I don’t know how to interpret this chain — is red lobster not fancy enough? For some reason I thought it was relatively fancy? Certainly not Michelin rated, but still
Without ever having been to one, I'll note that as a European I know Red Lobster only from TV as a stereotypical place used as a joke about the type of places people presented as less sophisticated might consider fancy. It's used that way in Big Bang Theory, for example, though presumably because it is well known enough as at least a place that some people will consider fancy.
lol, as a kid the “date night” restaurants were Chilis, Olive Garden, Applebees, and random mom-n-pop places. I think places like outback, Texas Roadhouse, and red lobster were reserved for “you got a promotion”-esque events. I bet that’s pretty normal for low-middle-class Midwest folks
It's popular with middle class suburban families. So, snobs (who don't realize that's what they are) like to sneer at it to demonstrate their sophistication.
Pick a point in the world. Find the area surrounding it within (an arbitrary) 30 minutes of travel by car under typical traffic conditions.
There are many such points in the world where there are no restaurants at all. If there's one restaurant, then it is the fanciest. If there are two or more restaurants, you can rank them. Without recourse to subjective comparisons, we might hypothesize that a restaurant with a higher average cost per main course is fancier than one with a lower cost.
Without actually doing the GIS searches, my contention is that there are quite a large number of points in the US where a Red Lobster can be considered the fanciest restaurant around.
When its competition is tgi Fridays and long John silvers, red lobster starts looking rather fancy. These places not only exist, but are probably most of the towns in America. I've lived in a few
I included it it because in a lot of central American towns those are your only two seafood options. And yes, if its competition is long John silvers, then red lobster might as well be Zuma
I don't see why a restaurant being a chain would automatically exclude it from ever being thought of as "fancy", but I guess it depends on your definition of fancy. Serving high-quality, well-prepared food in a decently high-class environment would be "fancy" to me. Would Fogo de Chão (a $50-$70USD/person Brazilian steakhouse) be considered fancy? Nobu is often also considered a fancy restaurant and is also a chain.
Does a "fancy restaurant" require absolute uniqueness? How do you define a "fancy restaurant"?
To me, "fancy" is about not allowing money-saving measures to have an effect on the taste and quality of the food. The menu is honest. The prawns are actually prawns and not shrimp (They ARE different!). Maine Lobster is actually from Maine and not some cheaper kind. Kobe beef is actually from Japan and not "American style Kobe".
Fancy restaurants create food with flavor, rather than trying to appeal to people with weak palates that can't handle a little garlic and rosemary.
All of this pushes prices up, but fancy restaurants aren't trying to compete on price.
The difference between prawns and shrimp only exists in some regions. The terms have no concrete scientific meaning, they're both vernacular and depending on where you are both or either term may be used for the same critter. I presume you mean that prawns are the bigger ones, but I've bought local caught fresh "shrimp" on South Carolina coast that were nearly as large as lobsters. There's really no consistent widely respected rule for which is which.
From a purely scientific naming, there actually is a difference between shrimp and prawns. They're different sub-orders. Prawns are Dendrobranchiata, while shrimp are Pleocyemata. I'm not sure it makes much culinary difference to me though.
It's a tricky one. I'd lean towards no, but there are some chains that push up against it. Often ones that are either small and/or where at least some of their restaurants are not "obviously chain restaurants" and often also employing the "trick" of a small number spread across cities that makes it seem "fancier"
As an example, Aqua has restaurants in New York, Miami, Dubai, London, and Hong Kong. Some of them are branded Aqua, but most are not. So while it's a "chain", it feels fancy, perhaps more so than justified. E.g. their London restaurants are perhaps more flashy / "tourist fancy" w/e.g. two restaurants in the Shard, than "actually" fancy. They're mostly pretty mid-range, maybe upper mid-range for London. I think that's about where you'll get to as a chain. To get above that, you get to the level where you expect the restaurant to at least tell you about their chef by name, whether or not they're actually famous enough for you to recognise it.
Yes. Some places in the US are a sea of chain restaurants so “fancy” is relative. People propose marriage at some chains, which I think indicates they think those chains are fancy.
Why does becoming a chain automatically disqualify a place as being fancy?
I think people apply a lot of assumptions once the word "chain" has entered the chat. They assume they've entered a race to the bottom on costs to maximize profits, but there are plenty of chains that I would still consider on the fancy side. Fogo de Chao and Ruth's Chris, for example.
Its expensive enough but fairly generic there are probably better choices for the same money everywhere its like giving a gift card for a gift its good but it lacks thought and imagination.
It’s (one of many) pretty yuk chain. In my 20s I probably wouldn’t have minded. Later I’d be internally going “really?” unless it were some area that really didn’t have good alternatives.
Is it about "how clean is the place" or about "how clean is the table while we are/after we are done eating"?
I've been in the US plenty of times, but I'm a burger guy, so I made sure I tried all burger chains and as many (indi) restaurants I could. But I've never been in a Red Lobster. I do understand though that lobster-eating can be messy - thus the bib.
I can also picture that cracking lobster 'body-parts' is not the most romantic setup.
