Fine Dining - Romano's Macaroni Grill's New Bread Can F Right Off

Episode Date: May 17, 2023

They changed the bread and killed our childhood! The boys color on the table at this week's pick: Romano's Macaroni Grill Garrett wants to bottle up Michael's spaghetti grease to eat later The bathroom signs are confusing Phil Romano has some crazy ideas for an Asian cuisine restaurant A pushy waiter demands to know why a nearby table is celebrating Garrett must become next week's restaurant, literally Audrey reviews the Macaroni Grill kids menu in this week's Munchkin Menu Musings JUB will make use of all your food byproducts We're on Patreon! Get an extra episode every month, extended Yelp from Strangers segments every other week, merch discounts, download access to our music including the 7 singles from our Olive Garden musical, and more!   Get our 5 Survival Tips for Casual Dining at www.finediningpodcast.com!   Send us your Romano's Macaroni Grill stories at [e-mail].   Follow us on TikTok and Instagram @finediningpodcast   Let us know where we should go next by leaving us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google, or wherever you get your podcasts. We read every one!   Next time on Fine Dining: Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville! If you have ever worked for Margaritaville and have a story to share, send it to [e-mail].

Hello, and welcome back to the Fine Dining Podcast, as in, it's fine. It's okay. This is the search for the most mediocre restaurant in America. I'm your host, Michael Ornelis. And I'm your host, Garrett Zwerk. And we're on a mission to find the perfect 5-point, 00 dining experience out of 10 at these chain restaurants that we grew up knowing, loving, eating at, and... Yeah, these were top shelf, fancy dining for us.

They were still, to me, always middle shelf. I knew what they were. I accepted them for that, and I loved them. But I don't know, I didn't have the delusions that you had. I don't want to say I had delusions. I just didn't have options. This was the best available. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We do this based on a restaurant's atmosphere. Based on the service. And of course, based on the food. We're going to the spots that we love. Today in particular, you picked a place that I loved growing up. I did too, Romano's Macaroni Grill. Yeah, the place that notoriously we have brought up multiple times throughout the run of this podcast as definitively our favorite table bread.

And... We're not the only ones. This is a common theme. You see lists of the best table breads and restaurants across America, and Macaroni Grill regularly knocks it out the park. Yeah. Speaking of knocking it out of the park, our Patreon episodes are top notch.

If you're not a subscriber to our Patreon, the link is in our description to this episode, or you can just go to patreon.com slash fine dining podcast. We've gone to Rudy's. We've gone to Fudruckers. We've gone to Portillo's. Oh, hey, speaking of Fudruckers, the founder of Macaroni Grill is also the founder of Fudruckers.

Oh, weird. We'll get into that later. And then we did Panda Inn. And now this month for May, we are going to be doing our origin. We're going to be going to a food court. And the actual food court. In which we met. Yeah, yeah.

And we are going to Frankenstein together a dinner. We'll have one dish from every single option in the food court. And we can't have any repeats between us. So I'm actually looking forward to that. So go out there, check that out. Fine dining party of two. This week, it's all about Macaroni Grill. Our table is in fact ready.

So we'll see you on the other side. Your table is ready. Follow me. Have you tried our chicken breast? Serving pancakes and rips. I recommend the spaghetti. We're here to satisfy, not to impress. Your table is ready.

Complimentary butter and bread. These walls have growth signs. Knit, knack, cowboy hat, good luck hat. Altograph guitar, some crap from your city. Behold the trash key of mediocrity. Fine dining. Just fine dining. Fine dining.

Two letters on the sign aren't shining. Neon flickering, irregular timing. Identify the perfect vibe. How the 10. Fine dining. Fine dining. First impressions. We drove quite a while.

Yeah, this was, what, two hours with traffic? Yeah, like to be 45 minutes without. After torrential downpour too. Yeah. We were going through like. Like floodwater. Yeah, literal floodwater. Yeah.

We're like the USPS for you people. All of you listeners who want this journey. Well, rain, snow, shine, whatever. We're going to bear the elements to go to macaroni grill. Yeah, we're going to bear the shine. What's that? You just said shine. I mean, what the hell is that?

Yes, we're going to bear the shine. You know, it's hard to drive with a glare sometimes. We had a case of where's the entrance. It wasn't like bad, but like normally you see the handicap parking spots. The entrance is right by those. That wasn't the case. It was like the frontage road off the freeway is what the entrance opened up to.

And there's no parking spots right there. So we kind of had to go all the way around the restaurant. It was fine, but as soon as we turned that last corner, you see like pillars and almost like a Romanesque architecture that still just hits with me. Yeah, it's like Olive Garden's Italian farmhouse, but nicer. It or not. I don't want to say this is more like a vineyard.

Yeah, almost than a farmhouse, but I loved it. Like the stone. This was a Tuscan villa. Yeah, I also have a lot of nostalgia for this. So, you know, whenever I see a macaroni grill, it just takes me back to the macaroni grill I grew up with. We walk in at about 645. Yeah, prime dining time on a Thursday.

So like it's later in the week and it is a ghost town. It really is, including like the host staff. There's no no one greets us. We just walk into just this vacuous Italian cavern and off to the right. There's a little waiting area that clearly doesn't need to be used. And a wall of olive oil, a wall of oil. Just a bunch of canisters of olive oil. But there's one canister like a skew.

It's pushed out a little more like I see this like I'm like, Oh, it's like one of those. It's one of those like Scooby-Doo bookcases where one book sticks out and you have to pull it and like a trap door opens and revolves you around. But the trap door opens and you get good service. Aw, I mean, yeah, we'll get into it. It wasn't like a terrible time, but it wasn't good to the left.

When you walk in, there's a bar area. It's the only place in the restaurant where there's TVs. Yeah, the only place which I think that's a nice change. I don't always want TVs over everywhere. It was a very appreciated touch for me. Honestly, like, you know, you go to a place like Buffalo Wild Wings. There's sports. You expect Hooters kind of same deal.

But when you're getting to like, I don't know, the Pizza Hut we went to had TVs. Okay, I'll take that. You know, it's not what you're there for. But when you're in a macaroni grill, you don't want those TVs. You do want to just have a nice dinner where you can be present. Now, the one thing that they did a little bit better than Olive Garden, because Olive Garden kind of undercut themselves with this, there weren't payment machines on the table.

