour or so being there that we just got up and left (also my dads side of the family is Native American and my mothers side is German)
I feel like one of the biggest issues with IHOP is that they are forced to be a 24/7 location instead of having hours based around their current staff. The manager having to cook is a very common occurrence, and often said manager has zero professional cooking experience. To make the situation worse, cause they get stuck making all the food (which is supposed to be made by a team, not a single inexperienced person) they aren't able to maintain what is happening up front. As an example, at my local IHOP, the host was a high schooler. They would give all the customers to their 2 friends, meanwhile the 3rd waitress who wasn't part of the friend group wasn't given any customers. This led to a fight among the staff as there were 14 tables with customers, and the 3rd waitress wasn't assigned to any of them. Shortly after that, the manager at that location left, which I only know as he became an assistant manager at my job and my God, he was the single worst manager I have ever dealt with, I didn't even work the same department as him and I hated being around them. So many people just started venting how much they disliked him, which led to him not keeping the position.
One of my cousins used to work at an Ihop near where I live, and she said there were days where it was pretty testy to work there. She never went a day without being told off by customers for something stupid like not getting their refills on time. It was so bad for her that she eventually quit because she just couldn't handle it anymore.
I was never a fan of Denny's over the years. The one that was close to my house (which is gone now) gave us our worst dining experience. Pretty packed around New Year's a handful of years back, but we got a table not too long afterwards. Waitress came by after around 5 minutes, saying she'd be right back to take our drink orders after checking on another table first. She never came back and we eventually left after not being serviced at all. We just went across the street to Bob Evan's instead, which was a far better choice.
Two things about Popeyes. 1. Popeyes is as much a sit down restaurant as McDonalds or KFC. You can sit and eat there, but it's typically a fast food place... that's probably why the service sucked. 2. Popeyes chicken is delicious if you like your chicken spicier and juicier than KFC of Chick-Fil-A, which I do.
I was surprised that Popeye’s was even included since most people consider it fast food instead of a sit-down restuarant. Also, you gave the exact reason I choose it over KFC. In fact, Popeye’s has my favorite spicy chicken sandwich of any fast food joint.
To me Popeyes is weak and tasted too much like buttermilk. KFC is just plain trash. I go to my favorite local spot and so does most of my town. Popeyes has opened up twice in our town and both times closed down from lack of customers. At least the second time it went a year and a half
They shut down the Denny's where I live (in Vernon, Ct). They did this rather suddenly with no advance warning. The employees were just abandoned with no compensation. I was surprised because it wasn't from a lack of customers. The place always seemed packed (certainly for breakfast) but I wasn't sure about nights as I never went at that time. No restaurant has gone in that location to take it's place. There was an old saying that "Nobody ever starts out going to Denny's but it's just where you end up." Because it was open 24 hours. But they stopped 24 hour operation during the Covid pandemic and never went back to it even after the epidemic was over.
Everyone: They're giving a review because they have stomach poisoning This one person: The urinals are too low and they gave me a lemon, WHERE IS MY WATER? I love the absurdity of online reviews
Panda might be the only restaurant on the list I've visited in recent memory, and my opinion on their noodles could not be any lower. Protip: if you're fortunate enough to have a local, family-owned Chinese restaurant then go there instead.
The last time I ate at Panda Express, 10 or more years ago, there was sand in all of my broccoli. I could hear it crunching in my teeth. I haven't been back since.
@DarkFire1536 sand how the heck did they get sand in the food never been to Panda Express and I will probably never go there. Also I personally find it better to go to my local Chinese restaurant or make my own at home.
@@trixxart777 I find sand in my broccoli from the grocery store sometimes when I wash it. I soak it in a strainer that is placed inside a bowl. When I lift the strainer, I often see sand on the bottom of the bowl. I think that perhaps they broccoli I ate from Panda Express may not have been washed thoroughly.
The Panda Expresses my dad and I have been to had really nice staff and everything was literally made while ordering. Then again, neither of us ordered noodles, just orange chicken and honey shrimp.
I actually enjoy my local IHOP. I’ve only been there a couple of times and DoorDashed it once, but the food was always great and the service inside always seemed personable.
I literally live about 1 mile down the street from the first Outback restaurant, here in Tampa. Yes, it was started by Americans, and they have created many other restaurants, some of which were successes and some which flopped, which is of course normal in the industry. I have NEVER heard or seen anywhere that employees were encouraged to use fake accents. I've certainly never experienced it at any of the locations I've been to. And while the restaurant is Australian themed, it doesn't try to copy Australian cuisine. Hell, I don't even know what Australian cuisine is apart from vegemite. ;-) The Bloomin' Onion is a creation of the restaurant. I don't know the name of the person who invented it, but he did a great job. They take a Georgia Vidalia onion, which is the biggest, sweetest onion there is. They slice it about 90% of the way leaving it attached at the base. Then dip it in the seasoned flour and deep fry. They serve it with a spicy sauce I don't like so I eat it plain and think it's delicious. The only complaint anyone I know has ever had about it is that it's so damn big that you can't get one unless you have at least 4 people, preferably 5 or 6, or you won't have room for your meal.
There was a very infamous moment that occurred in 2019 at a Denny's in Lithonia, GA, a suburb of Atlanta. A local news crew there was confronting employees working there due to several health violations. The employees didn't want to be filmed and began a physical altercation with the reporter. One female employee there even threatened to knock the reporter out if they refused to stop filming her and her son. That particular Denny's eventually closed its doors.
I understand trying to protect at least you and your child’s moral reputations from the news media, but threatening to knock out the reporter is just an epic fail of that effort… if that’s the case. I might be wrong?
I usually have good experiences at Denny's. IHOP has great food, but it's always slow. I was at 1 restaurant with only 3 tables with customers, yet it still took 45 minutes for my food to arrive. A great trick is to order take-out, if available. Then it's ready for you when you arrive, and even quicker than if sitting inside.
Yeah, I've never had a bad experience at a Denny's. They were actually my favorite place to stop at when I was a travelling salesman in the early-2000's. You could stop in and order a burger meal with avocado on it and all the fixings and it only ran you a couple dollars more than a McDonald's but was twice as good. I hear McDonald's raised their prices substantially recently though so I'd fathom Denny's is actually cheaper.
We actually had a pretty good Chili's by where I live, but they shut down nearly all their sit-down restaurants in Alberta. Now it's pretty much only found in airports of all things. There's some good food there, to be honest. Just VERY pricey.
I've actually never been to a Denny's. As a black woman I think I'm lucky in that respect. Thank you PhantomStrider and Nostalgia Critic for not only good content, but also for helping me avoid Denny's. My mother and I went to our town's local Golden Corral. It certainly lived up to its reputation. The food was mediocre, even the chocolate fountain! When you screw up with chocolate from a fountain, you KNOW you screwed up! I also remember going to a Shoney's restaurant on my way to visit my grandparents. The only thing I remember was winning a Beluga toy from a claw machine.
I was in Atlanta this summer, and my friend Jason kept asking the Uber/Lyft drivers where a good place to have breakfast was. This one Uber driver said a place, I think it was called something like Bob's Shack or something, that she hadn't been to in 10 years, so she didn't know if it still existed. Then she said another place was... well... we heard, "Danny's." We asked where that was. She was like, they're all over, but the one I go to is (I honestly forget the address). My friend Jason looks it up and asks, "Danny's you said?" "Yes," she replies. "Could you spell that?" "D-E-N-N-Y-S." We're in Atlanta, trying to get an authentic Southern breakfast, and she sends us to a fucking Denny's.
I was honestly shocked to find out about Shoney's reputation. I've only ever been to one location, being that there was only one near my town, but the food was amazing. It never seemed old or like it was off in any way and it always tasted good. The staff were always extremely kind and understanding, overall the experience was typically a treat despite being a pretty basic all-you-can-eat restaurant. My parents took me pretty often since they had dinner there on their wedding night (it was the only restaurant open at the time that wasn't packed), so it was really special to them. Sadly, it shut down during Covid since business was already slow, but I hope that some other location out there is just as good, cuz it was genuinely an amazing experience.
I was on vacation in Brooklyn, NY and went to IHOP in Sept 2023 for the first time and I must say I enjoyed the food and we had a very nice waitress..I also visited Chilli's in FL over the Christmas weekend of 2022 and I really enjoyed my food there as well, the only thing that needed improvement was the cleanliness and better decor..
"Chocolate Thunder From Down Under" sounds amazing, to be quite honest with you. I might give it a try if I ever visit the states. As a side-note, my mother once ordered a big mac and it had a caterpillar in. Let's just say that McDonald's were quick to give her a discount after that. I would've kept the insect as a good luck charm. :) I've never worked in a restaurant before. But I know how difficult it can be sitting to enjoy a meal, only to have rowdy customers making a scene (mostly teenagers trying to antagonise the workers or Karens making a scene) can be on the staff. I once encountered an angry impatient customer yelling at a drive-thru window operator because the line was taking forever. She was a blonde bespectacled lady in her twenties, she was quite sweet actually. I hope she's doing well nowadays.
