> Roberts saw an opportunity not just to re-create those bygone red sauce joints, but to present the most exaggerated, over-the-top version of them, to create an environment where people could feel totally comfortable—as he describes it, "... I wanted a restaurant people could look down on.”
>
> He wanted the decor to be tacky, the portions to be enormous, the atmosphere to be boisterous. He figured it didn’t matter that he wasn’t Italian in the slightest. There were also almost no red sauce joints in Minneapolis at the time, so diners wouldn’t have anything to compare it to. This was a restaurant, he says, “that was intentionally in bad taste, but good-natured bad taste.” The kind of place where the average diner could feel superior, and not feel bad about being puzzled over a wine list, or not knowing what kind of fork is used for a salad.
The concept of a restaurant that people "look down on" seems both bold and mean-spirited. It also vaguely reminds me of an article I read about the Old Spaghetti Factory.
What are some other examples of American restaurants that followed this playbook?
A friend of mine in college opened a dive bar, which quickly became very very popular. This was the type of place where you could smell the ammonia from the urinal when you walked in the door. Spending more than an hour in there, and you left smelling like cigarette smoke and stale beer.
When opening his 2nd bar, he made the rookie mistake of "trying to finally do it right". His new bar was walking distance from the original, and had a beautiful wood bar, leather chairs, fancy plate glass windows with frosted lettering, etc (top notch plumbing too).
His 2nd bar never caught on and he eventually had to close.
The importance of "dive's" is that everyone feels comfortable. You feel you can do no wrong. Spill your beer...so what. Whereas if the place it too fancy, everyone becomes too self-aware.
These types of places like BdB aren't about customers "looking down" on the place, its about being in a place thats comfortable and where the average joe doesn't feel looked down upon.
everything in your description of a dive from "smell the ammonia", to "cigarette smoke and stale beer" to "spill your beer...so what" makes me feel uncomfortable.
Traveling a bit, I've noticed that regardless the language, customs, atmosphere or locality that all pubs offer a kind of simple baseline. Whether it's in a ship or a totally foreign country, you can get a beer and some food and ask pretty direct questions of your bartender to get an honest lay of the land around you.
The best part of the crappy, touristy cruise ships is getting the hell off the ship and finding a local pub where you can chat with the locals outside of the tourist/vendor relationship.
The second best part of those ships is finding the empty pub onboard where the crew will open up and share their own stories and experiences.
Where I grew up there where two bars basically next door to each other. One was a dive who's primary selling point was that the drinks where always cheaper than next door and the other was a nicer place who's primary selling point was that it didn't attract the sort of people who's primary concern was how cheap the beer was. Both did very well.
Cheesecake Factory? They're famous for having terrible decor, service, and food, yet somehow being an essential part of the American high school prom experience.
> Cheesecake Factory? They're famous for having terrible decor, service, and food,
I've always found CF to have decent service and good (but not outstanding) food, a ludicrously long menu being the main negative, plus the fact that it's always ludicrously crowded because they underprice for their appeal.
The decor is gaudy, but not what I would describe as terrible (or even unpleasant, just incongruous.)
I get so peeved by the treatment of chain restaurants like this as "poor" or "terrible". Because you know what, Cheesecake Factory, Olive Garden, Red Lobster, Outback Steakhouse? These are some of the nicest restaurants the average citizen can hope to afford to go to more than once in their lifetime.
It isn't going to impress folks who have a personal chef at home, but the food is pretty darn good, and you don't have to saw off your right arm to pay for it.
> These are some of the nicest restaurants the average citizen can hope to afford to go to more than once in their lifetime.
This is almost undoubtedly untrue.
There are many independent or local restaurants in most regions that cost the same (or less) than the chains you mention. Ethnic restaurants frequently deliver more bang for the buck. In all of these non-chain categories there are “nicer” options that deliver a better atmosphere, food, wine, whatever the citizen in question is looking for.
