My favorites:
*Red Lobster
*Cheesecake Factory
*California Pizza Kitchen
*Panera--especially French onion soup
*Olive Garden
*Spaghetti Factory--especially veggie lasagna
*Wildfire (a Lettuce Entertain You restaurant)--salmon to die for when it's available

My family's favorite:

Roys: we just had dinner at the Roy's in JW Marriott at Desert Ridge. We always order butter fish, blackened ahi, and of course the chocolate soufflé. They are as good here in AZ as in Hawaii.

Elephant Bar: love their miso yaki salmon and jambalaya

Red Lobster: my kids could just eat the cheese biscuits and not order anything else. :)

Tony Roma's: like their Carolina style ribs.

In-N-Out: order the cheese burger with the onion grilled. Yum.

With all the choices in Chicago, that's depressing :(

Wildfire is a well executed place, good food. Skirt steak is my fave there.

It's been a long time since I've been to Spaghetti Factory. I thought it went out of business.

No kidding. If Applebee's and Buca di Beppo had been mentioned, I just might have burst into tears.

To be fair, the thread is about chains, not independent places.

But I must admit that I can place the following Chicagoland chains way above those listed earlier:

- Portillo's
- Walker Brothers (a subset of the Original Pancake House chain)

I'd even place Culver's, even though it's regional, above the other poster's list, but not above the Portillo's or Walker Brothers.

Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises (LEYE) was one of the first "chain but not quite a chain" restaurant groups. They get a lot of "vanity" venture capital from high-end Chicagoans who want to be able to say that they "own" a restaurant, but they are very good at the execution.

LEYE got Corner Bakery and Maggiano's to the point where they were able to spin them off to Brinker (Chili's, Romano's) in a stock deal a few years ago. Brinker has managed to promptly take Corner Bakery into the toilet, and hasn't done much good with Maggiano's either.

You have a point, although Willie did admit to liking Wildfire, also a chain with in a chain. And, I think there is a thread out there somewhere about really bad chains.

A few of my Mexican faves started in Texas are mentioned here so I figured I would butt in just a bit.

Someone mentioned Abuelos as trying to hard to compete with Don Pablos... actually it couldn't be further from the truth. Both restaurants started on the lonely plains in Lubbock TX (where Texas Tech boasts one of the top restaurant/hotel/institutional management programs west of Cornell). Until the mid-90s, Don Pablos were mostly found in Texas and the "original" in Lubbock went by the name "Don Julios" - same look, but an experimental menu. It was the learning lab for ventures that would eventually make their way onto the menus of the other DPs stores (or be banished to oblivion). Incidentally, the original Harrigans, also owned by the same restaurant group, was in the shopping strip a block away.

Abuelos never wanted the Don Pablos/Don Julios crowd - it tended towards 21 to 25 year old college students in search of big portions and specials on margaritas. It was a favorite happy hour stop and its positioning near the mall and neighborhoods full of rental houses and apartments made it perfect for the off campus crowd. Abuelos, conversely, located its original location in the upscale neighborhood development at 82nd/Quaker where many of the city elite were moving to get away from the university squalor.

Abuelos original menu focused on high-end margaritas (in over a dozen flavors w/ a tequila tasting menu), more upscale Mexican vs. Tex-Mex (grilled topped steaks, seafood items, a variety of specialty enchiladas served w/ fried eggs) and the crowd who was willing to pay. As an "expensive" joint by Lubbock standards, it tended to have 90 minute waits for tables and an older audience. For us college kids, it was a "special date" kind of place.

As Abuelos expanded into the metro markets (beyond West Texas) in the late 90s, they originally kept the look and feel of the original - but slowly have bowed to competition by making their menu slightly more Tex-Mex (but still not like the other quesadilla/burrito/fajita/taco joints) and a bit more affordable. Along the way, prices on the steak/seafood items have crawled up and things like the tequila tasting menu have been replaced by more mainstream frou-frou drinks.

My favorite dish is still the bacon-wrapped steak and shrimp... but now you have to remind the servers to give you the spiced potatoes and creamy Mexican spinach (the traditional sides) because they have grown too used to accomodating the rice and beans crowd. And enchiladas require asking for the egg... that option was not even on the menu the last time I was in.

If anything, its not (as one poster said) that Abuelos is trying too hard... if anything, they aren't trying hard enough. They are attempting to compete with the Don Pablos (with their $12.99 three-course menu and cheap/huge portions) while forgetting that the differentiation is what made Abuelos popular in the first place!

In general I am not a fan of chain restaurant food. So I agree with most everyone's dislike list.

My favorite chains would be Cosi (for food and coffee), Einstein Bros. Bagels, and Chipolte is the surprisingly best Mexican food option in my East Coast city.

The only difference is how many "pieces of flair" their wait staff is required to wear. (Google "pieces of flair" and "office space" if you don't know about pieces of flair...)

As for favorite chain restaurants, I love Penang Malaysian http://www.penangusa.com/

Everything I've ever had there is fresh and fabulous, and works for vegetarians, too.

The 1st time I went to Fat Burger I thought it was decent enough to go back. My 2nd trip to Fat Burger was at the one in Los Angeles on LaCienega and San Vicente. While I was sitting outside eating my burger I thought the burger had an odd consistency. I opened up the patty and noticed it looked kind of like someone had stuck together a bunch of pieces of meat from the grill and piled it together. Not appetizing but things could have been worse. Within seconds of this discovery I hear this loud scraping sound behind me in the parking lot. I turn to look and see one of the "chefs" scraping the spatula on the parking lot asphault to get the burnt food off of it. Never went back and I think they are now out of business...

If you go to Tommys make sure its an original Tommys not one of the hundreds of knock offs. Also I recommend the one on Rampart not the one in Northridge. Oh, and bring a weapon or secruity with you. Yes, its still worth it. ;-)

Best cheap eats chain - In & Out
Best pig out - Souplantation
Best Fancy Date night - Roy's
Best Father Day - Morton's
Best midpriced - CPK or Cheesecake Factory

A vote for Apple Bee's, In & Out, Cafe de Coral (HK), the Keg steakhouse (Canada).

Justin Quek - Jq Concepts
 

HI ALL! As I need a restaurant consultant to set up a new restaurant business - does anybody know how can i contack Justin Quek (ex Les Amis in Singapore) for his JQ Concepts? Does he have his own website? Please do kindly inform me asap.. I do appreciate & thank you for the info! :)