Can confirm that the “Chocolate Thunder From Down Under” is fantastic. I’ve had it numerous times and it always was the perfect way to end a meal. Recommend trying it. That caterpiller thing makes my skin crawl. Hope that didn’t traumatize you.
@@user-rx7pd1xv4k it was the lettuce and the fact the salad items hadn't been properly stored. It's why I refuse to eat salad in burgers, because I'm worried I'll chomp into a caterpillar or spider.
There used to be an Outback Steakhouse near me when I lived in California, it was surprisingly very nice. It was originally a Bob's Big Boy restaurant, and it was only around for about 14 years and is still an empty place. I recall the "Bloomin' Onion" and other junk they had, they were actually good, it was like ordering a bunch of onion rings with a dipping sauce. Plus that strange bread is still good, with the butter on the side but it was delicious. I rarely ordered crab or lobster, but those were solid options, same goes with the baby back ribs where you ordered them and they gave you those same wipes they had from gas stations that you opened like sugar packets. That was the experience there, it was basically a bar people went to that had tables, the actual restaurant looked fancy but the bar crowd were the regular people who bought stuff here. I ordered steak from here (duh, it's a steakhouse) and that was great too. My favorite item from the menu was a bowl of mushrooms, I ordered it damn near every time I went there, but it was solid and filled me up. Sucks it's no longer in business.
The thing is, these are all franchise restaurants, and the quality (or lack-thereof) falls 90% on the shit local owners who likely don't know their ass from their elbow about the culinary industry, nor do they give a fuck. They just want a stable earner for their real estate portfolio. They either give the management to a family member/friend who is incompetent, or outsource the management to another person who doesn't care and it trickles down from there. However you can also get franchise owners who care, and who do know what they're doing and decided to open a franchise for the stability and name recognition. It's the same thing with Starbucks. The coffee is only as good as the person making it.
I have good memories of Waffle Houses. Back when a bunch of fellow dateless friends and I pool-bought tickets to my high school prom and we all went together and coming home, stopping at a Waffle House at 2-3 am before getting taken home... That one time when my fiance' and I were moving me across the country and pulled into a town where we had a hotel booked in West Virginia and had literally no place to eat / even the grocery stores were closed at 3 am and there was the Waffle House, shining like a beacon to feed us. I enjoy Outback Steakhouse, but I don't take it as reflective of actual Australian culture at all. My late nephew talked about a friend he had from Australia who hated it because of how WRONG it all was, but, honestly, if you just take it as a chain-steakhouse and don't think about the fake-culture vibe, it's fine. American culture just does that - it's well accepted by now that most "Chinese" food was created for American-tastes and became a thing unto itself. I'm pretty sure that there are restaurants in other parts of the world that try "American" food, especially Southern food and get it wrong - I mean, different regions of our own country get our regional stuff wrong all the time - Northerners getting Southern stuff wrong, people on the west coast putting green peppers and provolone in "Philadelphia cheesesteaks" - cue me moving to the Philly area and literally NO ONE does that. But these "wrong foods" can still be tasty as they are.
The ones from this video I've eaten at are IHOP and Popeyes. I have only sat down once at an IHOP in the midwestern US back in 2017 and thought the pancakes were great. It's such a bummer seeing Popeyes on this list as they're one of my favorite restaurants. The chicken sandwich craze back in 2019 is something I remember a little well. Also, side note, I'm shocked that Australians don't eat macaroni and cheese.
Ehh, that last part was a bit inaccurate. We DO eat mac and cheese, (at least, i think so since i've seen some at a few stores and supermarkets), but it's just nowhere near as iconic in the childhoods of most Australians as TV shows and food writers would have you believe.
I was an employee at my local Popeyes from the Summer of 2019 to the outbreak of the Covid 19 pandemic in 2020. It was actually my first job ever after graduating high school. I worked at the front counter as a cashier and was subsequently on the front lines when the Chicken Sandwich hit in force. Lines around the block both in the drive thru and in the lobby, the number of people crowded into this small building was absolutely a fire safety hazard. There wasn't even much of a line, and more of just a wall of human bodies all clamoring to order this Chicken Sandwich that, by the way people scrambled for it, was the cure for cancer or the only form of sustenance on the planet. While this never happened at my location, there were instances of people getting into brawls over this Sandwich, and one location had someone pull out a gun, all in the name of this friend Chicken in a bun with mayo and pickles. My coworkers and I were legitimately scared to come to work. The worst part about it was, however, the days where from 10:00 am in the morning to 5:00 pm in the evening, I did not move from behind the register. For seven hours I was on my feet, stationary, taking orders from agitated, ignorant, or irate costumers without a bathroom or lunch break, having to explain to the customer that they can't have the Spicy Chicken Sandwich without mayo because it was the mayo that made it spicy. One man, I remember specially, walked up to the counter, shoving his way through people with a half eaten Sandwich, slammed it down in front of me and said "it's not spicy", when I had clearly explained the situation with the mayo. He looked at me like I had ran over his dog or pushed his grandmother down the stairs. I legitimately wanted to scream bloody murder working there during this time, and nearly walked off the job. I didn't though, wanting to be a 'good employee'.
If IHOP is on the list, I couldn't agree more. Before the pandemic, I went to IHOP almost every week but now, I hardly go as there's barely anyone there anymore. The pandemic made the waiters and the staff leave.
- When I was 7 or 8, I remember spending half an hour trying to eat a big burger at Applebees, but ultimately gave up half way because it made me nauseous. - I made the AB Honor roll many times in school, and my reward then was a golden corral certificate. The food then was fine, but it certainly got old after a few monthly visits. - Oh and this year, when I found an IHOP after a doctor visit, the waitress was disinterested and not polite at all. So that lines up with the #1 entry perfectly.
I've been to a Denny's exactly once in my life, back around 1990. It took us a little while to notice that people who were seated after us were having their orders taken before us, and then a table that was seated after us got their food before we even ordered. When the server finally came to our table, we just stood up and left. Two of our party of 5 or 6 were black. At that time, I hadn't yet heard the rumblings about racism.
At our Denny's they solved the racist problem by having the wait staff treat everyone like crap. We got up and left a near empty restaurant after nobody taking our orders for over a half hour and from what I hear it's still just as bad. The employees park out front to keep it from looking abandoned
You wouldn't DARE consider that Denny's had bad experiences with POC diners. Not to mention other good restaurants. I have no trouble at all finding videos and TikToks of blacks who don't want to be in a restaurant where they see other blacks inside. Why? They KNOW that their peers cannot behave themselves and THEY DON'T TIP. Blacks on video say this and the evidence confirms it. Shame me all you want but, all the shaming language in the world cannot change that. The magic word, rayssssissmm, doesn't work because we all know the dirty truth behind it. Deal with it.
Maybe your group was just talking a lot. I've noticed recently when I go anywhere with a group the wait staff tends to give you a lot of time, especially if folks are just chatting and not looking at menus or menus down etc? Idk maybe all Denny's are racist? In my area it seems like all types go there and are fine
@@beargillium2369 Of course I'll never know for sure why we were ignored, because I can never know what was going on in the server's head. I'm just sharing a personal experience related to the topic.
I'm surprised to see some of the restaurants here, and feel like I learned about others that I didn't know existed. I'm honestly surprised to see Popeyes in here cause it's one of the more popular ones in my country. Really the only complain I may have is the prices increasing, but other than that food tastes great. There was also a time where they kinda changed the fries for a different type because the ones that are usually served there weren't being brought here. So I'm surprised to see them here. But, as you put it with the "australian" restaurant, it can also be that Popeyes in my country has different succes than on other countries
As former hospital kitchen staff, order your food to go regardless if you're staying to eat it. They're a generally more careful about cross contamination and allergens when they gotta package it immediately, and the styrofoam carton protects your food more than their loose lidded plates. That and don't look at the ceilings inside of those food carts, it's one of the most neglected spots for cleaning due to time constraints. Also if you find crumbs on your plate that aren't from your meal or if your drink tastes funny, return it immediately; management typically cares more about things looking clean instead of actually being cleaned, often teaching the new hires a dunk in disinfectant is good enough.
IHOP being so hated puts a frown on my face Their chicken tenders? Amazing Mozzarella sticks? Amazing Strawberry banana french toast? Heavenly And in my experience the staff are nice
Hey Josh, As an American who has eaten at Outback Steakhouse I have always enjoyed the food I’ve gotten there and had great service. I respect other people’s opinions. I’ve had similar experiences at Applebees, Chili’s and Denny’s. Popeyes’s is mediocre.❤
Denny's is great as someone that ate there many times when I was younger and growing up. Of course I pretty much always played it safe and got the same item that was hard to mess up for them and was always good. Chicken friend steak, general rule if they can't do a chicken fried steak right, run away. Don't eat there much these days, but at times when your somewhere new and looking for something decent and don't want to experiment at a random place or do a random fast food place, denny's is a safe space as even the worst denny's seems to always nail the chicken friend steak.