As for the chains, they should have at least one thing to offer: consistency. No one is faulting folks for having a guilty pleasure, or working a chain into their routine when they’re looking for a known quantity meal.
But some people never break out of the mundane that consistency brings. The types who are too afraid to try things because they’re supposedly “fancy.” Or because they don’t look like they 2nd generation immigrants who run the restaurant down the road. The kind of folks who go to a Buca in Honolulu or Applebee’s in Times Square; those places are expensive as shit, and living a life like that is truly terrible.
The value proposition really isn't that great. It's not any cheaper than food from a local Italian joint. What you're paying for is that Olive Garden experience, whatever that is worth to you.
A good example is the Olive Garden in Times Square. It's _always_ packed despite there being better Italian places a few blocks away. Not to mention, if you're willing to hop on the subway there's significantly better Italian food available in the outer boroughs for much cheaper. Olive Garden isn't that cheap, that nice, or that tasty which makes it a mystery to a lot of people.
Part of that value prop is predictability. There are a lot of people who like to know exactly what they'll get, even when (especially when) travelling, and this is also why highway rest areas and airports so often have national fast food & coffee chains.
I would argue the cost is not much higher than fast food, but the quality is arguably still a large step up. Obviously these places get a lot of points for their excellent choice of bread (be they sticks, biscuits, etc.), and there's arguably something to be said for going to a restaurant and knowing they have food you like.
If you go to these restaurants a little more regularly, you also can stack up the rewards benefits, sometimes you can get discounted gift cards, etc. All of which you will not find at a non-chain restaurant.
Which is to say, if I can get a sirloin for the cost of a Whopper, it isn't much of a mystery why people go there.
Olive Garden's appeal in Times Square is the same as McDonald's: you're in a strange place, but you know what you can expect to find inside, and you know your kids will eat it while you have a glass of mediocre wine.
FWIW, if you go to McDonald's in some foreign countries you will be in for a shock as they serve many region-specific items. (Though in Paris, it's a pleasant shock, it's mostly the same but all of the food is better/healthier.)
Source: Yes, I traveled to the capital of a country known explicitly for it's exquisite food and did patronize a McDonald's.
FWIW, if you go to McDonald's in some foreign countries you will be in for a shock as they serve many region-specific items.
I still remember getting a surprisingly nice pepperoni pizza at a McDonald's in the US many years ago. Undoubtedly the nicest thing I've eaten at a McDonald's anywhere in the world.
Yes, I traveled to the capital of a country known explicitly for it's exquisite food and did patronize a McDonald's.
Some of the, by far, worst restaurants I've ever eaten at have been in France so there's a chance that McDonald's wasn't the worst choice you could have made.
i stopped in at one in new zealand for shits and grins. got some sorta tandoori wtfever chicken thing. it was vile. but it was exploring the unknown known.
also: walmarts in mexico are a step up from the ones in the us.
Every time I go to Cheesecake Factory or Red Lobster, I can always think of better replacements at the same price point.
I think some of it is cultural. Like BdB, these restaurants cater to a little gluttony. Portions are generally HUGE, and there's no disdain for a person who wants a Bloomin' Onion or endless breadsticks. Darden knows how to do an upscale steakhouse; it also knows what draws in thrifty, hardworking people who want overindulgence without pity or scorn.
We recently got dragged to a local outpost of "The Pizza Ranch," a 250+ location chain that serves fried chicken and pizza with wagonwheel decor. The waiting line looked like a casting call for People of Walmart. And that's just it; it's a different market. It's not serving the middle-aged man who wants a well-prepared meal with fresh ingredients.
Olive Garden in particular's worse than middle-high tier frozen Italian food in a bag, which comes out to the same price or cheaper. Certain dishes are worse than budget frozen Italian food that can be prepped in its container, a microwave. Granted you have to do some work for those but it's usually "heat in pan, serve" or similar. It used to be better (like, 10+ years ago) but has gotten quite a bit worse. Maybe a few dishes are better than that, but none of the ones I've ordered when I've gone in the last decade or so—one gets invited, and a place has to be damn bad before they go on my "I will risk being rude to avoid going here, and will not take the food for free" list.
