8 ms·

I mean, I wouldn't mind being taken out to Red Lobster. I've come to find too, partners who prefer whatever instead of having very specific expectations for ti

I mean, I wouldn't mind being taken out to Red Lobster. I've come to find too, partners who prefer whatever instead of having very specific expectations for time spent together are more comfortable to be around.

pinkmuffinere 2y ago
I don’t know how to interpret this chain — is red lobster not fancy enough? For some reason I thought it was relatively fancy? Certainly not Michelin rated, but still
- rob74 2y ago
  General question: can any chain restaurant be considered "fancy"? In Europe I would say certainly not, not sure about the US though...
  - Sohcahtoa82 2y ago
    I'd flip the question the other way around. Why does becoming a chain automatically disqualify a place as being fancy? I think people apply a lot of assumptions once the word "chain" has entered the chat. They assume they've entered a race to the bottom on costs to maximize profits, but there are plenty of chains that I would still consider on the fancy side. Fogo de Chao and Ruth's Chris, for example.
  - vidarh 2y ago
    It's a tricky one. I'd lean towards no, but there are some chains that push up against it. Often ones that are either small and/or where at least some of their restaurants are not "obviously chain restaurants" and often also employing the "trick" of a small number spread across cities that makes it seem "fancier" As an example, Aqua has restaurants in New York, Miami, Dubai, London, and Hong Kong. Some of them are branded Aqua, but most are not. So while it's a "chain", it feels fancy, perhaps more so than justified. E.g. their London restaurants are perhaps more flashy / "tourist fancy" w/e.g. two restaurants in the Shard, than "actually" fancy. They're mostly pretty mid-range, maybe upper mid-range for London. I think that's about where you'll get to as a chain. To get above that, you get to the level where you expect the restaurant to at least tell you about their chef by name, whether or not they're actually famous enough for you to recognise it.
  - cgriswald 2y ago
    Yes. Some places in the US are a sea of chain restaurants so “fancy” is relative. People propose marriage at some chains, which I think indicates they think those chains are fancy.
    - singleshot_ 2y ago
      Additional datapoint: I saw two people get married at a 5.11 retail store.
  - dsr_ 2y ago
    Pick a point in the world. Find the area surrounding it within (an arbitrary) 30 minutes of travel by car under typical traffic conditions. There are many such points in the world where there are no restaurants at all. If there's one restaurant, then it is the fanciest. If there are two or more restaurants, you can rank them. Without recourse to subjective comparisons, we might hypothesize that a restaurant with a higher average cost per main course is fancier than one with a lower cost. Without actually doing the GIS searches, my contention is that there are quite a large number of points in the US where a Red Lobster can be considered the fanciest restaurant around.
    - tiberious726 2y ago
      When its competition is tgi Fridays and long John silvers, red lobster starts looking rather fancy. These places not only exist, but are probably most of the towns in America. I've lived in a few
      - Sohcahtoa82 2y ago
        I wouldn't consider Long John Silver's a competitor to Red Lobster. LJS is fast food. TGI Friday's, sure.
        tiberious726 2y ago
        I included it it because in a lot of central American towns those are your only two seafood options. And yes, if its competition is long John silvers, then red lobster might as well be Zuma
  - vel0city 2y ago
    I don't see why a restaurant being a chain would automatically exclude it from ever being thought of as "fancy", but I guess it depends on your definition of fancy. Serving high-quality, well-prepared food in a decently high-class environment would be "fancy" to me. Would Fogo de Chão (a $50-$70USD/person Brazilian steakhouse) be considered fancy? Nobu is often also considered a fancy restaurant and is also a chain. Does a "fancy restaurant" require absolute uniqueness? How do you define a "fancy restaurant"?
    - Sohcahtoa82 2y ago
      To me, "fancy" is about not allowing money-saving measures to have an effect on the taste and quality of the food. The menu is honest. The prawns are actually prawns and not shrimp (They ARE different!). Maine Lobster is actually from Maine and not some cheaper kind. Kobe beef is actually from Japan and not "American style Kobe". Fancy restaurants create food with flavor, rather than trying to appeal to people with weak palates that can't handle a little garlic and rosemary. All of this pushes prices up, but fancy restaurants aren't trying to compete on price.
      - lupusreal 2y ago
        The difference between prawns and shrimp only exists in some regions. The terms have no concrete scientific meaning, they're both vernacular and depending on where you are both or either term may be used for the same critter. I presume you mean that prawns are the bigger ones, but I've bought local caught fresh "shrimp" on South Carolina coast that were nearly as large as lobsters. There's really no consistent widely respected rule for which is which.
        vel0city 2y ago