Yes, this was classy. To me, those are huge red flags of like corporate cheapness. It's just like you sold out the moment you put a zeusk. Yeah, like I don't want self scan inside my restaurant. Yeah, but back to the bar area. It actually was a nice looking bar. It wasn't in use. There was no bartender behind the bar, no patrons in there.

But it was a nice look. Yeah, it was pretty classy in an unexpectedly pleasant way. And so we walk forward. No one greets us. We're looking around. There isn't even, I mean, in the back of the restaurant, there's servers walking by their tables, because all patrons were kind of pushed to the back.

Oh, you know, we went to the bathroom before anyone even talked to us. Yeah, well, it was kind of like, well, I guess the host is gone. So we both have to pee. We've been in the car for two hours. Let's get that done with. And then we'll come back. And my favorite little detail is they got the signs all weird. Yeah, like the signs were on both sides of the door.

And and not consistent. Like a lot of places will do the themed doors where it's like, you know, something spicy. Like Elmen's or like blokes and shilas is what they have it out back. But no, macaroni grill decided to go English and Italian, but they didn't really get it right. So there is a door that says men and Wimini, which sounds like women I thought was women in Italian.

I was like, oh, they mixed them up. No, I looked it up. Wimini, Omini, or however you say it is also men. OK, Italian men, American men. Are you saying Italian men or women? I am not making that clear. I think that's what you're saying. I'm saying Italian men sound like women.

OK, there we go. To all you Italian listeners out there, you are as strappingly masculine as you choose to be. With that little purse that you carry. But then on the inside of the men's bathroom is a sign that says women. So what this tells me so far, Italian men and American men are allowed in this restroom. American women are allowed to leave.

OK, so I don't know how they got in there. Hey, I just woke that woman up that was taking a bathroom nap. Sometimes the floor is comfortable. Now, the party gets a little crazier because on the other door, the women's restroom, it says women in English and senore, which is a different Italian way to say man. So Italian men are just entitled to both restrooms. So maybe one's Italian man, maybe one's wussy Italian man.

Yeah, the masculine senore and the women. I don't know enough about the etymology of the Italian language to really be ripping on them. But I love the idea that just Italian men can go wherever they please. But you know what? We're Americans, so of course we can ignorantly make fun of any other language. That's the case. And that's what's happening here.

And more importantly, it's kind of what macaroni grill is doing with their bathrooms. And then to clarify on the right, it has one of those traditional like office building plaques that also says women with like the little stick figure on it. So yeah, that one has extra clarification. I bet that one had braille. Like that's the legally required thing to stick on there. And but the men's did not have that.

So the men's restroom, the Wild Wild West, the women's restroom, a crapshoot. Literally. OK. And the bathrooms, they were OK. Yeah, they were clean enough. They were clean, but there was just so much water on the sink counter, which is a pet peeve of mine.

At least the water wasn't milky like in Applebee's. Yeah, that's true. So we left the restroom, went back to the front, and even still the host was very slow to kind of notice us. She eventually did, took us to the back. Now, Garrett, there is one distinct difference about how we were presenting ourselves. You know, you and I, we're lords of mediocrity.

We live, sleep, eat, breathe mediocrity. I dress mediocrity often. The amount of times I'm wearing sweatpants. I know it's unacceptable, but I like to be comfortable. But not on this day. On this day, we dressed to the nines. Yes. We were in suits, ties, I had a vest on.

And it gave this impression that we are too fancy to be seated at a table with paper over it for coloring. Yes. So she walked us right back to a booth and like in a hyperventilative panic, I was just like, can we go there? And then I'm like, yeah, we're adults. We want to color.

Yeah, and they were like, oh, OK, sure. Set us down there, gave us our menus walked away. So now we're seated. We can see the atmosphere all around us, but that's not the order this podcast works in. We got to learn a little bit about the background of Romano's macaroni grill before we tell you all about the atmosphere.

Garrett, have you rounded up some rusty facts for us? I have indeed made some fresh, rusty facts for you. Let's round them up. All right, Garrett, you've got some rusty facts rounded up for us. But we know that in rusty fact round up, despite the fact that we're cowboys just hurting some rusty facts and cowboys have whips. We're just treating it like cattle.

My mom doesn't like the whip sound, so we have to censor it and replace it with another noise that I don't even know if it's more enjoyable to her. But we got to do something instead of whipping. What do we need to do for macaroni grill? What makes sense? A spaghetti splat. A spaghetti splat?

Just the sound of plopping into a bowl? Yes, sure. All right, let's get into it. Hit me with that first plop. Romano's macaroni grill was founded by Philip J. Romano in 1988 in San Antonio. Hey, it's the same age as me. And so I mentioned Philip J. Romano.

You may remember him as also the founder of Fudruckers. Yeah. Another thing about Philip you may have forgotten, he used to own karate dojos. Oh, I do remember that. So in my mind forever, he is going to be karate Phil. Yes. He was largely inspired by his own real from Italy,

Italian grandmother's cooking. The way you said that sounded so like my girlfriend in Canada kind of vibes. Oh, she goes to another school. You've not heard of it. I phrase it that way because macaroni grill has also been accused of making up a fake Italian woman for the recipes.

Oh, so like a little bit of a Lucille situation. But I think it's completely OK. The I guess character that was quote unquote made up was a mama character, which fine, whatever, say your imaginary mother made these meatballs when they were actually inspired by your grandmother. OK, I don't see a big lead there. That's cool.

And he is Italian. Yeah. Yeah. But karate Phil, please stick to your own heritage going forward. That's just something you should do because in the spring of 2020, karate Phil opened up a restaurant inspired by his affinity for all things Asian.

Oh boy. Tell me more about this. This place is named some dang good Chinese food. You said is not was this place still this place is still open. Oh my gosh. Some dang good Chinese food. Great. I can't even get through the title of this.

This is so absurd. Is it spelled S. U. M. Some. Yep. S. U. M. Some dang good. Great. But it confuses me too. So this is a master of karate. Right.

Maybe friendship too. For everyone. Yes. Yeah. But so karate Japanese art. Let's go into Chinese. Oh sure. Yeah.

Let's do that. That just that makes sense. It gets better on the menu. There are very original witty phrases such as Confucius say bottoms up by the drinks. OK. And by the dessert menu. Who doesn't love a happy ending?

Oh God. How do you feel about this? My immediate reaction was just straight up laughter. I read this. I'm like this happened in 2020. Yeah. And was kind of just brushed under the rug because we had other shit to deal with in 2020.