My first real job as a teenager was working at a local burger/comfort food chain. One time the flat iron (or whatever you call it) broke and was about to set on fire. A customer asked for a cheesesteak. I simply replied, "I'm sorry sir. The flat grill is out of order; can I get you anything else?" He then replied, "Okay. How 'bout a chicken cheesesteak?" I staired at him in wonder thinking, "how does this dude not know ALL cheesesteaks are prepared on the SAME GRILL?!!!!" I think I said something like, "Yeah, that grill is broken too." Point being, sometimes it's the customers that are the problem. I was 17 or 18 when this dude said this to me and somehow I knew the basics of how engineering worked better then him.
I’m so genuinely surprised to see IHOP at the top. The one I normally go to has pretty nice staff and they get the food out so quickly, sometimes in around 10 minutes. The food there’s pretty good too. The one time I had a bad experience was when I ordered an omelette and it was flavorless, which I was largely able to fix with the saltshaker at the table. I won’t get eggs there again, but I loooove their pancakes and their fried chicken.
I have the same experience, the IHOP close to my town is pretty chill and the food is fine enough, though for other IHOP’s I certainly don’t know how the employee’s are or what the treatment to them is like.
Once at ihop, they literally never brought our food. We sat there for over an hour, multiple asks to waitstaff, and finally they said they lost our order. They asked if we still wanted our food and we just left. They weren't even very busy and other people would come in, order and get their food while we sat there.
In college, I worked at a Golden Corral (2011). The back of the restaurant was just like that image, and we needed to inspect the plates every morning. This was because they would be covered with water and mushy food. We had to restock the plate stations before ending our shifts, and these plates were frequently hot from the dishwasher.
Dunno, I regularly go to IHOP because it’s near where I work. Never got the impression the staff were overworked; they were very friendly, casual, and eager to get my order down, which they do. It freaks me out when they do the “Happy Birthday” song out of the blue to a customer celebrating their birthday; almost choked, it startled me that much. Otherwise, so far I have had a good experience there.
Unfortunately, I've had a bad experience with Shoney's coming back from vacation in August of this year. We had eaten at a Shoney's breakfast buffet somewhere in the Alabama while heading back home. While it tasted all right, we all started feeling off somewhere in Tennessee when we were at a Rest Stop. It was only until we arrived back home and got our stuff in did we feel the full effects of a stomach flu/food poisoning. We spent the next couple of days praying to the porcelain deities and curling up in our beds... Not a fun time...
I’ve honestly had fairly good experiences with golden corral. My family and I used to go there a lot. The food was pretty good. My only complaint is that sometimes the stuff at the buffet would be cold.
Most of these restaurants were actually quite good back in the day. Back in the 80's, we went almost every Sunday morning, to Shoney's. Nothing could beat Shoney's breakfast buffet, until the day we saw a cockroach crawling up the wall. Never went back.
I LOVE Applebee's! I always get the steak and I always order it by phone and pick it up. It's always cooked perfectly. I also LOVE Golden Corral. I've never been disappointed with the food or seen any disgusting unsanitary conditions.
My best advice on things like this is to treat each restaurant on an individual basis. Look at reviews FOR THAT PARTICULAR RESTAURANT before going there. I have been to all of these restaurants multiple times and some have been good and some have been bad. Prime example: We have an EXCELLENT Applebees near us but there are three other Applebee's near us that are terrible! It's just a matter of finding a restaurant with good management and employees who care. Checking on-line reviews will usually reveal which restaurants are truly bad. Don't just walk in to any restaurant without checking its reviews. Another thing I've noticed is that reviews for nearly all restaurants have plummeted in the last few years. With this inflation wrecked economy, restaurants are jacking up prices and cutting corners on quality just to stay in business. This is, of course, reflected in the reviews.
We had a bar open up in the 2000s called The Fire House and it was more often referred to as The Fight House, because every single weekend a brawl broke out there. They used to have a "shake of the day" where you could roll some dice for a buck and maybe win a free drink token. My friend and I saved up for almost a year after going there for lunch almost every day (they let you do the shake with sodas too). We ended up having almost 300 tokens and at the time they exchanged one token for any drink. We ended up getting hammer, we also got other people drinks. Ended up tipping the bartender $200 and I puked in the back of the owners truck bed. After that drink tokens could only be exchanged for a drink valued at $3.50 or less. Haha.
Though not really a sit-down restaurant, every time we ordered Taco Bell, SOMETHING was wrong. Also, it always took close to 30 minutes to get only a few things.
I went to a Waffle House in the North Georgia mountains around dinner time, a couple of years ago. There were only two women working there. One to take orders and one to cook. They were flooded with to-go orders. The shut down over half of the tables in the restaurant so they could keep up. They had them all roped off. It sounds like iHop needs to do this.
I used to go to a Denny's every year after attending a comic con in my area. At one point in time they weren't a bad place to eat at and affordable all things considering. 2021 was the last year I went, we had to wait 20 minutes to be seated in a near empty building, everyone at the table had to reorder because they were out of stuff, the waitress had to come back over because she forgot our orders and when we finally got our food it was either frozen or burned and the waitress blamed them being short staffed even though there was almost no one in there and the night before we were at another restaurant that was short staffed and had a great experience. This was so bad I haven't been to a Denny's since
As someone who works as a dish washer at a place with an automatic dishwasher, I can confirm that sometimes it’s not as efficient. A cycle is around a minute long, and sometimes certain dishes need to go through more than once. Sometimes we have to scrub, rinse, or scrape food off of dishes, containers and utensils.
Oh, my goodness. Bless your heart! Oh, sweetie, Chef Mike is the hardest working guy in the back of the house at every American restaurant. Goodness me, I can't stop laughing. SOME of the food comes in frozen. Some! Hahaha! Oh, bless your heart. Your brownie came in frozen, honey!
My experience with the Golden Corral in Queesnsbury, NY has always been very positive. The place is clean, the servers are friendly and helpful, and the food is always hot, tasty and nicely displayed. The restaurant does a very good business...it's always crowded with an upbeat vibe. It's my favorite eatery.
I rememberer working as a line server for panda express at the airport, the job was pretty stressful as most of the time one person was doing the serving and the other was operating the cash register. And yeah we were told to put a bare minimum serving as possible, aka it must not overflow the scooper which seemed pretty scummy. The only good thing is you can have whatever you wanted during break time
I'm from the US and I've never been to Outback, but after hearing about that ridiculous menu and the staff faking Australian accents? I need to experience it for myself.
I wasn't aware of the fight club part, but regarding Waffle House, my family had a few annoying experiences with one of their places. We'd try to place an order over the phone, but no one would pick up. So we would go in, and we'd hear the phone ring. They'd always make excuses, like they unplugged the phone or someone took it home with them
I’m a new viewer and this has to be one of the funniest videos. You making jokes about the “Outback Steakhouse” has me laughing way too hard. 😂 thank you for the laughs it’s been a rough day
My boyfriend and I went to Outback Steakhouse for Valentine's this year and it was fantastic. We paid the same for 2 burger meals as we would at a fast food restaurant and the quality was sooo much better.
My dad and I wanted breakfast food so we went to our local Ihop. There was a couple families already waiting and no on was at the counter to seat anyone. We waited for around 5 minutes and then an employee came to the front, pressed a couple buttons on the computer and then disappeared in the back. Needless to say we went to the Waffle House across the street.
I'm honestly thankful that the local Golden Corral that I used to go to as a kid was pretty good. Got to eat what I wanted while my parents did too. It closed when I was still a kid which made me sad but on the upside I guess that's a good thing. Now my childhood memories aren't ruined, LOL
I swear, hearing about Waffle House, it's like they took the whole idea behind Baratie's staff in One Piece and thought it would be awesome if it was real while completely missing the fact that they only fight when necessary.
I used to enjoy Panda Express and buy from them every now and then. But I decided to eat some after recovering from a plastic surgery, and ever since then the Chili Shrimp makes me feel nauseous. Even to this day I feel like I wanna vomit when thinking of eating there.
9:36 Out of the 7 years I've been watching strider, I never expected to appear in a video of his. Today, or, I guess 9 days ago... it finally came, even as just a simple comment on twitter. Thank you Strider!
We avoid chain restaurants now they are cheaping out on the ingredients to save money. Dennys doesn't even have ice cream or shakes any more. There are a lot of privately owned restaurants in my area they are great.
We used to go to Outback in Medford, OR in the early 90s; we had a good time every time. Fast forward to 2015 my son took his new bride to Outback in Springfield, OR he was VERY disappointed and embarrassed since he spent a great deal of time praising the place.
Haven't had any problems personally myself, atleast not in a long time... it was probably atleast 15 yrs ago when I had to tell the staff at applebees I couldn't eat the steak they served me. I told them it needed to be cooked longer, 2-3 times and gave up. I am not someone who wants it to be medium-rare, I asked for medium-well (I like a little pink, not a lot of red and it still looks like it could be mooing).