        From a purely scientific naming, there actually is a difference between shrimp and prawns. They're different sub-orders. Prawns are Dendrobranchiata, while shrimp are Pleocyemata. I'm not sure it makes much culinary difference to me though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dendrobranchiata https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dendrobranchiata https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleocyemata https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleocyemata "True Shrimp" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caridea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caridea
- Sohcahtoa82 2y ago
  Red Lobster is at the same level as Olive Garden. The poor think they're fancy. Middle class think they're casual.
- ghaff 2y ago
  It’s (one of many) pretty yuk chain. In my 20s I probably wouldn’t have minded. Later I’d be internally going “really?” unless it were some area that really didn’t have good alternatives.
  - HenryBemis 2y ago
    Is it about "how clean is the place" or about "how clean is the table while we are/after we are done eating"? I've been in the US plenty of times, but I'm a burger guy, so I made sure I tried all burger chains and as many (indi) restaurants I could. But I've never been in a Red Lobster. I do understand though that lobster-eating can be messy - thus the bib. I can also picture that cracking lobster 'body-parts' is not the most romantic setup.
    - kelnos 2y ago
      It's not really about either of those things. Some people look down on Red Lobster because it's more middle-class/working-class than they are.
- bigstrat2003 2y ago
  I wouldn't call Red Lobster fancy, but I also think it's a perfectly fine restaurant. Certainly decent date material.
- michaelmrose 2y ago
  Its expensive enough but fairly generic there are probably better choices for the same money everywhere its like giving a gift card for a gift its good but it lacks thought and imagination.
- vidarh 2y ago
  Without ever having been to one, I'll note that as a European I know Red Lobster only from TV as a stereotypical place used as a joke about the type of places people presented as less sophisticated might consider fancy. It's used that way in Big Bang Theory, for example, though presumably because it is well known enough as at least a place that some people will consider fancy.
  - pinkmuffinere 2y ago
    TIL I’m not sophisticated lol (Don’t worry, I’m not offended)
    - vidarh 2y ago
      Well, I've not seen one so for what I know it might be a complete mischaracterization anyway :) But e.g Howard's mom going "Oh, Mr big shot with his Red Lobster": https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/5edf85de-e15f-4507-8c70-f1e2a63fc543 https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/5edf85de-e15f-4507-8c70-f1e2a63... (after rejecting Olive Garden, I think? I might misremember. Olive Garden is another chain I only know of from TV)
      - pinkmuffinere 2y ago
        lol, as a kid the “date night” restaurants were Chilis, Olive Garden, Applebees, and random mom-n-pop places. I think places like outback, Texas Roadhouse, and red lobster were reserved for “you got a promotion”-esque events. I bet that’s pretty normal for low-middle-class Midwest folks
- dabbledash 2y ago
  It's popular with middle class suburban families. So, snobs (who don't realize that's what they are) like to sneer at it to demonstrate their sophistication.
defrost 2y ago
Many of the girls|women in my part of the world would rather go freediving for crayfish and eat them on the beach than hang out in a chain resturant. https://youtu.be/yk6wa0YcUN0?t=60 https://youtu.be/yk6wa0YcUN0?t=60
- 082349872349872 2y ago
  Where I grew up, crayfish are freshwater mudbugs; those would be rock lobsters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4QSYx4wVQg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4QSYx4wVQg . Also where I grew up, we had a "baseball analogy" for dating, in which running the bases proceeds more or less as follows: 1st base - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_kTor63Ihw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_kTor63Ihw 2nd base - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHOo_b6Gn4c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHOo_b6Gn4c 3rd base - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-rB0pHI9fU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-rB0pHI9fU home run - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1niTEkP-6eo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1niTEkP-6eo So I would say (referring to the diving video!) that fingers in wet crevices and feeling around would be 3rd while sticking spears in and suddenly releasing tension would defo be a home run. In countries that don't really have baseball as a sport that anyone plays, does the same pattern apply? Are there different analogies, perhaps involving "silly mid ons" or "brexit tackles"?
- 082349872349872 2y ago
  Reflecting upon this a bit more, perhaps something that helps in our parts of the world is that restaurants are not segmented by price point. For instance, at lunch time everyone goes to the restaurants close by, but apprentices and street workers take the meal of the day, while the office workers order from the menu. So chain restaurants are really something that typically occur only in the same sorts of areas as big box stores, aiming at a similar demographic.
- mnky9800n 2y ago
  Aren't you special
  - defrost 2y ago
    Not particularly .. why do you think that? As stated above, first dates at resturants, etc aren't for everybody.