It wasn't even brushed under the rug. It got called out immediately. And those phrases are no longer on the menu. When karate Phil was confronted about this, what he did was deflect and blame the people for being offended by it. Ah like a mature adult. Oh speaking of more mature adult things that Phil embroils himself in. Sure.

He also recently settled a lawsuit in which he was caught on camera cupping the butt of a female employee only to later defend himself with the rationale of I thought you were just one of the guys. Because that's what you do with guys. Yes. You walk around and cup their butt. Yeah, that's just a typical male greeting. Like who doesn't love just a handful of male bro butt.

I know you learned that in elementary school. When I hang out with my D&G group, we just walk around touching each other in the butt. Yeah, I think that's a polite greeting. That's how you build camaraderie. Yeah. What's wrong with society that this is so wrong? There's a little bit more of this. So further details of the case involve some workplace retaliation, demands to see the harassed

employee's cell phone while on the clock, and just general assholery. Good news though. Philip J. Romano sold the franchise and concept rights to Macaroni Grill to the company that owns Chili's and Magianos in 1989. Oh, so he sold it real quick. Yeah, he just he just jumped in and made his money. Yeah, interesting. There are currently 40 locations in 15 states.

Wow, they're dwindling. They are. And this is part of their strategy. There are two airport locations at Chicago O'Hare and Orlando. Naturally. They're trying to put themselves in high traffic areas like airports. Makes sense. So they're currently at 40, which is down from 230 locations in 2008.

Wow. OK, so they've dropped 80 percent almost. There were 167 remaining in 2015. It was down to 116 two years later in 2017 at the time when they filed for bankruptcy. Yeah. The chain went through a number of sales over this period, including a particularly disastrous run from 2013 to 2015 with the former owners of Joe's Crab Shack, which caused this parent company to go into literal bankruptcy.

Which is what happens when you change your amazing bread recipe. Sorry, I'm getting emotional about it, but they deserve this. Despite the fact that the word macaroni is literally in the name, there's only one menu item that actually contains the macaroni noodle, the mac and cheese bites. The chain from time to time has offered the honor wine system, which means they leave a bottle of wine at the center of every single table. Mm hmm. And then it's up to the customers to tell them how many glasses they've consumed.

And I have a feeling this finally died because of the pandemic. Oh, because of health reasons and shared bottles. Yeah, you can't do that now. So they leave the bottle out for the next table. Macaroni grill used to offer a line of frozen pasta entrees available at grocery stores, just like Lubies does with their mac and cheese and square fish. Do you know which items? Uh, like there's a penny pasta, I think a bow tie pasta thing, something with chicken.

But as far as I can tell, it no longer exists. Yeah, like it's still displayed on websites, but it's out of stock everywhere. Gotcha. One last fact. Olivia Rodrigo's favorite comfort meal and yearly birthday dinner is the signature truffle mac and cheese bread and a Coke from her Manos macaroni grill. She's a Disney star, right? I don't know, she came up through the Disney machine and just over the pandemic turned into

one of the hottest recording artists on the face of this earth. Wait, so she likes the current bread? I don't know when they changed the bread. I don't either. Like she's, I don't know, maybe she's like 20, 21 now at most. God, she doesn't know what she was missing. I don't know if she knows the old bread. That old bread was just the stuff of legend.

And I am eternally sad that I will probably never have it again. I researched to find the point when this bread recipe changed and I see nothing. Yeah, I see no mention on the Internet of any change in it. But I see a lot of people talking about, hey, I went back as an adult and this bread is nowhere near what I remembered. Yeah, like it's a common sentiment, but I don't know if it's just nostalgia or it's definitely not. No, there is a marked texture like I remember the differences physically.

We'll get into it when we talk about food. That has been this week's Rusty Facts Roundup. They have a lot of wine mom energy decorations. If you looked at the table behind me, they were like, we didn't get a picture because there was a couple eating there. And if I would have taken a picture, it would have just looked like I was taking a picture of them. But there were signs that had the energy of like, it's wine o'clock.

All you need is wine. There was one sign that just said eatery. Yeah, there was a sign that just said eatery. I don't know what the font is, but it's a stereotype cursive. Yeah, it's a wine mom font. Yeah. There was a trophy on a mantle place that just clearly had the Macaroni Grill logo on it. And it was way too high for me to be able to see what the fine print on it was probably

like an honorable mention or a third place trophy or something. And they just want to put it out there so we can't read it out of reach. So they don't notice that we weren't the best. Here's our participation trophy. Oh, God, that'd be funny. There was a big open space. Stone walls, a room that was curtain off, but like a nice red theater curtain. So you almost didn't worry or wonder what was back there.

Like there was no am I missing out because it just felt complete as part of the partition was a complete part of the decoration. There were casks of wine in the center of the room. Yeah, yeah. And they were, I thought, an excellent touch. Yeah, it really makes you feel like you're right down the middle of the room. And it really broke up the environment. There were a couple of them.

And this is true of all the macaroni grills I've been to. I can't say it's true of every macaroni grill. But they almost have a series of cabinets and counters all down the middle. Yeah, like an operating hub for all the servers to kind of come to and grab whatever they need, makes things accessible. But the big wine casks, I think, just drive home the atmosphere. Yeah, they looked cool. But the operating center was like literally right over my shoulder.

Well, you did get to face the big open kitchen. Yeah, that was cool. But looking around, I also got to see the places where they didn't clean the restaurant. Yeah, by the corners and the floor, by the doors, there was dirt and grime. The countertops in the middle of the restaurant. By the floor, you could there was a buildup. You can tell they didn't clean the corners. No one got down on their hands and knees and really cared for the place.

I don't know if it's fair for me to expect someone to do that. I mean, you do expect a place to at least not have buildups of grime. I think that's a fair expectation. How they go about solving that is up to them. Yeah, I don't want to see dirt and grime in my restaurant. Yeah, there was also a fireplace. That was nice. But all of this pales in comparison to the real part of the atmosphere that we came here for,

the paper on the table and the crayons. Yes. The freedom to artistically express ourselves. And I will say, I am proud of myself. I made a very significant amount of personal growth through this meal. I did not draw a single penis on the table. I was like a proud father. I was like, oh, they grow up so fast.