I remember that Denny’s uproar. It was in Orlando I believe during something called Black Beach Week. Meany black fraternities and sororities show up and basically takeover the town, just like in any spring break. However, apparently the only thing black college students like better the bitching about racial profiling is dining and dashing in huge numbers. So, Denny’s put out the ill fated pay first policy. But, only because of a city ordinance created in response to complaints from the aforementioned black students, because in previous years restaurants would close for “vacation or remodeling” that week. So Denny’s was constrained by law to remain open and get robbed 24/7 for an entire week!
Once got sick off of spinach artichoke dip from Applebee's. Last year, ate breakfast at a Denny's; the biscuit was so dense I could have thrown it through the window, through the windshield of the car on the other side and take out the driver.
This surprises me about IHOP. I've been to several, in different states and towns. ALL of them had excellent service and very good food. Toledo, OH and Russellville, Ark are one of the best. "Very packed" when we went in and both gave excellent service. 5 stars on both.
![State of Play | September 24, 2024 [ENGLISH]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/fVs0suPHAX8/mqdefault.jpg)
As someone who frequents a lot of these restaurants, your experience can be entirely different depending on which location it is. It tends to depend on who's managing the place.
It *completely* depends on who manages the place. Problem is a lot of chain restaurants tend to be run by real-estate moguls who are just looking for steady earners and could not care or know less about the culinary industry. They leave the day-to-day to scuzzy managers who are just trying to maximize profits, or incompetent relatives/friends who got the job through nepotism.
Also, who serves you. At a Denny's I ordered a dish that supposedly wasn't going to cost you not more than $ 14.00, to my surprise, the same dish was charged $ 27.00 couple of days later at the same place, so it looked as if the waitress decided to use price gauging, telling me that prices went up, but I wasn't convinced and left the place unhappy.
Seeing Josh not be offended by the Australian stereotypes of "Outback Steakhouse" and instead laughing at them was really wholesome honestly...
I mean it'd be a weird thing to get upset over
@@phantomhiphop yeah fr
Yeah that's something my father would be angry at... Total tosser. 😅
@@phantomhiphop Wouldn't surprise me to see someone get mad either though. People make the most trivial things an issue on the internet, so nothing surprises me anymore.
@@sonicstarman9663 people have too much free time
Worked at a Denny's for a few years, and the amount of food waste is what astounded me the most. I'm sure it is the same at other restaurants but it isn't something everyone talks about. It just appalling how much food just gets thrown out on a daily basis.
Even if the food is good, in my experience they consider it theft if you, the employee, take it home. Starbucks went through a phase where it served wine. When I worked at Starbucks my coworkers told me when that Starbucks phased out alcohol they had to pour dozens of wine bottles in the sink as the company would consider it theft it they took it home. When I worked at Starbucks and Dunkin I would be told I had to toss things out and if I took it home they'd consider it theft. It's such a stupid waste.
Is the waste stuff they cooked and didn't serve, stuff that went bad, or stuff the customers were served and didn't eat? I imagine it's a combination of all three, but I'd wager the majority of the waste was customers not eating everything. Denny's is known for extremely large meals. Grand Slam Breakfast was, what, 2 eggs, 2 sausages, 2 toast, 2 pancakes, orange juice, and coffee, right? If I ate that much in one sitting, I'd be in pain, and I'm a fairly fat guy.
@@ryanwhite7852I think the reason why they consider it theft is cause they don't want employees to abuse the system and purposely cook extra food to take home still quite dumb though luckily my work (five guys) isn't like that here if somthing is out of date for five guys standards than employees is around take it home normal bread said for five guys standards bread only have a shelf life of 5 days so it's still good to take home
I can't even talk about food waste. It's so upsetting. Every place I've worked threw out so much food.
But the kicker at every single job was, if you get caught with so much as a roll that's going to be discarded, you'd get fired.
I'm going to stop there before I get my soap box out🤣
@@Jennithebaker "You took our garbage that was totally going to be hauled away and dumped in a giant hole. YOU'RE FIRED!" Seriously, that's the abusive boyfriend attitude, except with profits. "If I can't have it, no one can!"
I remember at a IHOP, I was with my dad as we were eating out that day. We went in and waited to be seated, then like 10 minutes later, another group came in and was given a table. We waited another 10-15 minutes before my dad spoke up and we got a table. The waiter who got us the table was really kind and apologized to us. In the end, we left that waiter a good tip.
Those moments like that,are becoming a rare. Moments like that are becoming too rare nowdays.
Especially in situations like non-white American diners in predominantly white towns and cities, having Denny's restaurants in them,are exceedingly even more rare.
Sexism.
People being drunk at a Applebee's and getting rowdy is one thing.
Witnessing fights just because they get fed up with crappy customer service or for some other reason is another.
Thank goodness you all had a pleasant experience.
My wife and I have eaten at IHOP many time in Huntsville, TX. The service was really good and polite. The food was always good and the wait times were good! Of course this is not England!
I think it also might be good to mention, this happened at a United States location.
Last time I went to IHOP my pancakes were mouldy
COVID did in most restaurants. Their costs soared, supplies dwindled, portions got smaller, as did offerings on menus, and many dishes (recipes) were simplified. Employees left. It's no wonder that many restaurants declined. A major determinant of the quality and cleanliness of a specific location is the quality of management.
It's also that the tip-based economy doesn't work anymore.
Stupid covid
thank you for bringing up the point about ihop staff potentially not being treated well. i remember one time where i was sitting at my table and could very clearly hear a staff member being shouted at, F-bombs included, by who i'm assuming was a manager :( one of many awful things that happened at that location. i hope that person is doing okay now
IHOP. where it typically takes them 2 hours to get my order wrong.
That's not real genuine, decent customer service. Whether it's Applebee's (they're not as good as they used to be,compared as in the years past...) , Waffle House? We don't have them here in the southern part of south Texas.
Or anywhere in Texas.
Maybe in Alabama.
And I haven't seen or experienced in being in - or witnessing - in restaurants like that.
In places like that.
In Denny's. In IHOP. In Arby's.
In having standards whenever the employees and their employers at any Denny's restaurants behave like ADULTS.
Not like teenagers or children.
@@Randytherumbler Waffle House nearly everywhere in Alabama.
Fast service, good food, decent prices, open late (usually).
That's a good way to get me to ask for the manager and ask why they're so rude to their staff.
Of course they had to share a picture of Rick and Morty
I can confirm the insanely long wait times at IHOP, at least for my local area. I was a doordash driver, and was consistently made to wait upwards of 45 minutes for the food that they knew they needed to make well before I even made it to the restaurant. This was consistent across four different locations, regardless of how busy they were at the time. It was so bad I began just turning down any orders that sent me to IHOP simply because I was not willing to waste that much time, I got paid by how many orders I would do, not by an hourly rate, and that just was not worth the effort.
Eh, we’d have had you well on your way at our location, bruh. Those other stores need to get their act together if you ask me. 😒
This comment is transphobic in some ways
@@JamesWagner-vv9iz don't try to be a troll, it just makes you look stupid.
I LOVE IHOP
“I’m serving billions and I can’t be beat! You’re a bin full of lettuce, facing defeat!” Ronald McDonald
Cheeto’s dude?
Get your recipes together, man!
I've had the same fries since I was Willard Scott the weatherman
That's such a good rap battle lmao
Where's the beef? Right here!
I tried a local iHOP last month around lunch time. The cookies and creme waffle I tried was good, and my friend who ordered blueberry pancakes said her's was good too. The staff was also nice there, even checking on us when we suddenly stopped talking, not realizing we had our food, I guess us being there made her day better somehow. Now to be fair, it was actually pretty empty inside, so we didn't have to wait long, but since we both in customer service and have disabilities, we were fine with waiting and more understanding if we had to wait longer times.
I have to say that bad experiences happen everywhere at times. I know that the server is not in charge of making the food and it is not their fault. We need more sympathy in these situations because nobody's perfect ❤
Of course they are not. They at least could DO BETTER!!!
When you see them put the food up at the window and the servers are all standing around gabbing, and then you get your food cold, it's absolutely their fault.
@@protorhinocerator142most people don't work at IHOP (for long) if they have any intentions of being better 😂
👍. Damn right they do. Nobody's perfect. It happens from time to time.
Australians are quite different dining out at Outback Steakhouse than we Americans do.
Not that I would know. (I've never been to Australia.) I stupidly thought they'd serve kangaroo steak or crocodile grits. Or well...umm....Ohhh.. forget it.
Oh wow! Just last week my brother and I went to an Applebees, and unfortunately he did end up vomiting after eating a chicken sandwich. I thought it was maybe just car sickness as we were traveling for a while (which it still could’ve been), but I had no idea that there was a real reputation of food poisoning. That’s awful!
Love these videos so much! Always so informative and kind and well-researched. I still think you’re one of the friendliest YTber’s out there. Thanks for being you, Strider!
LOVE the pfp! Kirby and the Forgotten Land is my fav game of all time!