Kinda like how up to a few years ago Noodles & Company was pretty good cheap food, then they doubled all their portion sizes and their food unaccountably dropped to sub-frozen-and-boxed-food quality levels and they started calling themselves "World Kitchen" or something.
When I read one of those I mentally replace the name with "McDonalds." As in, look at this hifalutin' VIP bigwig who's too good for McDonalds ... or Starbucks. Not saying much.
None of these are my favorite restaurants, but they'll do in a pinch.
I don't think it's really price snobbery. I've been to much nicer restaurants with average plate prices in the $10–$20 dollar range that those places fall into. There are even a lot of "foodie" places in that range.
None of the places you listed are cheap. The price of a steak at CF or Outback is about the same as the price of a steak at any "$$" restaurant. Olive garden is particularly expensive for what they offer (except lunch, which is a legitimately good deal as long as you're okay with eating 3 days worth of calories in breadsticks and can afford to be in a food coma all afternoon). And red lobster is just legit expensive and low-quality... you're better off on both price and quality with pretty much any other restaurant that has a fish menu...
Applebees, Chilis, and TGI Fridays, on the other hand, do have truly "economy" menu items. However, you still get what you pay for -- the key insight is that those places compete with bars, not restaurants, on price point. You can get sauce-covered chicken strips with frys for $10 at any mom and pop corner bar...
Many local diners have a better steak for the same price as an Outback. The chains definitely win on always-good-enough consistency, since you know exactly what you're going to get at what price.
Wow, I must be pretty unsophisticated. I always thought cheesecake factory was a fancy place. I guess being located at the fancy retail mall must have colored my perception.
It's actually a pretty American playbook for restaurants especially in the south. There are many BBQ, Southern Cookin, fried fish places that do this all over the place. I'm in Texas and my family frequents these types of places a lot.
I thought it was really interesting and enlightening that anyone could think about a restaurant this way - shows how little I know about the hospitality industry. I always pegged it to be going for different social classes sort of thing, but then I could never figure out why a burger and fries at a red robin is about the same as most steakhouses, and people were okay with that.
It definitely does make you feel like you don't need to impress anyone to be there - the real value that comes from making a place people feel socially relaxed is something I haven't thought much about.
On some ways, but I think PF Chang’s is perhaps a better example because it’s more sit down like BdB, whereas PX is more fast food and it also goes a bit over the top with regards to iconography and imaging. For Americana, probably Armadillo Willy’s.
Armadillo Willy's is an awfully local reference. They only have a few locations relative to the other chains mentioned in this thread, and the furthest from the South Bay is in Dublin.
I once went to the Ripley's Believe It or Not museum in Baltimore.
The exhibits were both amazing and ridiculous.
They had paintings of Bill and Hillary Clinton drawn in Hamburger grease. They had a giant picutre of Bill Gates, but when you got close, the "pixels" were different colored keyboard keys.
Was it "high art"? I think not. Was I entertained? yes.
and I have to say the whole article reminded me a little of this onion "article":
It’s not mean spirited, it’s tacky and tacky is amazingly comfortable because it invokes humor. The Pope room is hilarious even for Catholics because it is not mean spirited but a tacky but well meaning room. It’s comfortable and you know it’s not snooty so you can be at ease with their quite good service. Also, the portion size makes it family or group ordering at not a “I’ll have” place.
Many American chains can fit under this guise. As others have said: Cheesecake Factory, Panda Express, Taco Bell, but also McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, Pizza Hut, Domino's, In 'n' Out, Whataburger...none of them pretend to offer a haute dining experience.
Ones that I would argue don't want to be looked down upon (but are) are the likes of Olive Garden, Chili's, Applebees, Texas Roadhouse. They put on a facade of being fancy, but everyone knows most dishes served at these places were frozen and put in the microwave minutes before they are served. I could be wrong with the examples I gave though; it's been a long time since I've eaten out at any of them...