Yeah, you know, we did kind of the stereotypical things. We did tic-tac-toe and because we're both high functioning adults, we got cat's games. Like if you're an adult out here losing tic-tac-toe, what are you doing? Yeah, just stop. Just like pay a little bit of attention. It's not a hard game to tie. If you lose tic-tac-toe, it's an embarrassment. And if you win tic-tac-toe, it's honestly kind of an embarrassment

because it just means that you didn't have a functional opponent. Winning tic-tac-toe is for children against adults who are letting them win. That is what winning tic-tac-toe is. But needless to say, it was still fun to play it. Yeah. And by fun, I mean... It happened. It happened.

It was there. I like to guarantee a cat's game in every single game I play. Yeah. It's really not that hard because I'm an adult. But there are games that you're not great at. Hangman. I like to guess the weird letters in Hangman. Like W and X and crazy shit like that.

Yeah, and that's how you lose because statistically, those aren't going to be the things popping up. But I would think those are the letters you would put into the words. No. I just wanted to express a sentiment. But you did not guess it. I put R.I.P. Old Bread Recipe. The seven letters and did not guess an R in any of that,

which would have really tied it together for you. The worst part about it is you only got one of the letters at all. Words are hard. So, you know, Hangman, not your strong suit. Nope. I did draw some artwork from two episodes ago. I took you to court over Cinnabon. And I still should have won that.

Come on. Nah, I won the case. It's settled law. You bribed the judge with Cinnabon. That's the only reason you won. Cinnabon was a piece of evidence. It was Exhibit B. That's not a bribe.

Yes, it was Exhibit B. Exhibit bribe. No, boo. Anyways, I celebrated my victory by drawing winner, loser, a judge stand, a jury, which we didn't have, and just kind of making a stick figure mural of this courtroom. And then you decided to pull a karate Phil Romano and make sure that we knew which one of those stick figures was the Asian in the room.

Yeah. I drew a rice hat and I elongated my eyes a little bit. You are framing me for racism whenever the servers walk by. Yes. Yeah. Now, I do want to get into the table next to us a little bit. They had a lot of coloring going on. It looked like a family of four,

but the youngest of the four looked like they're probably college age. Yeah. So I always appreciate that we still out here coloring. Never grow up, kids. But the mom specifically had some sort of an occasion and they got her a piece of tiramisu. And instead of blowing out the candle, she just kind of like waved her hand on it,

like fluttered back and forth and knocked out the candle that way. And the whole family just looked at her like, what? What was that? Like the husband was literally filming it. And he just kind of looked at her like, huh? Yeah. Which I just thought was kind of silly. But in hindsight and thinking about it,

I realized that's a great way to not get your germs all over a dessert that you're about to share with people. So huge props to the mom of this celebration family. Just waft out the candle. Just waft it out. Just give it a little wave and no one has to eat your spittle. I would like to award this woman for wafting out her candle with this week's This is Way Too Little.

This is Way Too Little. Oh, this is Way Too Little, a very rarely given award to just very tiny things happening in the restaurant. Very dentally earned. This is Way Too Little. So we need to rate this atmosphere. I liked it. The nostalgia factor weighed in heavily for me, but seeing all the stone, like I love the architecture

of a macaroni grill. I love the wood inside. I love the stone. I love the wine casks. I love the ability to color. All these things added up to a net positive. I didn't really see the same grime that you did. The mixing up of the Italian word for women and men

on the doors tickled me in a positive way. The wall of olive oil. There's nothing bad I noticed about it. That doesn't mean it's like top shelf. It's not amazing, but I'm going to give it a one-thumb up. A very confident one-thumb up. There were good and bad for me. Yeah.

It was a cohesive, warm, welcoming atmosphere. That was empty. Would you say it was non-offensive? No, I was incredibly offended. Okay. Well, you're the one who drew the rice hat. Damn it, Phil. There was good.

There was bad. I loved the wine casks. I did not love the dirt and grime around the base of them. Right. They tried to make you feel like you were at home. Yeah. A millennial wine mom's home. Shit, yes.

Everything that was good had something that brought it down. So I'm just going to give this zero thumbs up. Just a flat no-thumb. Flat safe wine mom home. Which arguably an unsafe place to be. When her toddler discovers her Vicodin prescription, that is not a safe home. Oh, my God.

The way that kid's not going to feel pain. All right. Moving to the next segment. Service. I feel like our service experience started off with nothing. Yeah, it started off with, is someone going to see us? We came dressed nicely. We want to be treated a certain way.

We want to be respected members of society, Garrett. That's so funny. And we didn't get it. We got just nothing. There was no one there. No one noticed us. Went to the bathroom, came back. And then the host we saw was around a corner,

folding a bunch of silverwares into napkins and stuff. And just kind of looked like, may I help you? Before getting up and coming over. But also, I think that's the appropriate amount of hustle for an empty restaurant. Well, maybe the restaurant is empty because people typically get that level of hustle. I don't know.

Maybe. But took us back to our table. We sat down. As we said before, she sat us in a booth first. Yeah, and we had to be placed at a coloring table. But this wasn't the only time we saw this hostess. Because partway through, before we had even ordered, she just comes by and asks if she can take our menus.

No, you can't take our menus yet. That's not your job. That's what the server does. Once we've ordered, you give them back and then they bring them up to the front. Like, why are you trying to take our menus when we haven't even ordered yet? Yeah.

And then the manager came by up to her and almost immediately was like, no, not these ones. And she was like, well, I checked the other station and there's like none there. And she's like arguing back to her manager. So there's like a menu shortage? I guess. There were QR codes on the table for those QR code menus.

So during the pandemic, the QR code thing was understandable. Made a lot of sense. Yeah, it was innovative. Good job. But now just bring us back the regular menus. I'm getting sick of this. I feel like I shouldn't have to get my phone all sticky and dirty just to read your menu.

Wait, why is your phone getting sticky and dirty? Because I'm eating food. You don't have the food yet. You're using it to order. You have no food yet. I don't have food yet. Good point. Why?

My hand's sticky. I don't know. This is a horrifying mystery. This is a legitimate problem I have though. This is actually a reason that I'm annoyed by these menus. Well, so my problem with the QR code menu. My hands are sticky. That seems like an issue that you need to solve.

