Originally Posted by
GadgetFreak
And that is why most of this category of restaurant is utter and complete crap. Contrast that to say a Lubys Cafeteria, which at least when I lived in Texas had each store get local bought ingredients and base their daily, fresh cooked menu on that. Lubys had good food even though it was a cafeteria. It isnt about cost or snobbery, it is about having decent standards and holding places to that. If people wouldnt eat the slop there would be more places not serving slop.
Heston Blumenthal had this same theory.
He set about creating a menu for what sounds like the English Applebees equivalent (Little Chef -a place for reheated and microwaved slop), applied some decent standards and asked the chain to hold to those standards.
At the establishment he worked with, profits soared yet the menu prices were unaffected. Plan is to roll out these 'decent standards' across the country.
Since so many TV ideas make it to the US, perhaps someone can convince the French Laundry team to work their alchemy on an American chain...
http://www.channel4.com/food/on-tv/h...-chef_p_1.html