An open letter to a specific corporate restaurant chain…

(If you’re an avid reader of the blog of my wife, socKs, you may have seen her most recent blog post about our experiences  this evening at a specific restaurant.  Here’s a letter I’m writing to them, although, due to my fear of a litigious online world, I’m going to mask their real name and go with an alias instead.

Dear “TGI Expensive, Uncreative and Bland’s”:

We used to be such good friends. What happened?  Where did our love go?

You used to be a wild fling in college. An upscale establishment in the early ’90s — at least upscale enough for us poor college students. Yet you were somewhat affordable. And you were only a five minute drive away from campus — any campus we would happen to be at at the time. Your fettucine alfredo was beyond satisfactory. Your spinach dip was great when shared with a round of beers and funky neon-blue alcohol.

That was you fifteen years ago. I know we’ve all aged. But you’ve changed.

Well, you still look pretty much the same. The trademark red and white stripes are still there. Some of the fonts have changed.  yet you still manage to fill your walls with replicas of road signs from the 1950s, giving the restaurant that “down in the unfinished basement” feel to it. But your personality is different. Perhaps it’s due to living a cold life through tough economic times that hurt you so greatly. That will harden anyone’s heart.  How I yearn for your younger days…

Remember when you had frequent diners’ points? When my girlfriend (now wife) were dating beginning in 1996, we would enjoy our experiences with you. And when it was time to pay the check, we would present our card to get “points.” Hell – our entire wedding party went to your establishment in Boca Raton — and we seriously cleaned up on points then as well! Eventually the points fell into disuse, but we were proud of the fact that we got up to about 65,000 of them – which was about 74% of one round-trip airline ticket to anywhere in the Continental USA.

Even in our honeymoon years we would make you part of our lives — although we didn’t eat out nearly as often, you would still be a special treat for us. Hell — we even visited your establishment when we were in Berlin in 2000 for the points! And we knew it was well-established fare that we could enjoy.

But somewhere along the way, you changed.  I think the font went first.  And, perhaps, a management style.

TGI Expensive, Uncreative and Bland’s, you started changing your menu around quite a bit. Gone were the basic (and less costly) menu items like fettucine alfredo. You decided that your answer to everything was adding steak marinated in Jack Daniels. Which may be appetizing for many, but isn’t quite the cup of tea for this vegetarian. But the menus were spectacular looking! The “Jack and Brownie Fudge Steak Sundae” may not have sold as much, but the pictures were beautiful.

And now? Well — let me tell you how you jilted my family and me today:

We decided that this would be a wonderful day to go out to dinner as a treat for our five year old son. He’s a relatively picky eater, but the past several times he was greeted at your doors he could enjoy something he loved: a plain cheese quesadilla. No sour cream, no chives, no bacon, no steak.  Just a cheese quesadilla. We, his parents, would choose other menu items.  It was a simple plan that worked at least the past seven times we’ve been there over the past 18 months or so.

This wasn’t on the menu, unfortunately. If our son wanted a “double-stuffed quesadilla” which included.. well, stuff most likely soaked in Jack Daniels, they could accommodate. But a regular quesadilla? Apparently not.

We were thrown for a curve here. We knew that the restaurant changes around its menu a lot. But changing it around so much that melted cheese in a tortilla was too great a feat?

Our server explained: the way they do it now at TGI EUB’s is a smidge different: The quesadillas come pre-made from the TGI Kitchen Headquarters. Frozen. All the cook needs to do is warm it up, and — presto! pre-fab double stuffed quesadillas!  You know those TGI EUB’s branded frozen appetizers at the supermarket? Same general idea. It’s like having an American family restaurant meal with food made out of Ikea furniture.  It probably saves them a lot of money not having to hire chefs. All they really need are people who can operate a microwave oven at a middle school level.

Oh — and the items remain quite expensive.

So — we were told (after she confronted the cook and her manager) that no, a plain cheese quesadilla couldn’t be done.  Apparently these hadn’t been pre-fabbed in a freezer truck for TGI consumption. What is this, the former Soviet Union? Is TGI EUB’s simply the next punchline of a fairly lukewarm Yaakov Smirnoff joke?

You’ve changed, TGI Expensive, Uncreative and Bland. You’ve really changed. You put that picture of the ugly-ass platinum blonde guy from the Food Network on all of your menus to demonstrate how sophisticated your food is. He’s a TV Personality. It’s the rational equivalent of putting a picture of Dr. House in the waiting room of a hospital.  You’ve sacrificed good food for image, and that’s simply not cool.  We decided to leave your establishment without eating, and we don’t think we’ll be back.

But you don’t care. You’ll have plenty of suckers as your clientèle. And that’s something likely won’t change. And it makes my blood boil.

TGI Expensive, Uncreative and Bland, I’d really like you to suck my balls.  Go ahead. I insist.

You can even slather them with Jack Daniels first.

Your former lover and customer,

— Shiny