Okay, when you want to know what do you want for dessert, you've already had your meal. So you take out your phone. Yeah, but regardless, my issue is that most places QR code menus are not formatted well. The only way that you can do it is if your QR code takes me to a standalone PDF. But if I'm like loading web pages that have all these image assets on it and one thing loads before the other,

like a lot of these places QR code destinations are nightmares to navigate. They're not smooth. If you don't have great service in the restaurant, it's like, great, now I can't order. So, you know, there are a lot of issues with it. But the more concerning thing here is just why are your fingers sticky? Then there was our actual server. And the one thing that I was always used to at Macaroni Grill growing up

was the server would walk over, grab a crayon and write their name in an orientation that's upside down to them, but forward to us. And we didn't get that. And that's how they introduced themselves. And it was just a nice little touch that I would be excited for. And I'm wondering, was that just a location that I grew up with? Was that standard of other macaroni grills? I don't know.

Or did she just think we were fancy boys and didn't want that? Now our server was, she was okay. She didn't make a ton of appearances. Now she brought us the things we needed. Which for an empty restaurant, I don't know. Like it was a little slow, whatever. It's fine. What I really liked, she gave us three seconds on bruschetta.

Well, just the bread. Yeah. And that bruschetta was good. We'll talk about that. But that scored her some points for sure. Yeah. And she didn't do anything wrong. No.

All of our needs were met in an appropriate time. Like she did her job. But she's not the server that stood out to me the most. No. There was a guy who was just, I don't know, he had very like, I've used this term I think before on the podcast, but it hasn't been applicable for a while. He had camp counselor vibes.

Like the tone that he spoke to his table with. He had the other table that was behind us with the mom that wafted out the candle. They asked if they had any desserts for a special occasion. And he asked like, oh, what's the special occasion? And they kind of answered vaguely. You know, because it's their business. They can celebrate whatever they want.

Maybe she's just like, recovered from a disease or had like, it could be something very personal to the family where it's like, we don't want to publicly say this. We don't want to make it a thing. And this guy decided to just just go, why won't you tell me already? But like trying to keep as cool, but like really prying. And it just, it hit with such an energy that it was unusual.

And I just wondered, what's going on over there? Garrett, what is going on over there? What are they celebrating and why is he so interested? I think they're celebrating the fact that they found one of the last remaining Romano's macaroni grills still alive in its natural environment in the wild. Like they didn't even look it up on their phone. No, they went on a macaroni grill safari and they found one.

And they didn't want to tell him because they didn't want to hurt. Like, how do you tell someone, you're the last of a dying breed? We ventured all the way to Cerritos to find you. Which is funny because there are still like 40 something left, but they are spread real thin. I think that's enough to be on the restaurant endangered species list. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. They're like Phil Romano's other project,

Fudruckers, who's still on the threatened species list. But no, these are straight up endangered. And hopefully they don't go extinct. No, we don't want that to happen. We don't want them to become the food edition of Blockbuster. Not at all. That would be painful. But really, these are very kind people.

They are. Think of the amount of existential dread you would feel if you were suddenly told your entire existence is in jeopardy. And I am here just to celebrate the fact that I found you while you're still here. Almost as if your demise is inevitable. Yeah, it'll make you feel like you're in a human zoo. Is macaroni grill a human zoo? Macaroni grill is in fact a human zoo.

And this was just a table of kindhearted individuals not trying to upend anyone's grasp on existence. I think you nailed it, Garrett. I think that's what was going on over there. It's like the Truman Show, but with pasta. Yeah, I think putting all these elements together, the service for me, I felt like I was left wanting. I felt like the only thing that was like a really big positive

was the extra dose of bruschetta bread. But it was just a little slow. The stuff with the hostess kind of bugged me at the front, like notice me. Notice me. I wore a suit, damn it. But no, no, we got noticed with our menus. Yeah, the shiny menu in our hand. I must have it.

I'm going to go one thumb down. It's not like this adamant I hated it, but it's not good. And I wouldn't call it neutral. So one thumb down. I agree with you in sentiment. I think the experience was closer to one thumb down. But hey, these are endangered species we're talking about. Yeah.

And I think they get the endangered species bump. So zero thumbs up for the service. Munchkin menu musings. My name is Audrey and I'm eight years old. I'm going to be reviewing the kids menu from Ronald's Macaroni Grill. They had a word search. Some of the words were easy. Swimsuit, camera, clothes, hat, jacket, map, toothbrush.

I like the word search. Then they had a word scramble. They had me unscramble city names in Italy. Some of the cities were Milan, Naples, Rome, Venice. I didn't like the word scramble. I skipped the part to learn Natalia. I had fun doing the connected dots. They formed the leading tower pizza.

Then on the back, they had a maze. It was called its pizza tie. I had to get the tomato, the cheese, the mushroom, and the olive. All to the middle where the pizza was. The last thing they had, I could write a postcard from Italy. I wrote it to my mom. It was pretty. Overall, I'll give this menu a score of 8 out of 10.

It was a pretty good menu. This was Audrey for much good menu music. Thank you. Food. All right. So yeah, we're opening with the table bread. This is this is why we came here. We lay awake at night just thinking about this bread.

I mean, truly, especially as a kid. That's what kept me wanting to be like mom and dad. Can we go back to macaroni grill? It was that bread. I didn't care beyond that what I ate. Like I would always get some form of pasta usually. But I wasn't there for that. I was there for the bread.

Exactly. And dare I say, the bread was by far the weakest part of my meal. Overall, I actually enjoyed the food. I did too. But this bread was just a massive disappointment. It was hard, spongy and just uninspiring. Yeah, the texture of it, because it used to be just this pull apart bread. You would as a table just, you know, someone just you reach onto the loaf,

you pull it off. And so I don't know if this was a pandemic change, because it's like we don't want everyone at the table handling the bread. But you, you know, grabbed a knife, cut it right down the center, and it just had that like you're sawing into crust sort of feel. And it just, it wasn't that before. Maybe I'm wrong with this. But I remember this being more of like a focaccia.

Yeah. It was definitely not like it had a lot more like rosemary on it before. Yeah. It was so well seasoned. That's why I was thinking focaccia. It's like the rosemary on top. This had like ground up rosemary mixed within the dough. Like it's rosemary peasant bread.

It used to have like almost like basted with love around it with like an olive oil. And they still did. So I noticed next to the bread warming tray. Yeah. They had this large open container of olive oil. Yeah. So they just coat it. Yeah.

Yeah. You got it. It was a really unenthused coating. Yeah. It just comes. It's got like hard edges almost like it looks like trapezoidal when it's on this plate. Yeah. It's shrunk.

The bread used to be bigger. It used to be rounder. It used to just look like something you would find in a Disney cartoon. I was trying to figure out what the hell happened to this bread. Yeah. I'm looking online. I'm looking at the copycat recipes. Some of the older ones reference focaccia more.