Despite a lot of jokes and offended Yelp reviews I see accusing virtually every restaurant at every price level of that, I'd be surprised if any were literally microwaving frozen meals to serve. They use a lot of frozen and canned ingredients for dishes, and probably use mixes made for them in commercial kitchens and shipped to the restaurants. But a little cooking at the end can go a long way.
Chili's, for instance, serves not only freshly made salsa but freshly fried chips. The tortillas are pre-made and pre-cut and just need to be dumped in the oil, and you can make salsa in batches by dumping pre-measured portions in a blender. Panda Express is cooking everything on site throughout the day, too. Take the right bags of pre-cut vegetable blends, the meat, the sauce, stir it all furiously in a big wok, put it on a heat table. No microwave.
Most of the speed of "casual" restaurants just comes from doing a lot of prep work ahead of time, keeping everything from sauces to precooked vegetable mixes in warmers, and using the same ingredients across a range of dishes. (Prepare five grilled meats, six sauces, and put them on beds of rice, mashed potatoes, or pasta, and now come up with a name for each possible combination. Presto! You're a Cheesecake Factory.)
Applebees and Chilis sort of skirts the line - they want the after-work crowd but also families at the same time. They don't really have an identity, but I think thats sort of the point - be as generic an option as possible to have as wide a market as possible, offend no-one.
> What are some other examples of American restaurants that followed this playbook?
It's pretty common (perhaps dominant) with ethnic (or American regional, and some other strong themes) chains or single-location restaurants, because it promotes accessibility by making alien elements less off-putting. It's a way to make it so the restaurant doesn't seem to be looking down on the customers.
It arose organically before the restaurants adopted it, but Taco Bell and White Castle have both embraced their reputations as food for the chemically impaired. Almost every time* I've heard someone talk about either restaurant, they have a glee as if sliders or a gordita crunch are a form of debauchery.
*the exception is vegetarians who have a lot of completely earnest love for the bean burrito.
As someone who lives in Italy, a lot of what seems to be considered "Italian" in the US sometimes feels like little more than a caricature. It does trouble me slightly, because it feels like an impersonation of Italian culture.
On the other hand, it's probably just culture diverging and developing in different ways after migration, which is to be expected. So the problem is mostly one of identity: the same label - italian - means very different things to people across the world...
I'm grateful, as an American, that we have access to so many different cultures and cuisines. It's the one thing I missed sorely when I was travelling across Europe.
You're right on the label though, Italian American =/= Italian in the same vein that Chipotle/Taco Bell isn't Mexican. However, there are plenty of institutions in the states that do nail a more purist experience of Mexican or Italian or what have you.
Italian-American cuisine, including places like Buca di Beppo, are absolutely not in the same vein as Taco Bell or Chipotle. Italian-American cuisine is a unique part of a culture that arose organically from millions of Italian immigrants and their children in the United States. Taco Bell and Chipotle are culture-less money-making ventures with superficial ties to a foreign cuisine.
Tex Mex or Cajun cuisine would be a more apt comparisons.
Is there really such a thing as culture-less food? The fact that Taco Bell, for instance, has struggled so much in some international markets suggests there might be a stronger cultural element to it than you’re giving it credit for. Yes, it’s a business that exists to make money. But the fact that it does make money is because the food connects with millions of people in the US.
There’s something very unique about the US, which is that we’re taught from a young age that “culture” is something that other places have and the US is just a melting pot. But you can’t mix things together for 200+ years and still seriously claim you haven’t created something just as unique as the ingredients that went into it.
Sure, but the article points out that Buca was emulating (or evoking or whatever) Italian-American, not Italian.
Maybe those things are conflated in places with no direct connections, but any Italian American with ties to Italy knows that the two are very distinct cultures.
