this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2023
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I see this image and I wonder where the fuck else people are going to eat. Tbh this reads as a very urban take, if you're living in an area that basically exists to service people driving on the interstate it is just all chains. Any "family" restaurants are serving food from the same bulk supplier so they're identical to one another as well on top of tasting bad and being overpriced. People say chains are bad but like theyr'e at least consistent, paying $20 for really bad pizza that's worse than the $10 pizza you can get from Pizza Hut of all places is the extent of commercial food culture in much of so-called flyover country.
There isn't really such a thing as a public space out here. Any other kind of date is simply going to be at a bar or at someone's house. You simply do not socialize like how people socialize on TV out here, you either have to be visiting your friends' houses regularly or you're going to simply go direclty home and watch TV. There's simply not enough rich people to support anything more upscale.
in my country - or at least were i live - chain restaurants are something that mainly exist in cities
I cannot stress enough that I am not exaggerating, this is what a majority of this hell country looks like
Only major cities and tourist towns really have local restaurants worth thinking about. The rest of it is the same chains.
If you’re lucky you get to pay an absurd amount of money to live somewhere that looks like this instead
And then it’s still mostly chains they’re just much more expensive ones.
Perkins is still around?
in the US midwest, they're more suburban or rural, or at least if you live near major highways. it's very easy for golden handcuffs to choke out any local businesses in these places that simply lack the population density to support anything more niche. they literally pay employees more than local businesses, abuse their workers less because they have an actual HR department that provides some level of protection against the most obvious abuses of individual managers (ie mangers get fired for groping people, where small business tyrants just get away with it), charge less than anything local, and then once anything speciifc to that location has closed down they let the entire community rot.
the norm is much more around people visiting each other's houses, you don't really go anywhere other than a chain to hang out. there's a nice playground but that's generally not for adults on dates, that's for people with kids. there's not completely nothing but it's nothing that would wow someone that is turning up their nose at olive garden of all things. you simply are not going to be eating at a michelin star restaurant without a very long ass drive.
hell at weddings i don't think i remember ever actually being professionally catered. it's always either a pitch in or certain relatives assigned the task of making all the food. everyone just cooks at home. i've eaten much more baking sheet/pan pizza than i've eaten pizza at an actual pizza place, there's like two pizza places that aren't chains around here and i hate both of them.
for first dates? that sounds kinda scary. here the norm is either coffee shop/cafe, grabbing a drink at a bar, or just going on a walk/hike
blind dates aren't super common, most people aren't really meeting on apps or anything ('cause again, not enough population density to make those things work), so a "first date" is still often with someone you've met a few times at least. but yeah in that sort of situation you're going to fuckin' olive garden lol.
That is actually really nice though. Having the family involved in that way sounds really sweet
Personally have I live in a fairly rural areas in California and Nevada for most of my adult life, and I have never had trouble finding at least a few good local spots, though usually not right on the interstates, that tends to be dominated by the chains. In fact one of my favorite taquerias is this hole in the wall in a town of about 500. I wonder if part of the difference is that we have significant populations of assorted migrants in rural areas out west.