And the new ones are all okay. This is straight up rosemary peasant bread. I just want to pour one out for our fallen homie. The old table bread. Easily the worst part of the meal. Dry had like even in olive oil it was dry. Now the olive oil was great olive oil. Yeah.

It's always great. It's always great. But I'm not scoring this thing based on the strength of what I dipped it in. I'm scoring it on its own merits because that's what I would have scored it on before. 4 out of 10 for this bread. And you know what part of that is resentment on my own part. But 4 out of 10 for what used to be 10 out of 10 bread. Yeah.

I'm with you. I also exact 4 out of 10 bread for me. It's dry, lifeless, flavorless sadness. Yeah. So let's move on to the appetizers. From here on out, everything I enjoyed. Me too. We got crispy Brussels sprouts.

Whenever I see Brussels sprouts on an appetizer menu. We have to get them. They're whoever decided that Brussels sprouts was going to be this vegetable that we all put stock into and serve at restaurants. I feel like this has been like a last 10 years phenomenon. I actually appreciate that. Yes, it is a last 10 years phenomenon. There was a genetic change in the makeup of the typical Brussels sprout within this time period.

Is that true? Yes. Like an evolution? Yeah. Evolution, selective breeding, something like that. So as of now, we are eating a different variety of Brussels sprout than we ate as children. It was engineered to be less bitter, sweeter. So like everything we love about it now was not there when we were kids.

So. Okay. Like you because you are on the train right now. Me too. It's like I grew up not liking Brussels sprouts. I'm sure like most people did. That's the stereotypical thing to not like as a kid. Yeah.

I didn't know that. That's actually really cool. This was solidly good. It had like a balsamic glaze that I thought worked really well. It was good. To me, it was a seven out of 10 Brussels sprout. I'll get these a six out of 10. My biggest knock on these, they were a little too flaky.

I wanted a little more heft to them. It's like you're frying these in a cast iron pan. The grease really soaks in and these were just a little too light and feathery for me. But the flavor was great. Balsamic glaze was good. I love the wispy crisp edges of a Brussels sprout when I get those. Yeah, I do agree that you want more texture there. Maybe I just cherry picked the good ones

because I didn't have that problem with it. But I mean, you're also more of an al dente pasta person. So I know you like just a little bit more to bite into. Yeah. Then we got the bruschetta. This had so many flavors for what looked like it was just a slice of white bread cut diagonally. And it had grill marks on it, had a little olive oil dip, and then the tomatoes were so delicious.

They were complex and juicy. It's I think the tomatoes paired perfectly with the olive oil. Perfect. It was actually just so well done. I wrote down a nine out of 10, but thinking back on it, this may make up for that old table bread. Well, nothing makes up for taking away the old table bread. But they took away a part of our souls.

They took away part of our freaking childhoods. You know, I was about to give the bruschetta a 10 out of 10, but based on the way you just phrased that, I'm just going to go with my original score of nine out of 10 on this bruschetta. But it is very good bruschetta. It is excellent bruschetta. And I'll give this a 9.5 out of 10, just for the flavor explosion. The crease of the olive oil paired perfectly

with the fresh acidity of the tomato. There was the perfect amount of garlic mixed in. Oh, man. Yeah. As a complete dish, this was flavor fauna. Oh, yeah, yeah. You got lost for a second. Yeah, it was so good.

I got the pasta molano. It had sun-dried tomato, mushroom and chicken, all in a garlic cream sauce. Yeah. The flavors were complex, and there was like just a hint of spice that would make a person from the Midwest notice. So like, I want more spice. Oh, yeah. Oh, oh, that's hot there.

Don't you know? Oh, oh, oh, that's hot. But yeah, I genuinely enjoyed the dish. It felt comforting. It's something I would eat on a cold day at home. It's seven out of 10. It was a good pasta. I tried your bite of chicken, and I rather enjoyed it.

I got to create your own pasta. I had spaghetti with bolognese and garlic and Italian sausage. The sausage on its own, I thought was like an eight. This was a really well done Italian sausage. You gave me a bite. It was excellent. Right? You know, I'm going to just say the whole dish was an eight.

They had full cloves of garlic in there. I saw that. You know, you just get a nice blast of garlic with the spaghetti bolognese, which was a good thick texture, like just an excellent meaty ragu. Great flavors. Yeah, just it's a very good, I mean, eight to me is kind of like, you're looking at the bottom end of great.

This was a great, a great entree. Glad I got it. No regrets. Have I had better? Absolutely. But who cares about that? You're getting a strong recommendation. If you're going to macaroni grill and you want the spaghetti

bolognese with garlic and Italian sausage, you're going to enjoy it. It's rich. It's savory. Can't go wrong with it. But once you're done with it, at the bottom of the bowl, there is just a collection of grease. Oh my God.

And Garrett, you said the most psychotic thing I have ever heard a person say. I'm going to give it this week's This Is Way Too Much Award. This Is Way Too Much. You said, I want to bottle that up and eat it later. Yes, that was the most appetizing looking grease I have seen in such a long time. Just the orange glow of that grease looked so good.

I want to put that on top of a pizza. I want to dip breadsticks into that. I want to, I just, I want pasta with just that. Garrett, I wipe grease off of pizza. You're a monster. That's the best, tasty part to live longer. So I don't want the part that's like objectively the worst part of it for you.

I don't want more of that. Sure, it's tasty meat and sauce drippings. That's what it is. Of course, it's going to be good, but to bottle up actual heart disease and eat it later is psychotic and way too much. I'm just going to say, life is not worth living without that orange grease, man. I will gladly use scrounge through dumpsters for grease traps.

I'll gladly knock two years out of my life if I can find a bottling source of that orange goodness. Horrifying. You say things that cause me to not fall asleep as fast. And now a word from our totally not made up sponsor. Oh, hi there. It's your favorite sponsor job and I'm back with a brand new service for you.

Bottling leftover bull bottom pasta grease. That just screams job. So if you're a restaurant who finds yourself doing dishes with all this leftover pasta grease and you don't know what to do with it because it looks so delicious and you feel guilty washing it down the drain, hit up job. And I'm not going to stop there. There's all sorts of buy products that I can help you

figure out what to do with. Shrimp tails. No one will notice if you crush them up real small and put them in your crushed red pepper flakes. Probably won't be as spicy. At least not in the traditional way. What about that layer of film that develops at the surface of the minestrone you left out?

