rant: fine dining

[haltz]

A guy I know used to be the GM of a Red Lobster. He said they literally don't have saute pans. Kind of hard to sear a scallop without one. Like a lot of corporate places, there's no actual cooking going on there.

[cardsfansince82]

I eat seafood less than 10 times a year, and most of that is sushi. I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

This has nothing to do with red lobster, but it has everything to do with all you can eat.

There's a pizza buffet here that we go to for lunch every now and then. It's $8 for all you can eat. We'd have contests to see who could eat the most. We'd gorge ourselves. I think the most anyone ever ate was 14 pieces of pizza. 6-10 was normal.

I saw the owner away from the restaurant one day and started talking to him about costs and what not. He said the most expensive pizza they put on the buffet cost $2.23 including labor and materials to make. The average was less than $2. The pizzas have, iirc, 12 slices. So....yeah. I was amazed that unless you're the guy from man v food, you're not going to come close to making this place wish you hadn't come in.

[jim]

Completely disagree with Red Lobster. There are things I don't like on the menu, but if you go with the Crab Legs/Lobster/fish of the day you are going to get a pretty good meal at a reasonable price. Plus 1,000 calorie biscuits that are deeeeee-licious. All you can eat.

[JL21]

This has nothing to do with red lobster, but it has everything to do with all you can eat.

There's a pizza buffet here that we go to for lunch every now and then. It's $8 for all you can eat. We'd have contests to see who could eat the most. We'd gorge ourselves. I think the most anyone ever ate was 14 pieces of pizza. 6-10 was normal.

I saw the owner away from the restaurant one day and started talking to him about costs and what not. He said the most expensive pizza they put on the buffet cost $2.23 including labor and materials to make. The average was less than $2. The pizzas have, iirc, 12 slices. So....yeah. I was amazed that unless you're the guy from man v food, you're not going to come close to making this place wish you hadn't come in.

On one hand, I'm not surprised that the cost to make their product is low. On the other hand, that's even lower than I would've expected.

How does it even taste?

[Freed Roger]

I may put my darden company restaurant gift cards up for auction.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

Right, like any restaurant, you can get things that are edible. The fact they don't do [expletive] other than fry stuff there is why they're a joke of a restaurant though, especially 'seafood'. And, they're owned by the same company as Olive Garden. Like olive garden, if you can go in and just get all you can eat biscuits/bread sticks for $5 or whatever, you'd be alright.

[heyzeus]

I've never eaten at Red Lobster. Not a food snob, just never had the occasion to be there.

[cardsfansince82]

There's a CiCi's pizza by my house and right now another chain is building their own pizza buffet directly across the street. There's a third chain with a location less than a mile away. There must be some money in it.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

How does it even taste?

I think $2 is pretty average nationwide for a cheese pizza. So, this place is a little lower than average, assuming their cheese pizza is less than that.

They do a lot of specialty pizzas (buffalo chicken ranch, steak alfredo, cheeseburger, fajita, desert pizzas, etc). The specialty pizzas are pretty tasty while the normal (cheese, pepperoni, etc) are less than average. You also get a salad bar included in the $8 so ranch dressing is freely available to dip your pizzas in. Including price in the decision, I'd say it's one of the better places to go (pizza wise) though obviously you're not getting a great quality pizza.

Overall, the guy failed in Fayetteville, AR (I think there was already a pizza place like his there when he opened) but has probably 10 or so restaurants throughout the state with Little Rock being a stronghold.