pinkmuffinere 2y ago

I don’t know how to interpret this chain — is red lobster not fancy enough? For some reason I thought it was relatively fancy? Certainly not Michelin rated, but still

rob74 2y ago
General question: can any chain restaurant be considered "fancy"? In Europe I would say certainly not, not sure about the US though...
- Sohcahtoa82 2y ago
  I'd flip the question the other way around. Why does becoming a chain automatically disqualify a place as being fancy? I think people apply a lot of assumptions once the word "chain" has entered the chat. They assume they've entered a race to the bottom on costs to maximize profits, but there are plenty of chains that I would still consider on the fancy side. Fogo de Chao and Ruth's Chris, for example.
- vidarh 2y ago
  It's a tricky one. I'd lean towards no, but there are some chains that push up against it. Often ones that are either small and/or where at least some of their restaurants are not "obviously chain restaurants" and often also employing the "trick" of a small number spread across cities that makes it seem "fancier" As an example, Aqua has restaurants in New York, Miami, Dubai, London, and Hong Kong. Some of them are branded Aqua, but most are not. So while it's a "chain", it feels fancy, perhaps more so than justified. E.g. their London restaurants are perhaps more flashy / "tourist fancy" w/e.g. two restaurants in the Shard, than "actually" fancy. They're mostly pretty mid-range, maybe upper mid-range for London. I think that's about where you'll get to as a chain. To get above that, you get to the level where you expect the restaurant to at least tell you about their chef by name, whether or not they're actually famous enough for you to recognise it.
- cgriswald 2y ago
  Yes. Some places in the US are a sea of chain restaurants so “fancy” is relative. People propose marriage at some chains, which I think indicates they think those chains are fancy.
  - singleshot_ 2y ago
    Additional datapoint: I saw two people get married at a 5.11 retail store.
- dsr_ 2y ago
  Pick a point in the world. Find the area surrounding it within (an arbitrary) 30 minutes of travel by car under typical traffic conditions. There are many such points in the world where there are no restaurants at all. If there's one restaurant, then it is the fanciest. If there are two or more restaurants, you can rank them. Without recourse to subjective comparisons, we might hypothesize that a restaurant with a higher average cost per main course is fancier than one with a lower cost. Without actually doing the GIS searches, my contention is that there are quite a large number of points in the US where a Red Lobster can be considered the fanciest restaurant around.
  - tiberious726 2y ago
    When its competition is tgi Fridays and long John silvers, red lobster starts looking rather fancy. These places not only exist, but are probably most of the towns in America. I've lived in a few
    - Sohcahtoa82 2y ago
      I wouldn't consider Long John Silver's a competitor to Red Lobster. LJS is fast food. TGI Friday's, sure.
      - tiberious726 2y ago
        I included it it because in a lot of central American towns those are your only two seafood options. And yes, if its competition is long John silvers, then red lobster might as well be Zuma
- vel0city 2y ago
  I don't see why a restaurant being a chain would automatically exclude it from ever being thought of as "fancy", but I guess it depends on your definition of fancy. Serving high-quality, well-prepared food in a decently high-class environment would be "fancy" to me. Would Fogo de Chão (a $50-$70USD/person Brazilian steakhouse) be considered fancy? Nobu is often also considered a fancy restaurant and is also a chain. Does a "fancy restaurant" require absolute uniqueness? How do you define a "fancy restaurant"?
  - Sohcahtoa82 2y ago
    To me, "fancy" is about not allowing money-saving measures to have an effect on the taste and quality of the food. The menu is honest. The prawns are actually prawns and not shrimp (They ARE different!). Maine Lobster is actually from Maine and not some cheaper kind. Kobe beef is actually from Japan and not "American style Kobe". Fancy restaurants create food with flavor, rather than trying to appeal to people with weak palates that can't handle a little garlic and rosemary. All of this pushes prices up, but fancy restaurants aren't trying to compete on price.
    - lupusreal 2y ago
      The difference between prawns and shrimp only exists in some regions. The terms have no concrete scientific meaning, they're both vernacular and depending on where you are both or either term may be used for the same critter. I presume you mean that prawns are the bigger ones, but I've bought local caught fresh "shrimp" on South Carolina coast that were nearly as large as lobsters. There's really no consistent widely respected rule for which is which.
      - vel0city 2y ago
        From a purely scientific naming, there actually is a difference between shrimp and prawns. They're different sub-orders. Prawns are Dendrobranchiata, while shrimp are Pleocyemata. I'm not sure it makes much culinary difference to me though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dendrobranchiata https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dendrobranchiata https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleocyemata https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleocyemata "True Shrimp" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caridea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caridea
Sohcahtoa82 2y ago
Red Lobster is at the same level as Olive Garden. The poor think they're fancy. Middle class think they're casual.
ghaff 2y ago
It’s (one of many) pretty yuk chain. In my 20s I probably wouldn’t have minded. Later I’d be internally going “really?” unless it were some area that really didn’t have good alternatives.
- HenryBemis 2y ago
  Is it about "how clean is the place" or about "how clean is the table while we are/after we are done eating"? I've been in the US plenty of times, but I'm a burger guy, so I made sure I tried all burger chains and as many (indi) restaurants I could. But I've never been in a Red Lobster. I do understand though that lobster-eating can be messy - thus the bib. I can also picture that cracking lobster 'body-parts' is not the most romantic setup.
  - kelnos 2y ago
    It's not really about either of those things. Some people look down on Red Lobster because it's more middle-class/working-class than they are.
bigstrat2003 2y ago
I wouldn't call Red Lobster fancy, but I also think it's a perfectly fine restaurant. Certainly decent date material.
michaelmrose 2y ago
Its expensive enough but fairly generic there are probably better choices for the same money everywhere its like giving a gift card for a gift its good but it lacks thought and imagination.
vidarh 2y ago
Without ever having been to one, I'll note that as a European I know Red Lobster only from TV as a stereotypical place used as a joke about the type of places people presented as less sophisticated might consider fancy. It's used that way in Big Bang Theory, for example, though presumably because it is well known enough as at least a place that some people will consider fancy.
- pinkmuffinere 2y ago
  TIL I’m not sophisticated lol (Don’t worry, I’m not offended)
  - vidarh 2y ago
    Well, I've not seen one so for what I know it might be a complete mischaracterization anyway :) But e.g Howard's mom going "Oh, Mr big shot with his Red Lobster": https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/5edf85de-e15f-4507-8c70-f1e2a63fc543 https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/5edf85de-e15f-4507-8c70-f1e2a63... (after rejecting Olive Garden, I think? I might misremember. Olive Garden is another chain I only know of from TV)
    - pinkmuffinere 2y ago
      lol, as a kid the “date night” restaurants were Chilis, Olive Garden, Applebees, and random mom-n-pop places. I think places like outback, Texas Roadhouse, and red lobster were reserved for “you got a promotion”-esque events. I bet that’s pretty normal for low-middle-class Midwest folks
dabbledash 2y ago
It's popular with middle class suburban families. So, snobs (who don't realize that's what they are) like to sneer at it to demonstrate their sophistication.