Golden Coral
“Jenny, its Pearl, Coral is totally out”
Never had a bad experience at IHOP; always great food and service.
I tried to go to Applebees once but we were ignored by two different waitresses for 45 minutes before I told them where they could stick their restaurant.
The 30 people waiting for tables didn't seem to mind though.....🥴
On the flip side, I loved Cracker Barrel!
same here, exactly with both places.
I would rather get jump at Waffle House then wait an hour and a half for waffle
Strider. I’m glad that you do your research on this stuff. It’s informative. And it inspires me to cook more at home
WAFFLE HOUSE: "Can you fight!!" 😂😂😭😭😭
Once at Applebees they threw away our food when we went to the restroom
That's just sick! So sorry that they did that to ya!
I remember one time my dad worked for Applebee's. I won't say where as he no longer works for them. Roughly fifteen years ago my dad worked for them and the power went out. I remember we had to drive to his work and Pack A Bunch of the Food in my Dad's Car and Left the windows down overnight Just to try to keep them cold. The very next day we come back to Applebee's. To return the food back to the fridge after they fixed it. I don't hold my dad responsible as he was just following orders. But I no longer eat at applebee's and neither does my dad. I may have grown up being fed applebee's, but i'm old enough to know it's not the same as it used to.
I can confirm things about Golden Corral myself. The one I always used to go to in Florida was decent a few years back, but fell off HARD a few years after. The staff was terrible, ALL of the food was either cold and or missing. Literally half the containers you get the food at was empty and there werent even that may people in the resturant. The excuse we got from the main manager there was "it's most of ours, and my first day here" which I honestly didn't believe for a second.
Every time I go to Golden Corral I get sick...and not the ate too much kind of sick but the some rando put their head under the sneeze guard and sneezed all over the food sick.
@@evilrollo "Every time?" Why did you return? Damn! Is it that hard to figure out? If I got sick _one time_ after some restaurant (which has never happened) I'd never return.
Honestly, I am a big fan of breakfast and also a night owl. IHOP has been a life line. All of the IHOPs in my area are clean, remodeled, and look contemporary. During the pandemic & lock down, my local IHOP changed out two windows at different ends of the restaurant and turned them into pedestrian walk up windows: 1 to take the order and pay, the other was for order pick up when ready. They remained open 24 hrs the entire time and never disappointed. All the grocery stores, Wal-Mart's, etc in my community reduced their business hours down to 1 shift (8hr to 12 hr) a day so when I was up at night time if I hadn't had the opportunity to go grocery shopping IHOP was really the only place I was able to get something to eat until I made it to the grocery store (Frankly Speaking - I felt like it was safer to go to IHOP and get food to-go than actually spend an hour in a grocery store walking around in an indoor closed environment.) I'm not going to say that I've never had a bad experience at an IHOP but the good definitely outweigh the bad times experiences.
I would rather get jumped at Waffle House then sit at IHOP
Josh
I can honestly say I wish I had your optimism and bright personality. It’s always nice to see someone so happy and friendly and with a sense of humor
We had lunch at Outback in Naperville, IL. The server was very good and got our orders to us in a timely manner. Unfortunately, our steaks were over seasoned with salt, garlic and some type of hot spice. We took them home and fed them to our dogs.
I've had some bad experiences with Ihop, but they did formally apologize.
my only experience with Popeye's on the other hand, was just plain awful.
It does really depend on who you get. Imo it’s my favorite place to get fried chicken, it’s so crispy and juicy. For the service, yeah… if you’re in a trashy area, expect that for the service. I’m sorry your experience was bad.
I have had varying experiences with iHop. The one by my college was always delicious with amazing service. The one in my hometown on the other hand, once accidentally served me scoops of butter instead of ice cream.
My worst one was them forgetting a bunch of my sides for a rather big family meal, so just out of curiosity, what was your experience?
Wow, the local Popeye's is pretty good. I mean, sure the actual style of food is something of an acquired taste to my town's more northern palate, but it's definitely higher quality than whatever trash KFC is serving (except coleslaw, the one thing the local KFCs, yes we have multiple, beat them on), still prefer Church's Texas Chicken though.
I think Popeyes chicken is just plain garbage. Apparently so did most of my town because a Popeyes has opened here twice and both times they closed down at least the second time it lasted over a year and a half. KFC is barely hanging on but that's what happens when a local place blows them out of the water. Our local mom and pop grocery has a world class deli that serves the best fried chicken. They've been voted best so many years in a row everyone else stopped trying
I went to IHOP with my mother after the two of us had done stuff i forgot about. It was alright but i was hungry so it was even better.
As a culinary arts student I'm very interested in customer comments and opinions about well known restaurants.
As a retired food service manager, I can tell you it all comes down to location, location, location.
I think Dennys is the championship fight circuit of restaurants! Over here in Oaktown the Dennys in the bay area is notorious for having outbreaks of groups brawling. I think it's because of the ' all you can eat waffles ' dinner. First of all, everyone probably needed ' more waffles ' and there were too many butts ❤😂
Been having a pretty bad day but the blow was eased when I saw Strider uploaded
thank you for making your content Josh :))
Same! These videos always make my day
I worked for a smaller local sit down restaurant for 23 years. I did everything short of bartending and management. I've been more tolerable for some mistakes when I do go out. I love these videos keep up the great work.
I’ve been to IHop and I haven’t seen anything of the sorts of any of the bad stuff mentioned, also I’d recommend not going to Buffalo Wild Wings since you can’t even hear yourself think, also I don’t feel sick after being at Applebees, also one time I went to Denny’s in Strasbourg, me, my father, his father, my fathers uncle, my uncles two sons at the time, and my uncles wife went to Denny’s but nobody even bothered to take an order of what we wanted to drink and I think it was around half an hour or so being there that we just got up and left (also my dads side of the family is Native American and my mothers side is German)
I feel like one of the biggest issues with IHOP is that they are forced to be a 24/7 location instead of having hours based around their current staff. The manager having to cook is a very common occurrence, and often said manager has zero professional cooking experience. To make the situation worse, cause they get stuck making all the food (which is supposed to be made by a team, not a single inexperienced person) they aren't able to maintain what is happening up front. As an example, at my local IHOP, the host was a high schooler. They would give all the customers to their 2 friends, meanwhile the 3rd waitress who wasn't part of the friend group wasn't given any customers. This led to a fight among the staff as there were 14 tables with customers, and the 3rd waitress wasn't assigned to any of them. Shortly after that, the manager at that location left, which I only know as he became an assistant manager at my job and my God, he was the single worst manager I have ever dealt with, I didn't even work the same department as him and I hated being around them. So many people just started venting how much they disliked him, which led to him not keeping the position.
One of my cousins used to work at an Ihop near where I live, and she said there were days where it was pretty testy to work there. She never went a day without being told off by customers for something stupid like not getting their refills on time. It was so bad for her that she eventually quit because she just couldn't handle it anymore.
I was never a fan of Denny's over the years. The one that was close to my house (which is gone now) gave us our worst dining experience. Pretty packed around New Year's a handful of years back, but we got a table not too long afterwards. Waitress came by after around 5 minutes, saying she'd be right back to take our drink orders after checking on another table first.
She never came back and we eventually left after not being serviced at all. We just went across the street to Bob Evan's instead, which was a far better choice.
I'm so sorry that had to happen to you and your family. That's awful!
Two things about Popeyes.
1. Popeyes is as much a sit down restaurant as McDonalds or KFC. You can sit and eat there, but it's typically a fast food place... that's probably why the service sucked.
2. Popeyes chicken is delicious if you like your chicken spicier and juicier than KFC of Chick-Fil-A, which I do.
I was surprised that Popeye’s was even included since most people consider it fast food instead of a sit-down restuarant.
Also, you gave the exact reason I choose it over KFC. In fact, Popeye’s has my favorite spicy chicken sandwich of any fast food joint.
To me Popeyes is weak and tasted too much like buttermilk. KFC is just plain trash. I go to my favorite local spot and so does most of my town. Popeyes has opened up twice in our town and both times closed down from lack of customers. At least the second time it went a year and a half
They shut down the Denny's where I live (in Vernon, Ct). They did this rather suddenly with no advance warning. The employees were just abandoned with no compensation. I was surprised because it wasn't from a lack of customers. The place always seemed packed (certainly for breakfast) but I wasn't sure about nights as I never went at that time. No restaurant has gone in that location to take it's place.
There was an old saying that "Nobody ever starts out going to Denny's but it's just where you end up." Because it was open 24 hours. But they stopped 24 hour operation during the Covid pandemic and never went back to it even after the epidemic was over.
Everyone: They're giving a review because they have stomach poisoning
This one person: The urinals are too low and they gave me a lemon, WHERE IS MY WATER?
I love the absurdity of online reviews
I can kinda understand the last one. It sounds weird getting a lemon, but then not getting your water.
Panda might be the only restaurant on the list I've visited in recent memory, and my opinion on their noodles could not be any lower. Protip: if you're fortunate enough to have a local, family-owned Chinese restaurant then go there instead.
