Saturday, March 25, 2006
Ch-Ch-Ch-Chevy's
posted by RICK : 12:30 PM
On Thursday the super-cool G and I went to a screening of the new Beastie Boys concert film. It was pretty kick ass. For those of you who aren't "down," the movie was shot during their October 2004 show at Madison Square Garden. The gimmick: they handed out 50 HI-8 cameras to fans in the audience under the guidelines that they had to KEEP FILMING. All in all, I'd say the idea worked quite well. If you like the band, you'll like the movie.
There were only 3 screenings on Thursday and the only one we were able to get into was at a theater in Battery Park. So we had to go downtown. Wayyy downtown-- the part of Manhattan that turns into a ghost-town after six o'clock (I blame the terrorists, or the banking industry and their CRAZY 9-5 hours). In any case I was starving. Downtown New York City doesn't lend itself to spontaneous food consumption like the rest of the city does. It takes a little more planning. Personally, I don't like to plan. Maybe some of you have discovered this?
We ended up at Chevy's (home of the FRESH-MEX!). The decision was made out of necessity with a decent dose of irony thrown in for good measure. Chevy's is kind of like a more southern Chili's or a less southern Chi-Chi's depending on your latitude. But really it's a proud member of the sit-down-chain family of restaurants. We all know these establishments, and in most of America they are synonymous with "eating out." I was raised on them, and I suspect most people who grew up in the suburbs were as well. This is fascinating to me.
Generally speaking, most towns of 100,000 people or more are in no short supply of restaurants, and while the sit-down-chain may have the most obvious presence it certainly isn't going to be the only option for a family of four to grab a decent meal. But it usually wins out. Why? It can't be because of the food. Sure, you're rarely going to find something completely objectionable (though the crazy mayo-fused sauce on G's Steak-Tacos seemed suspect), but you're never going to encounter someone saying, "Applebee's makes the best hamburger in the free world!" If anything, they make a perfectly acceptable hamburger in the free world. The same is true for the general value as menu items are rarely given a NICE PRICE sticker.
The fact of the matter is that most families (and I suspect most people) have a go-to list of restaurants. They trust this list. It is a list made from painstaking repetition factored together with low-expectations and proximity. Here is the Pecoraro go-to restaurant list used between the years 1993 and 1997 (list includes sit-downs only):
-Applebee's (The nationwide leader in grilled Americana)
-Valentino's (Nebraska's premiere Italian chain and dubbed "best pizza ever" by people who weren't forced to eat copious amounts of it in Millard Cafeterias during the late 90s)
-Village Inn (merchant of all-day breakfast, pies, and underage smoking)
-Fuddruckers (gourmet burger chain that I still kind of like)
-Grab bag: this spot belongs to an rotating cast of local eateries that, interestingly, are almost all pizza places (Zio's, Sortino's, Godfather's, Big Fred's more)
Now then, did we only hit up these places because my family wasn't adventurous? Well, that case can probably be made, but I think the better case is that we knew everyone liked them, and they were familiar. Familiarity goes a long way. It's almost exclusively the reason I have friends.
"Rick, I like you. You remind me of this kid I knew in high school," you say, "He was considerably cooler than you, if I remember correctly."
"I'll take it!" I respond.
If you're hungry and you're in a car and driving along a street populated with restaurants, familiar logos go a long way, even if there's a chance that a smaller restaurant will actually provide you with a better meal. This illustrates a key point, being the difference between eating-out for entertainment and eating-out for survival. Survival eating rarely involves chances. Survival eating also doesn't care much about authenticity or even taste, for that matter. Survival eating is pure-- it's just about the food. It doesn't even have to be food, as long as you can chew it, but there is one thing that it does demand and that's free refills.
I'm off to Fridays.
On Thursday the super-cool G and I went to a screening of the new Beastie Boys concert film. It was pretty kick ass. For those of you who aren't "down," the movie was shot during their October 2004 show at Madison Square Garden. The gimmick: they handed out 50 HI-8 cameras to fans in the audience under the guidelines that they had to KEEP FILMING. All in all, I'd say the idea worked quite well. If you like the band, you'll like the movie.There were only 3 screenings on Thursday and the only one we were able to get into was at a theater in Battery Park. So we had to go downtown. Wayyy downtown-- the part of Manhattan that turns into a ghost-town after six o'clock (I blame the terrorists, or the banking industry and their CRAZY 9-5 hours). In any case I was starving. Downtown New York City doesn't lend itself to spontaneous food consumption like the rest of the city does. It takes a little more planning. Personally, I don't like to plan. Maybe some of you have discovered this?
We ended up at Chevy's (home of the FRESH-MEX!). The decision was made out of necessity with a decent dose of irony thrown in for good measure. Chevy's is kind of like a more southern Chili's or a less southern Chi-Chi's depending on your latitude. But really it's a proud member of the sit-down-chain family of restaurants. We all know these establishments, and in most of America they are synonymous with "eating out." I was raised on them, and I suspect most people who grew up in the suburbs were as well. This is fascinating to me.
Generally speaking, most towns of 100,000 people or more are in no short supply of restaurants, and while the sit-down-chain may have the most obvious presence it certainly isn't going to be the only option for a family of four to grab a decent meal. But it usually wins out. Why? It can't be because of the food. Sure, you're rarely going to find something completely objectionable (though the crazy mayo-fused sauce on G's Steak-Tacos seemed suspect), but you're never going to encounter someone saying, "Applebee's makes the best hamburger in the free world!" If anything, they make a perfectly acceptable hamburger in the free world. The same is true for the general value as menu items are rarely given a NICE PRICE sticker.
The fact of the matter is that most families (and I suspect most people) have a go-to list of restaurants. They trust this list. It is a list made from painstaking repetition factored together with low-expectations and proximity. Here is the Pecoraro go-to restaurant list used between the years 1993 and 1997 (list includes sit-downs only):
-Applebee's (The nationwide leader in grilled Americana)
-Valentino's (Nebraska's premiere Italian chain and dubbed "best pizza ever" by people who weren't forced to eat copious amounts of it in Millard Cafeterias during the late 90s)
-Village Inn (merchant of all-day breakfast, pies, and underage smoking)
-Fuddruckers (gourmet burger chain that I still kind of like)
-Grab bag: this spot belongs to an rotating cast of local eateries that, interestingly, are almost all pizza places (Zio's, Sortino's, Godfather's, Big Fred's more)
Now then, did we only hit up these places because my family wasn't adventurous? Well, that case can probably be made, but I think the better case is that we knew everyone liked them, and they were familiar. Familiarity goes a long way. It's almost exclusively the reason I have friends.
"Rick, I like you. You remind me of this kid I knew in high school," you say, "He was considerably cooler than you, if I remember correctly."
"I'll take it!" I respond.
If you're hungry and you're in a car and driving along a street populated with restaurants, familiar logos go a long way, even if there's a chance that a smaller restaurant will actually provide you with a better meal. This illustrates a key point, being the difference between eating-out for entertainment and eating-out for survival. Survival eating rarely involves chances. Survival eating also doesn't care much about authenticity or even taste, for that matter. Survival eating is pure-- it's just about the food. It doesn't even have to be food, as long as you can chew it, but there is one thing that it does demand and that's free refills.
I'm off to Fridays.
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-Rick
(co-creator)
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