this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2024
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chapotraphouse
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When I visited the US I was confused why there were so many dogshit restaurant chains and how they managed to stay open. Surely nobody is eating at these places.
The dogshit restaurants we have are a mixture of two actual good things that, like everything else in the US, was bled out of existence. The diner experience, and the inherent transient nature of American society. Being able to travel cross country has always been a relatively easy thing to do until recently, and eating while traveling is a no brainer. The food aspect used to be handled by large numbers of diners that had good quality food (relatively obviously) but has been replaced in large part by chain restaurants. Coincide this with the difficulty and expense of moving and you got a bunch of places that are almos comically bad.
This might be a bit rosy of a view of diners -- I'm sure plenty were mediocre or bad. Not exactly the same, but my dad told me about traveling before and after cheap chain hotels sprung up everywhere, and said a real benefit of chains was that even if the quality wasn't spectacular, you knew more or less what you were getting, which is itself valuable.
That’s probably true to some extent, I do be lovin a diner. But I would still argue that chain quality has gone down overall to the point that I genuinely believe Applebees straight up microwaves their food. Diners are and have always been a gamble, but I still stand behind the idea that the chain restaurant is essentially the diner concept mass produced across the United States in place of those diners.