Make a kid's day. He can use it as a bouncy ball. I like one of those sticky hand things. I don't know. I'm just spitballing, but jumps good for the environment. Reduce waste. Find alternate uses for things. So if that sounds good to you, bring me in.

Just call me. I don't have a phone, but if you grind up all the crayons on your table and do a little rail of shavings, I'm really good at ending up in places that look like they have cocaine. I gotta go. Okay, bye. I told you at the restaurant there's this pizza joint

that saves up the extra grease from their amazing pepperoni cups. Yeah. They put it in a bottle, mix it with ranch, and then they drizzle it over the top of their pizzas. I don't like this. Oh, man. I mean, I'm sure it's tasty.

I'm sure it's very tasty, but man, so unhealthy. Now, speaking of unhealthy, dessert. We got the decadent chocolate cake. It was a very rich cake with crispy toffee on top. Those bits were amazing. They were almost like butterscotchies in taste. It had the texture of toffee and the taste of a butterscotch chip. It was putting in the work, man.

It lent so much flavor to the full bite. Now, the whipped cream that came with this, I thought was very thick and good tasting whipped cream. I loved it. I'm going to go eight out of 10 as well on this decadent chocolate cake. Thanks to the PEDs. Thanks to the PEDs.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We've accused the crispy cinnamon tortilla strips at Chevy's as being dessert performance enhancing dessert toppers. And in this case, those crispy toffee bits were absolute PEDs. Yeah, but I mean, hey, they enhanced it. I'm here to eat it.

Eight out of 10. Oh, and it was picturesque. I do want to address that. Yeah, it looked good. It looked like a piece of stone architecture but made of chocolate. Yeah, it looked stone because to me, it was a little too stiff.

It was stiff. It was a little dry. It was a light on flavor. I disagree with, I mean, look, you can interpret it how you want. I disagree with dry and the stiff was, it wasn't from a staleness though. It was from a thickness.

It was dense. It was in a way that I love. Yeah, it was a very dense cake. I didn't enjoy it. I can only give this whole thing a six out of 10 really thanks to the Butterscotch Bites. Wow. All right.

Well, different strokes for different folks. This is the first cake I've had in a little bit that I didn't feel was quote unquote store bought. I've been using that throwing that phrase around and this I felt like, okay, they made this here. I don't feel like I could just go to like Trader Joe's and find something similar. I agree.

Like I could not find this to Trader Joe's but I could find this at a Shell station. Incorrect. This was gas station cake. Incorrect. And an insult to all things that chain restaurants do for us, Garrett. Overall, I enjoyed my food experience.

I mean, that bread being different was dramatically bad. I feel a profound sense of loss. But after that hurdle, everything was good to great. I'm still going to go two thumbs up despite the change table bread. With macaroni grill, you learn a life lesson. When you love something, sometimes you have to let it go. And this night, I think we let go of the bread.

Yeah. Once we were able to get past that, we had a very good meal. I agree. I'll give this a strong one thumb up for the personal growth I gained in this experience. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The one thumb up is for the journey you went on. Yes, we learned how to take loss as men.

Yes. And grow and express ourselves. And next time we will, I guess, be a little bit better prepared to handle it. We will cope. Well, I guess all that's left to do is put a score on this bad boy. But before we give our score, let's see what the people

are saying. Let's head on over to Yelp and see what other people are saying about this location of macaroni grill. Let's get some Yelp from strangers. We need a little yelp, a little yelp, a little yelp from strangers. A one star, two star, three star, four by Y. So get a little yelp, a little yelp, a little yelp

from strangers. A little yelp, a little yelp. Give us those complaints while you literally whine and die. All right, this is Yelp from strangers where we go to Yelp and read out our favorite one, two, three, four, and five star Yelp reviews from the very restaurant location that we visited.

People are very fickle. Oftentimes their ratings don't match their words. And that's what we love the most. They're just filled with typos and grammatical errors. It's a blast for us. We're going to give you just a couple of these here. And then if you want to hear the full segment, all five of these reviews, you can head on over to our Patreon

and the full segment will be uploaded there the day before the episode drops. Okay, let's start off with a one star review. Let's do it. Robert G from 19 days ago. He wrote this review 19 days ago, but it was from last year. He's just now getting around to do it.

12 16 2022 was the last time we gave them one more chance. Service was once again awful. Hold on. I just want to go back to I love the fact that he wrote this in March for an experience three months ago. Has he been losing sleep over this singular macaroni grill experience? He just needed to get it off his chest.

Guys, I need closure. I'm gonna drop it on Yelp. He keeps going. The vibe you get is one of resentment. Resentment that you're there. The servers are for themselves and don't bother to help one another. So he's resenting his time there quite obviously.

I'm wondering like, was he a server there and was let go? I wonder if there's like a backstory to this or like, he got scorned by another server. And this is his revenge. A one star Yelp review three months later. That or he just witnessed something traumatic. Like one server was drowning in olive oil and the other one was just like, nah, fam and kept moving.

I like that option a little better. Witnessed an actual olive oil death macaroni grill. That's why they built the wall of oil. It's the tomb. It is the tomb of the drowned in olive oil employee. And you can hear the screams of that employee. Still to this day. So they say.

Five star review. This is from Clay B. 10 months ago. It is the only Yelp review he has written, right? Yes. But he has 235 friends on Yelp. Is that what that is? Yes.

The first one is the amount of Yelp friends. The second is review. The third is the amount of pictures you post. It's like his friends finally peer pressured him into writing. Yes. This is just his like social networking. Yelp is his Facebook. All right.

This is from 10 months ago. I took my first date, her last Thursday, and it was an absolute smash. Thanks to Stephanie. My date was very particular about her order, but Stephanie got it done to every last detail. I like that he's throwing his date under the bus already. She was pretty picky.

And I like how he wrote the word smash in all caps as if to allude to something else. Oh yeah. It was a date after all. I ordered the rustica and it was delicious. Didn't get to snap a pic of my dates meal. Can't have her think I'm too crazy yet. I also ordered a blood orange combo,

which hit the spot perfectly. I scored the second date and won't hesitate to return here. Thanks to Stephanie and the whole team. This sounds like a guy who's like, oh, I've got a spot that this girl likes. And now every date night he takes her to macaroni grill. Oh, did you ever have one of those places growing up where you just took all your dates?