I am not surprised, I think Panda express is horrible.
The last time I ate at Panda Express, 10 or more years ago, there was sand in all of my broccoli. I could hear it crunching in my teeth. I haven't been back since.
@DarkFire1536 sand how the heck did they get sand in the food never been to Panda Express and I will probably never go there. Also I personally find it better to go to my local Chinese restaurant or make my own at home.
@@trixxart777 I find sand in my broccoli from the grocery store sometimes when I wash it. I soak it in a strainer that is placed inside a bowl. When I lift the strainer, I often see sand on the bottom of the bowl. I think that perhaps they broccoli I ate from Panda Express may not have been washed thoroughly.
The Panda Expresses my dad and I have been to had really nice staff and everything was literally made while ordering.
Then again, neither of us ordered noodles, just orange chicken and honey shrimp.
I actually enjoy my local IHOP. I’ve only been there a couple of times and DoorDashed it once, but the food was always great and the service inside always seemed personable.
the IHOP in Oregon city, OR is great! we always look for our favorite server and we have always had good food!
I literally live about 1 mile down the street from the first Outback restaurant, here in Tampa. Yes, it was started by Americans, and they have created many other restaurants, some of which were successes and some which flopped, which is of course normal in the industry. I have NEVER heard or seen anywhere that employees were encouraged to use fake accents. I've certainly never experienced it at any of the locations I've been to. And while the restaurant is Australian themed, it doesn't try to copy Australian cuisine. Hell, I don't even know what Australian cuisine is apart from vegemite. ;-) The Bloomin' Onion is a creation of the restaurant. I don't know the name of the person who invented it, but he did a great job. They take a Georgia Vidalia onion, which is the biggest, sweetest onion there is. They slice it about 90% of the way leaving it attached at the base. Then dip it in the seasoned flour and deep fry. They serve it with a spicy sauce I don't like so I eat it plain and think it's delicious. The only complaint anyone I know has ever had about it is that it's so damn big that you can't get one unless you have at least 4 people, preferably 5 or 6, or you won't have room for your meal.
I’m glad none of the Michigan Coney Island restaurants never made this hated list.
I live in Michigan and love Coney Island!!! Esp Leo’s coney island
There was a very infamous moment that occurred in 2019 at a Denny's in Lithonia, GA, a suburb of Atlanta. A local news crew there was confronting employees working there due to several health violations. The employees didn't want to be filmed and began a physical altercation with the reporter. One female employee there even threatened to knock the reporter out if they refused to stop filming her and her son. That particular Denny's eventually closed its doors.
I understand trying to protect at least you and your child’s moral reputations from the news media, but threatening to knock out the reporter is just an epic fail of that effort… if that’s the case. I might be wrong?
I usually have good experiences at Denny's.
IHOP has great food, but it's always slow. I was at 1 restaurant with only 3 tables with customers, yet it still took 45 minutes for my food to arrive.
A great trick is to order take-out, if available. Then it's ready for you when you arrive, and even quicker than if sitting inside.
Yeah, I've never had a bad experience at a Denny's. They were actually my favorite place to stop at when I was a travelling salesman in the early-2000's. You could stop in and order a burger meal with avocado on it and all the fixings and it only ran you a couple dollars more than a McDonald's but was twice as good. I hear McDonald's raised their prices substantially recently though so I'd fathom Denny's is actually cheaper.
The ikea restaurant in Toronto is half as cheap as our McDonald’s and twice the quality! I love their stevia colas and the drink cups aren’t massive
We actually had a pretty good Chili's by where I live, but they shut down nearly all their sit-down restaurants in Alberta. Now it's pretty much only found in airports of all things. There's some good food there, to be honest. Just VERY pricey.
I've actually never been to a Denny's. As a black woman I think I'm lucky in that respect.
Thank you PhantomStrider and Nostalgia Critic for not only good content, but also for helping me avoid Denny's.
My mother and I went to our town's local Golden Corral. It certainly lived up to its reputation. The food was mediocre, even the chocolate fountain! When you screw up with chocolate from a fountain, you KNOW you screwed up!
I also remember going to a Shoney's restaurant on my way to visit my grandparents. The only thing I remember was winning a Beluga toy from a claw machine.
Beluga plush, big dub!!!
Personally, I've never really had a bad experience at a Denny's. It's one of my favorite restaurants. God, they have good pancakes.
I was in Atlanta this summer, and my friend Jason kept asking the Uber/Lyft drivers where a good place to have breakfast was. This one Uber driver said a place, I think it was called something like Bob's Shack or something, that she hadn't been to in 10 years, so she didn't know if it still existed. Then she said another place was... well... we heard, "Danny's." We asked where that was. She was like, they're all over, but the one I go to is (I honestly forget the address). My friend Jason looks it up and asks, "Danny's you said?"
"Yes," she replies.
"Could you spell that?"
"D-E-N-N-Y-S."
We're in Atlanta, trying to get an authentic Southern breakfast, and she sends us to a fucking Denny's.
Roxie's Cafe is where it's at. It's by the Reverb Hotel
TBF, the Grand slam was actually invented in Atlanta
Next time consider Atlanta Breakfast Company. I was in Atlanta for a convention and went to that restaurant and it was pretty damn good.
I was honestly shocked to find out about Shoney's reputation. I've only ever been to one location, being that there was only one near my town, but the food was amazing. It never seemed old or like it was off in any way and it always tasted good. The staff were always extremely kind and understanding, overall the experience was typically a treat despite being a pretty basic all-you-can-eat restaurant.
My parents took me pretty often since they had dinner there on their wedding night (it was the only restaurant open at the time that wasn't packed), so it was really special to them. Sadly, it shut down during Covid since business was already slow, but I hope that some other location out there is just as good, cuz it was genuinely an amazing experience.
I don’t think we have or had a Shoney's in western Pennsylvania
I don’t think we have or had a Shoney's in western Pennsylvania. I’ve never heard of that place before
I didn't think Shoney's still existed
I was on vacation in Brooklyn, NY and went to IHOP in Sept 2023 for the first time and I must say I enjoyed the food and we had a very nice waitress..I also visited Chilli's in FL over the Christmas weekend of 2022 and I really enjoyed my food there as well, the only thing that needed improvement was the cleanliness and better decor..
Great timing strider! I was looking for something to watch while eating my bigfoot lol
"Chocolate Thunder From Down Under" sounds amazing, to be quite honest with you. I might give it a try if I ever visit the states.
As a side-note, my mother once ordered a big mac and it had a caterpillar in. Let's just say that McDonald's were quick to give her a discount after that. I would've kept the insect as a good luck charm. :)
I've never worked in a restaurant before. But I know how difficult it can be sitting to enjoy a meal, only to have rowdy customers making a scene (mostly teenagers trying to antagonise the workers or Karens making a scene) can be on the staff. I once encountered an angry impatient customer yelling at a drive-thru window operator because the line was taking forever. She was a blonde bespectacled lady in her twenties, she was quite sweet actually. I hope she's doing well nowadays.
Can confirm that the “Chocolate Thunder From Down Under” is fantastic. I’ve had it numerous times and it always was the perfect way to end a meal. Recommend trying it.
That caterpiller thing makes my skin crawl. Hope that didn’t traumatize you.
Oh that's funky, a caterpillar. That's a heck of a lot better than a cockroach. But I wonder how a caterpillar got in there...
@@user-rx7pd1xv4k it was the lettuce and the fact the salad items hadn't been properly stored. It's why I refuse to eat salad in burgers, because I'm worried I'll chomp into a caterpillar or spider.
There used to be an Outback Steakhouse near me when I lived in California, it was surprisingly very nice. It was originally a Bob's Big Boy restaurant, and it was only around for about 14 years and is still an empty place.
I recall the "Bloomin' Onion" and other junk they had, they were actually good, it was like ordering a bunch of onion rings with a dipping sauce. Plus that strange bread is still good, with the butter on the side but it was delicious.
I rarely ordered crab or lobster, but those were solid options, same goes with the baby back ribs where you ordered them and they gave you those same wipes they had from gas stations that you opened like sugar packets. That was the experience there, it was basically a bar people went to that had tables, the actual restaurant looked fancy but the bar crowd were the regular people who bought stuff here.
I ordered steak from here (duh, it's a steakhouse) and that was great too. My favorite item from the menu was a bowl of mushrooms, I ordered it damn near every time I went there, but it was solid and filled me up.
Sucks it's no longer in business.
The thing is, these are all franchise restaurants, and the quality (or lack-thereof) falls 90% on the shit local owners who likely don't know their ass from their elbow about the culinary industry, nor do they give a fuck. They just want a stable earner for their real estate portfolio. They either give the management to a family member/friend who is incompetent, or outsource the management to another person who doesn't care and it trickles down from there.
However you can also get franchise owners who care, and who do know what they're doing and decided to open a franchise for the stability and name recognition. It's the same thing with Starbucks. The coffee is only as good as the person making it.