As the son of Italian immigrants (who moved here 40 years ago), I've just learned to think of it as "Italian American" food/culture that evolved/diverged over the last 100 years. It's still painful to hear things like 'pasta fazul' or 'mozzarelle' being passed off as Italian.
Interestingly, some of the "faux-italian" dialects of Italian American culture are descended from dialects that went extinct in Italy, but were preserved in Italian-American immigrants.
Same can probably be said of any country's cuisine in America.
E.g. many staples of Chinese restaurants in America (General Tso's chicken, chop suey, sweet and sour whatever) are not found in China except at super touristy places.
There are lots of...I guess I would call them "mashup cuisines" around the world, especially in post-colonial and post-WW2 Asia. Local chefs tried to recreate western dishes with their own ingredients and techniques and it made for some interesting results.
Since it's early morning as I write this, I'll use Hong Kong-style macaroni soup[1] as an example: it's literally macaroni in broth with a slice of processed ham on top and some white bread on the side. Not Chinese in the least, but now it's as much a local breakfast staple here as congee.
Also, an aside: sweet and sour pork is a legitimate Cantonese dish and it's in every Canto restaurant in China. I really miss crab rangoon sometimes, though...
Some “Indian” dishes, like chicken tikka masala, originated in Britain in similar circumstances to American “ethnic” dishes. And lots of Vietnamese food has French influences.
Fun fact! Philip Roberts, who started Buca, sold it and started what is now one of the best steakhouses[0] in the country. It's the cash cow (no pun intended) for the other restaurants in his restaurant group Parasole, and is easily the highest-grossing restaurant in Minnesota.
They're "sperm-to-table" and a treat to dine with. I'm there too often.
Manny's is great, but in Minneapolis I'd honestly rather go to P.S. Steak or Burch Restaurant if I'm in the mood for a good steak. It may be just me though, as I don't enjoy the traditional steakhouse experience.
As an Italian-American, this explains why every time I go to a Buca di Beppo, I feel like I'm in some kind of merger between a mediocre Italian restaurant and a minstrel show. To those of us who grew up in this culture, it's ridiculous (almost bordering on offensive). Thankfully, I grew up in communities where the Italian's could proudly go to other restaurants that were more respectful of a 3,000 year old culture.
It's tough to feel proud of what Buca di Beppo has done to popularize Italian-American culture in the same way it's tough to feel proud of the movie The Godfather. We aren't all mobsters and we don't all have giant busts of the Pope and cherubs in our houses. Some of us are just computer scientists who like basil.
> To those of us who grew up in this culture, it's ridiculous (almost bordering on offensive).
Both of my parents are half Italian-American, and that's the tradition in which I was raised.
My relatives who actually came off the boat loved Buca di Beppo. And Olive Garden, etc. (Of course we all know it's not as good as home cooking, but who cares when you just want something fast.)
Honestly, Italian-Americans have no one to blame but ourselves for exalting gangster culture and caricatures. We love that stuff.
Does McDonalds make the best hamburger? Does Taco Bell make the best burrito? Does Pizza Hut make the best pizza?
No, but I still eat at every single one of them all the time.
If I'm in flyover country, nothing beats the $19 Tuscan Steak at Olive Garden. Maybe some day I'll go to Italy and then never eat "fake" Italian food ever again, but I doubt it.
I could almost tolerate it, might even enjoy it sometimes, but eating there is just excruciating to me. For some reason they all seem to be optimized for loudness. Buca di Beppo really wants you to feel like you’re always surrounded by huge groups of people having comically loud conversations, but that’s one of the last things I want from a restaurant, or any public place really.
Loudness in restaurants seems to be hip right now. It also has been shown to correlate positively with both alcohol consumption and table turnover, so it might not be going anywhere soon.
I'm glad I found someone that feels that same way. I used to walk by a BdB on my way to work and I couldn't help but notice the horribly stereotypical cartoon they use as their mascot.[0] My thought experiment for this image is: Imagine how this type of caricature looks like for pretty much any other genre of restaurant (Chinese food, sushi, burritos, etc). It's probably super offensive. To me, that's a good indicator that this caricature is offensive too.