defrost 2y ago

Many of the girls|women in my part of the world would rather go freediving for crayfish and eat them on the beach than hang out in a chain resturant. https://youtu.be/yk6wa0YcUN0?t=60 https://youtu.be/yk6wa0YcUN0?t=60

082349872349872 2y ago
Where I grew up, crayfish are freshwater mudbugs; those would be rock lobsters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4QSYx4wVQg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4QSYx4wVQg . Also where I grew up, we had a "baseball analogy" for dating, in which running the bases proceeds more or less as follows: 1st base - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_kTor63Ihw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_kTor63Ihw 2nd base - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHOo_b6Gn4c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHOo_b6Gn4c 3rd base - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-rB0pHI9fU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-rB0pHI9fU home run - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1niTEkP-6eo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1niTEkP-6eo So I would say (referring to the diving video!) that fingers in wet crevices and feeling around would be 3rd while sticking spears in and suddenly releasing tension would defo be a home run. In countries that don't really have baseball as a sport that anyone plays, does the same pattern apply? Are there different analogies, perhaps involving "silly mid ons" or "brexit tackles"?
082349872349872 2y ago
Reflecting upon this a bit more, perhaps something that helps in our parts of the world is that restaurants are not segmented by price point. For instance, at lunch time everyone goes to the restaurants close by, but apprentices and street workers take the meal of the day, while the office workers order from the menu. So chain restaurants are really something that typically occur only in the same sorts of areas as big box stores, aiming at a similar demographic.
mnky9800n 2y ago
Aren't you special
- defrost 2y ago
  Not particularly .. why do you think that? As stated above, first dates at resturants, etc aren't for everybody.