I have good memories of Waffle Houses. Back when a bunch of fellow dateless friends and I pool-bought tickets to my high school prom and we all went together and coming home, stopping at a Waffle House at 2-3 am before getting taken home... That one time when my fiance' and I were moving me across the country and pulled into a town where we had a hotel booked in West Virginia and had literally no place to eat / even the grocery stores were closed at 3 am and there was the Waffle House, shining like a beacon to feed us.
I enjoy Outback Steakhouse, but I don't take it as reflective of actual Australian culture at all. My late nephew talked about a friend he had from Australia who hated it because of how WRONG it all was, but, honestly, if you just take it as a chain-steakhouse and don't think about the fake-culture vibe, it's fine. American culture just does that - it's well accepted by now that most "Chinese" food was created for American-tastes and became a thing unto itself. I'm pretty sure that there are restaurants in other parts of the world that try "American" food, especially Southern food and get it wrong - I mean, different regions of our own country get our regional stuff wrong all the time - Northerners getting Southern stuff wrong, people on the west coast putting green peppers and provolone in "Philadelphia cheesesteaks" - cue me moving to the Philly area and literally NO ONE does that. But these "wrong foods" can still be tasty as they are.
The ones from this video I've eaten at are IHOP and Popeyes. I have only sat down once at an IHOP in the midwestern US back in 2017 and thought the pancakes were great. It's such a bummer seeing Popeyes on this list as they're one of my favorite restaurants. The chicken sandwich craze back in 2019 is something I remember a little well. Also, side note, I'm shocked that Australians don't eat macaroni and cheese.
Ehh, that last part was a bit inaccurate. We DO eat mac and cheese, (at least, i think so since i've seen some at a few stores and supermarkets), but it's just nowhere near as iconic in the childhoods of most Australians as TV shows and food writers would have you believe.
@@worthybutter2004 thanks for being specific 👍
@@MisterDanielTofu You're welcome.
I was under the impression Popeyes was fast food. There’s a drive thru
I was an employee at my local Popeyes from the Summer of 2019 to the outbreak of the Covid 19 pandemic in 2020. It was actually my first job ever after graduating high school. I worked at the front counter as a cashier and was subsequently on the front lines when the Chicken Sandwich hit in force.
Lines around the block both in the drive thru and in the lobby, the number of people crowded into this small building was absolutely a fire safety hazard. There wasn't even much of a line, and more of just a wall of human bodies all clamoring to order this Chicken Sandwich that, by the way people scrambled for it, was the cure for cancer or the only form of sustenance on the planet.
While this never happened at my location, there were instances of people getting into brawls over this Sandwich, and one location had someone pull out a gun, all in the name of this friend Chicken in a bun with mayo and pickles. My coworkers and I were legitimately scared to come to work.
The worst part about it was, however, the days where from 10:00 am in the morning to 5:00 pm in the evening, I did not move from behind the register. For seven hours I was on my feet, stationary, taking orders from agitated, ignorant, or irate costumers without a bathroom or lunch break, having to explain to the customer that they can't have the Spicy Chicken Sandwich without mayo because it was the mayo that made it spicy. One man, I remember specially, walked up to the counter, shoving his way through people with a half eaten Sandwich, slammed it down in front of me and said "it's not spicy", when I had clearly explained the situation with the mayo. He looked at me like I had ran over his dog or pushed his grandmother down the stairs.
I legitimately wanted to scream bloody murder working there during this time, and nearly walked off the job. I didn't though, wanting to be a 'good employee'.
If IHOP is on the list, I couldn't agree more. Before the pandemic, I went to IHOP almost every week but now, I hardly go as there's barely anyone there anymore. The pandemic made the waiters and the staff leave.
Really? the IHOP in my area is ALWAYS packed
- When I was 7 or 8, I remember spending half an hour trying to eat a big burger at Applebees, but ultimately gave up half way because it made me nauseous.
- I made the AB Honor roll many times in school, and my reward then was a golden corral certificate. The food then was fine, but it certainly got old after a few monthly visits.
- Oh and this year, when I found an IHOP after a doctor visit, the waitress was disinterested and not polite at all. So that lines up with the #1 entry perfectly.
Great video idea as always, keep it up.
I've been to a Denny's exactly once in my life, back around 1990. It took us a little while to notice that people who were seated after us were having their orders taken before us, and then a table that was seated after us got their food before we even ordered. When the server finally came to our table, we just stood up and left. Two of our party of 5 or 6 were black. At that time, I hadn't yet heard the rumblings about racism.
At our Denny's they solved the racist problem by having the wait staff treat everyone like crap. We got up and left a near empty restaurant after nobody taking our orders for over a half hour and from what I hear it's still just as bad. The employees park out front to keep it from looking abandoned
You wouldn't DARE consider that Denny's had bad experiences with POC diners. Not to mention other good restaurants.
I have no trouble at all finding videos and TikToks of blacks who don't want to be in a restaurant where they see other blacks inside. Why? They KNOW that their peers cannot behave themselves and THEY DON'T TIP. Blacks on video say this and the evidence confirms it. Shame me all you want but, all the shaming language in the world cannot change that.
The magic word, rayssssissmm, doesn't work because we all know the dirty truth behind it. Deal with it.
Maybe your group was just talking a lot. I've noticed recently when I go anywhere with a group the wait staff tends to give you a lot of time, especially if folks are just chatting and not looking at menus or menus down etc? Idk maybe all Denny's are racist? In my area it seems like all types go there and are fine
@@beargillium2369 Of course I'll never know for sure why we were ignored, because I can never know what was going on in the server's head. I'm just sharing a personal experience related to the topic.
I'm surprised to see some of the restaurants here, and feel like I learned about others that I didn't know existed. I'm honestly surprised to see Popeyes in here cause it's one of the more popular ones in my country. Really the only complain I may have is the prices increasing, but other than that food tastes great. There was also a time where they kinda changed the fries for a different type because the ones that are usually served there weren't being brought here. So I'm surprised to see them here. But, as you put it with the "australian" restaurant, it can also be that Popeyes in my country has different succes than on other countries
I don't think Popeye's or Panda Express are considered 'sit-down' restaurants; they are fast food joints.
As former hospital kitchen staff, order your food to go regardless if you're staying to eat it. They're a generally more careful about cross contamination and allergens when they gotta package it immediately, and the styrofoam carton protects your food more than their loose lidded plates. That and don't look at the ceilings inside of those food carts, it's one of the most neglected spots for cleaning due to time constraints. Also if you find crumbs on your plate that aren't from your meal or if your drink tastes funny, return it immediately; management typically cares more about things looking clean instead of actually being cleaned, often teaching the new hires a dunk in disinfectant is good enough.
IHOP being so hated puts a frown on my face
Their chicken tenders? Amazing
Mozzarella sticks? Amazing
Strawberry banana french toast? Heavenly
And in my experience the staff are nice
Hey Josh, As an American who has eaten at Outback Steakhouse I have always enjoyed the food I’ve gotten there and had great service. I respect other people’s opinions. I’ve had similar experiences at Applebees, Chili’s and Denny’s. Popeyes’s is mediocre.❤
Denny's is great as someone that ate there many times when I was younger and growing up. Of course I pretty much always played it safe and got the same item that was hard to mess up for them and was always good. Chicken friend steak, general rule if they can't do a chicken fried steak right, run away. Don't eat there much these days, but at times when your somewhere new and looking for something decent and don't want to experiment at a random place or do a random fast food place, denny's is a safe space as even the worst denny's seems to always nail the chicken friend steak.
Me too, but maybe it’s so good because I’ve always ordered breakfast items
My first real job as a teenager was working at a local burger/comfort food chain. One time the flat iron (or whatever you call it) broke and was about to set on fire. A customer asked for a cheesesteak. I simply replied, "I'm sorry sir. The flat grill is out of order; can I get you anything else?" He then replied, "Okay. How 'bout a chicken cheesesteak?" I staired at him in wonder thinking, "how does this dude not know ALL cheesesteaks are prepared on the SAME GRILL?!!!!" I think I said something like, "Yeah, that grill is broken too." Point being, sometimes it's the customers that are the problem. I was 17 or 18 when this dude said this to me and somehow I knew the basics of how engineering worked better then him.
I’m so genuinely surprised to see IHOP at the top. The one I normally go to has pretty nice staff and they get the food out so quickly, sometimes in around 10 minutes. The food there’s pretty good too. The one time I had a bad experience was when I ordered an omelette and it was flavorless, which I was largely able to fix with the saltshaker at the table. I won’t get eggs there again, but I loooove their pancakes and their fried chicken.
I have the same experience, the IHOP close to my town is pretty chill and the food is fine enough, though for other IHOP’s I certainly don’t know how the employee’s are or what the treatment to them is like.
Once at ihop, they literally never brought our food. We sat there for over an hour, multiple asks to waitstaff, and finally they said they lost our order. They asked if we still wanted our food and we just left. They weren't even very busy and other people would come in, order and get their food while we sat there.