I think Italian-Americans see "cultural appropriation", caricature, non-Italians portraying Italians in movies, etc as part of the process of integration.
If someone with no Italian heritage wants to open up a pizza shop or sell pasta and put a big statue of Mario in front, go right ahead! If it's good, we'll eat there.
You know who made the best pizzelles in my family - by far? My mom's Irish-German stepfather.
tpolverini says>"Some of us are just computer scientists who like basil."
Well, you can open a restaurant named "Computer Scientists Who Like Basil" but I ain't gonna be one of your customers until I see lines queuing up!8-)
tpolverini says>"respectful"? "bordering on offensive"? "proud"? "it's tough to feel proud of the movie The Godfather", "I grew up in communities where the Italians could proudly go to other restaurants that were more respectful of a 3,000 year old culture."
Heck, that's nuthin'! I grew up in communities where you could proudly go to restaurants serving food that _was_ 3,000 years old, judging by the taste! I'll take Italian-American any day!
Jeez! Lighten up a little bit! The economy runs on entertainment. And if we can't laugh at each other and at ourselves then we're lost. That's the original and cheapest entertainment.
[Later: Hey! Hey! Why the downvote? You guys got no sense of humor? C'mon, help me out here, I'm dyin'!]
It's cultural appropriation, and it's understandable you feel it's silly or offensive. Part of what makes it uncomfortable is the appropriation of culture for little more than vapid monetary gain. Like you said, it's not contributing to Americans' understanding of Italian culture---if anything it's hurting it with silly stereotypes.
Interestingly, if someone was criticizing the appropriation of an indigenous or asian culture, there is little chance it would be this highly upvoted on HN. I think this is a worthwhile lesson for the community.
Back in the mid 90s my colleagues and I from the warm southern US found ourselves on the freezing winter streets of downtown Minneapolis after dark. We had brought coats but were still quite unprepared for 10 below zero F. As we wandered around looking for a place to eat, we spied a small well-lit door leading down to a basement. The waitress saw us, threw open the door, and said "You get in here. You're about to freeze to death!"
Whereupon we had one of the best and most welcoming meals I remember. That was my introduction to Buca di Beppo, and no matter what anyone says about it, I will always be fond of the place because it saved our lives that cold winter night.
It's amazing how much context, atmosphere, hunger, environment, etc affect our perception of food.
My most favorite and memorable meals ever were little, low quality places that I hate after coming back from long treks through the wilderness, or even the meals cooked while on those treks. As well as many places my wife and I ate on our honeymoon.
And I have been to a fair number of excellent restaurants including michellin starred ones.
It seems unlikely that those places were actually that good (probably the same as your buccas experience). And I have returned to some of them under different circumstances and not found them particularly amazing.
I think I enjoyed the 'tacky' decor of the restaurants after visiting Italy and Rome specifically. Each restaurant, is incredibly unique, amazing to hear the story behind it.
I may be an Apple user who is interested in such movies as the goonies at the matrix but I’m not going to open an Italian restaurant called iBuca. I just don’t feel the article has enough intellectual relevance to be on the front page of happiness
>
> He wanted the decor to be tacky, the portions to be enormous, the atmosphere to be boisterous. He figured it didn’t matter that he wasn’t Italian in the slightest. There were also almost no red sauce joints in Minneapolis at the time, so diners wouldn’t have anything to compare it to. This was a restaurant, he says, “that was intentionally in bad taste, but good-natured bad taste.” The kind of place where the average diner could feel superior, and not feel bad about being puzzled over a wine list, or not knowing what kind of fork is used for a salad.
The concept of a restaurant that people "look down on" seems both bold and mean-spirited. It also vaguely reminds me of an article I read about the Old Spaghetti Factory.
What are some other examples of American restaurants that followed this playbook?