family-style chain restaurants can squeeze 'em. greasy spoons rule. --and the city needs better downtown diners by the way.

I think New Yorker's love or distaste of these family-style chain restaurants has everything to do with where they grew up and what they grew up eating.

I thought it was interesting to see so many people in the NYT article today say they liked the Olive Garden and other family-style chains because they reminded them of home and/or a bit of the suburbs.

We've had fast food burger joints in NYC forever but not a lot of family restaurants and hardly any ethnic family chains like Olive Garden. Diners have been our family restaurants.

The part I find a bit too much to handle is the idea of mass-produced ethnic food like Olive Garden. There are so many fantastic, cheap, mom-and-pop Italian restaurants in NYC. Why would anyone want to eat Fettuccine Alfredo that tasted like plaster of paris?

But what do I know? I'm still trying to explain the popularity of Dominoes in a city with some of the best pizza parlors in the world.

These restaurants work on a couple different levels:

- Tourists know what they'll get, so there's built-in appeal as well as guests (at least in the Times Square locations);

- New Yorkers who have never tried there are probably curious;

- Going to one of this restaurants is like slumming it...you don't have to worry how you act, it's just easy. Personally, I rather do it where the food is better, but if it is convenient and your expectations are duly adjusted, I can undestand it. It's like going to same diner all the time - you're used to it, it's comfortable, it does its job.

oh snap- j0sh pulled my card. indeed- i've been banned from coffee shop for pretending to be a "famous producer" and offering to make the models/waitresses who work there "bigger than j-lo" in exchange for favors. so basically if i want food by union square, it's got to be mcdonalds or ranch 1. and ranch 1 always gives me the ED.

jake, why were YOU at the golden arches on union square? couldn't choke down another sesame chicken salad at coffee shop?

BTW on the topic of NYC chain resturaunts, i went to the TGI Friday's in midtown a few weeks ago (dont ask why), and it was absolutely despicable- even for a TGI Friday's. And all the food was literally 3x the price of ones in other parts of the country.. With one (shockingly bad) drink a piece, it came out to over $35/person. There are countless good NYC resturaunts you could eat at for less within walking distance- yet another item added to the list of examples of no matter where you go or what you do, most people are still idiots.

zeta-jonesing! hee! i don't always back down so easily, but you're right about micky d's and nerve. (nerve! gah!). perhaps you're more on target than i about le jardin d'olives as well. nycers are wack indeed. but i wonder, even if they weren't willing to violate city social mores to indulge in their secret longing for all-you-can-eat alfredo, one would think they would be all over some red lobster irony...where is the trucker hat of restaurants?

i'm going to disagree with tooshy on this one- i think new yorkers are secretly wack as all hell and just waiting for the opportunity to practice their wackness. i mean, i was at the macdonalds on union square yesterday and it was just filled to the brim with hot young things zeta-jonesing themselves before meeting up with their nerve.com dates at barnes and noble- dates they'd probably love to take to the olive garden if the damn social strictures of our uber-hip city did not forbid it. life is so cruel!

i suspect it reflects more the expectations of tourists, and the people who work but do not actually *live* in the city, and are sometimes (gah!) forced to eat here, due to circumstances beyond their control. familiarity, in this case, does not appear to breed contempt. no city-dweller i've known in the...geez, nine years i've lived here has been to one of those places--unless it was for for the purposes of journalism, or hosting out-of-town guests used to dining at West Coast Plaza.

There are members of my familial clan who would much prefer Red Lobster over Nobu, no matter what the price and certainly not for the novelty. Taste is tase, I guess.