In college, I worked at a Golden Corral (2011). The back of the restaurant was just like that image, and we needed to inspect the plates every morning. This was because they would be covered with water and mushy food. We had to restock the plate stations before ending our shifts, and these plates were frequently hot from the dishwasher.
Dunno, I regularly go to IHOP because it’s near where I work. Never got the impression the staff were overworked; they were very friendly, casual, and eager to get my order down, which they do. It freaks me out when they do the “Happy Birthday” song out of the blue to a customer celebrating their birthday; almost choked, it startled me that much. Otherwise, so far I have had a good experience there.
The scariest part of town always has the best popeyes
I wonder why......... lol
Unfortunately, I've had a bad experience with Shoney's coming back from vacation in August of this year. We had eaten at a Shoney's breakfast buffet somewhere in the Alabama while heading back home. While it tasted all right, we all started feeling off somewhere in Tennessee when we were at a Rest Stop. It was only until we arrived back home and got our stuff in did we feel the full effects of a stomach flu/food poisoning. We spent the next couple of days praying to the porcelain deities and curling up in our beds... Not a fun time...
I’ve honestly had fairly good experiences with golden corral. My family and I used to go there a lot. The food was pretty good. My only complaint is that sometimes the stuff at the buffet would be cold.
Most of these restaurants were actually quite good back in the day. Back in the 80's, we went almost every Sunday morning, to Shoney's. Nothing could beat Shoney's breakfast buffet, until the day we saw a cockroach crawling up the wall. Never went back.
I LOVE Applebee's! I always get the steak and I always order it by phone and pick it up. It's always cooked perfectly.
I also LOVE Golden Corral. I've never been disappointed with the food or seen any disgusting unsanitary conditions.
My best advice on things like this is to treat each restaurant on an individual basis. Look at reviews FOR THAT PARTICULAR RESTAURANT before going there. I have been to all of these restaurants multiple times and some have been good and some have been bad.
Prime example: We have an EXCELLENT Applebees near us but there are three other Applebee's near us that are terrible! It's just a matter of finding a restaurant with good management and employees who care. Checking on-line reviews will usually reveal which restaurants are truly bad. Don't just walk in to any restaurant without checking its reviews.
Another thing I've noticed is that reviews for nearly all restaurants have plummeted in the last few years. With this inflation wrecked economy, restaurants are jacking up prices and cutting corners on quality just to stay in business. This is, of course, reflected in the reviews.
We had a bar open up in the 2000s called The Fire House and it was more often referred to as The Fight House, because every single weekend a brawl broke out there. They used to have a "shake of the day" where you could roll some dice for a buck and maybe win a free drink token. My friend and I saved up for almost a year after going there for lunch almost every day (they let you do the shake with sodas too).
We ended up having almost 300 tokens and at the time they exchanged one token for any drink. We ended up getting hammer, we also got other people drinks. Ended up tipping the bartender $200 and I puked in the back of the owners truck bed. After that drink tokens could only be exchanged for a drink valued at $3.50 or less. Haha.
Though not really a sit-down restaurant, every time we ordered Taco Bell, SOMETHING was wrong. Also, it always took close to 30 minutes to get only a few things.
I went to a Waffle House in the North Georgia mountains around dinner time, a couple of years ago. There were only two women working there. One to take orders and one to cook. They were flooded with to-go orders. The shut down over half of the tables in the restaurant so they could keep up. They had them all roped off. It sounds like iHop needs to do this.
I used to go to a Denny's every year after attending a comic con in my area. At one point in time they weren't a bad place to eat at and affordable all things considering. 2021 was the last year I went, we had to wait 20 minutes to be seated in a near empty building, everyone at the table had to reorder because they were out of stuff, the waitress had to come back over because she forgot our orders and when we finally got our food it was either frozen or burned and the waitress blamed them being short staffed even though there was almost no one in there and the night before we were at another restaurant that was short staffed and had a great experience.
This was so bad I haven't been to a Denny's since
As someone who works as a dish washer at a place with an automatic dishwasher, I can confirm that sometimes it’s not as efficient.
A cycle is around a minute long, and sometimes certain dishes need to go through more than once.
Sometimes we have to scrub, rinse, or scrape food off of dishes, containers and utensils.
Oh, my goodness. Bless your heart! Oh, sweetie, Chef Mike is the hardest working guy in the back of the house at every American restaurant.
Goodness me, I can't stop laughing. SOME of the food comes in frozen. Some! Hahaha! Oh, bless your heart. Your brownie came in frozen, honey!
HAHAHA Chef Mike, I love it.
My experience with the Golden Corral in Queesnsbury, NY has always been very positive. The place is clean, the servers are friendly and helpful, and the food is always hot, tasty and nicely displayed. The restaurant does a very good business...it's always crowded with an upbeat vibe. It's my favorite eatery.
I rememberer working as a line server for panda express at the airport, the job was pretty stressful as most of the time one person was doing the serving and the other was operating the cash register. And yeah we were told to put a bare minimum serving as possible, aka it must not overflow the scooper which seemed pretty scummy. The only good thing is you can have whatever you wanted during break time
I'm from the US and I've never been to Outback, but after hearing about that ridiculous menu and the staff faking Australian accents? I need to experience it for myself.
I wasn't aware of the fight club part, but regarding Waffle House, my family had a few annoying experiences with one of their places. We'd try to place an order over the phone, but no one would pick up. So we would go in, and we'd hear the phone ring. They'd always make excuses, like they unplugged the phone or someone took it home with them
I’m a new viewer and this has to be one of the funniest videos. You making jokes about the “Outback Steakhouse” has me laughing way too hard. 😂 thank you for the laughs it’s been a rough day
My boyfriend and I went to Outback Steakhouse for Valentine's this year and it was fantastic. We paid the same for 2 burger meals as we would at a fast food restaurant and the quality was sooo much better.
My dad and I wanted breakfast food so we went to our local Ihop. There was a couple families already waiting and no on was at the counter to seat anyone. We waited for around 5 minutes and then an employee came to the front, pressed a couple buttons on the computer and then disappeared in the back. Needless to say we went to the Waffle House across the street.
One restaurant my parents will refuse to go to is Chipotle. They say they have extreme diarrhea after eating the food.
I'm honestly thankful that the local Golden Corral that I used to go to as a kid was pretty good. Got to eat what I wanted while my parents did too.
It closed when I was still a kid which made me sad but on the upside I guess that's a good thing. Now my childhood memories aren't ruined, LOL
I swear, hearing about Waffle House, it's like they took the whole idea behind Baratie's staff in One Piece and thought it would be awesome if it was real while completely missing the fact that they only fight when necessary.
Now this makes me want to see how a Japanese person would react to a Waffle House fight happening... FIRST HAND.
I used to enjoy Panda Express and buy from them every now and then. But I decided to eat some after recovering from a plastic surgery, and ever since then the Chili Shrimp makes me feel nauseous. Even to this day I feel like I wanna vomit when thinking of eating there.
9:36
Out of the 7 years I've been watching strider, I never expected to appear in a video of his. Today, or, I guess 9 days ago... it finally came, even as just a simple comment on twitter. Thank you Strider!
We avoid chain restaurants now they are cheaping out on the ingredients to save money. Dennys doesn't even have ice cream or shakes any more. There are a lot of privately owned restaurants in my area they are great.
Popeyes is fast food, not a "sit-down" restaurant.
We used to go to Outback in Medford, OR in the early 90s; we had a good time every time. Fast forward to 2015 my son took his new bride to Outback in Springfield, OR he was VERY disappointed and embarrassed since he spent a great deal of time praising the place.
Haven't had any problems personally myself, atleast not in a long time... it was probably atleast 15 yrs ago when I had to tell the staff at applebees I couldn't eat the steak they served me. I told them it needed to be cooked longer, 2-3 times and gave up. I am not someone who wants it to be medium-rare, I asked for medium-well (I like a little pink, not a lot of red and it still looks like it could be mooing).
I remember that Denny’s uproar. It was in Orlando I believe during something called Black Beach Week. Meany black fraternities and sororities show up and basically takeover the town, just like in any spring break. However, apparently the only thing black college students like better the bitching about racial profiling is dining and dashing in huge numbers. So, Denny’s put out the ill fated pay first policy. But, only because of a city ordinance created in response to complaints from the aforementioned black students, because in previous years restaurants would close for “vacation or remodeling” that week. So Denny’s was constrained by law to remain open and get robbed 24/7 for an entire week!
Jan 6 and BLM showed anyone with eyss can tell racial profiling of very much a thing.
Once got sick off of spinach artichoke dip from Applebee's. Last year, ate breakfast at a Denny's; the biscuit was so dense I could have thrown it through the window, through the windshield of the car on the other side and take out the driver.
This surprises me about IHOP. I've been to several, in different states and towns. ALL of them had excellent service and very good food. Toledo, OH and Russellville, Ark are one of the best. "Very packed" when we went in and both gave excellent service. 5 stars on both.