Um, I had like a rotation of places I liked and just whichever one I was in the mood for would be where I went. But I don't know. I'd say overall not really. It was just places I liked. I had this Japanese steakhouse where the waitstaff started noticing me with just a revolving door of dates.

Yes. Yeah. One of them was, I got a fist pound moment. One guy was like, oh, hey, hey, man, how's it going? I noticed you. Yeah. But the most important part is, did you smash? That's what Clay B wants to know.

Yeah, Clay wants. If you'd like to hear the rest of our Yelp from Strangers segment, go on over to our Patreon and we'll be posting all five of our favorite reviews there. You can find the link for that in the description of this episode or just go to patreon.com slash find dining podcast. Final rating. All right.

Well, we know where the strangers sit. Now we need to know where do we sit at tables? We do sit at tables, Garrett. That is an accurate observation. Good for you. You get a gold star today. Yay. Do you have a score for us?

Romano's macaroni grill is that millennial mom that sells herbal life on Facebook. Despite all the hurray for wine and behind all of the living, laughing and loving, this place is crushingly depressed, riddled with anxiety and stuck in survival mode. It feels like cutbacks and full on panic now that there are less than one fifth

of the restaurant's remaining. Yeah. The dining room was just as empty. The table wine was gone. The pizza was gone. And the bread was barely a shell of its former self. Woof. This chain's company trajectory has largely been

an unmitigated shit show. But the restaurant itself is only a disaster of mediocre proportions. The food is mostly better than you'd normally make at home yourself. Sure. You can draw on the tables and the staff seem to care to varying degrees.

So I'm going to get that. I mean, one guy seemed to really care. Varying degrees of caring. Yeah. So I'll give this a 6.23. Right between Okay, so still in the... Luby slash panda in islands.

Still in a good category. Just above mediocre. Yeah. The food really saved this place. Yeah. I mean, the food was good. Okay. I mean, I think that's a fair rating.

Yeah. Just that was like a Yelp review, though, where your words had me thinking he's going to go like threes. And you doubled that. You went in the sixes. I still went higher than you. I mean, bread be damned.

This was a good meal to me. Yes, bread be damned. It was a good atmosphere. You know, the service I didn't love, but the service isn't really like the thing at macaroni grill. Like you're not going for the service. You're going for the food.

Yeah, I'm going to go 6.54. Okay. Not, you know, it's good. It's good. It's not one of the best places I've ever been, but I'll take it. I'd go back. Yeah, it's more than mediocre.

I'd happily go back if I were in the area and I was like looking for somebody to eat. I could, I could be convinced to be like, Hey, let's, let's go back to macaroni grill. Sure, I'll do that. So that means macaroni grill, you're going up on the Chachki of mediocrity, our Frankenstein wall Chachki that you can see

on our social media on Instagram and TikTok at fine dining podcast. You can see a picture of this massive scoreboard that keeps track of the running tally of all of our restaurants that we have visited so far. Macaroni grill, you go up on the Chachki of mediocrity with a 6.39, which is not mediocre enough. Not mediocre enough.

Draw from the bowl. The you must bowl. It is not in the zone of mediocrity that four to six range. We ventured too far outside. Garrett, you need to be punished. Punished me. You need to draw.

Let's stop that. I knew you would have that reaction. You need to draw from the you must bowl. Okay. This is our bowl of punishments for when one of us chooses a place that does not fall within that zone of mediocrity. Okay, I got one.

What's it say? From Mark Danger. Oh, we have one from a listener. Yes. Nice. Thanks, Mark. You must become the physical embodiment of the next restaurant pick.

So I don't know what that means. I guess if this were Hooters, would I come in an owl costume? Or would I like just come really sad? Oh, that makes sense. All right. Well, whatever our next restaurant pick is, you need to embody it.

So we need to figure out what that next restaurant is going to be. So we have a little game that we like to play to determine that. We need to play, Garrett, the headline game. The rules of the headline game are as follows. Garrett will present three headlines to Michael that include this week's restaurant.

They can be made up or they can be actual headlines. If Michael can correctly guess if at least two out of three are real or fake, he will get to select next week's restaurant. However, if Garrett stumps him, he'll select again. Are you ready to play, fellas? I am ready to play.

Okay. Every once in a while, I managed to find a theme for these. Yeah. And this is one of those weeks, and I'm elated I found this. Oh, God. Headline number one, Rodent Activity

found at Romano's Macaroni Grill in Boca Raton. I'm gonna say false. I don't know. I think the phrasing, not the, not the concept of it, but the phrasing of it, I think false. Rodent's in Boca. That's just fun.

Okay. Second headline, check this out. Woman discovers rat tail in macaroni grill pasta in viral video. I'm gonna say true. That's horrifying from rat to rat tail. Oh, no. All right. Third one, Romano's macaroni grill in Stockton,

permanently closed after health department uncovers rodent problem. I mean, that sounds like a thing that would happen, but I'm sure they would also have other things that would shut them down, not just that one. So I'm gonna say false, I think. I don't know. I'm unsure about that, but I'll say false.

The first one, Rodent Activity found at Romano's macaroni grill in Boca Raton. You said false. That one is true. I picked it because it sounds so good. Of course you did. All right. Second one, check this out.

Woman discovers rat tail in macaroni grill pasta in viral video. You said true. Yeah. That one is false. No. I made it up. You got me with the check this out.

Exactly. That sounds exactly like every single viral video post. Was I correct in the last one? And the third one, Romano's macaroni grill in Stockton, permanently closed after health department uncovers rodent problem. You guessed false, and that is indeed false.

Yeah, but one out of three means nothing. No. I lose. You get to pick the next restaurant. You get to choose the restaurant that you have to embody. What are you gonna do? Are you ready? Well, I mean, should I?

Do I need to brace myself? In some situations, the one that draws the punishment isn't actually the one being punished. So, you know what? I'm going to make this your problem this week. I am going to become the physical embodiment of Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville. No.

Get ready. I don't want to babysit drunk you. I am going to be wasted away in Margaritaville. I hate this. Get ready. I hate this so much. Oh, my God. All right.

Well, we didn't find the most of your restaurant in America with macaroni grill. Maybe it'll be Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville next time. We're going to have fun. I'm going to be so upset for just however many hours we're there as you're just boozing it up. It does sound terrible. Getting drunk on sugary margaritas at Universal City Walk.

Wow. Just like a big color-induced nightmare as you walk around covered in neon. Yeah. And maybe vomit. We'll find out. Yeah. Maybe you'll impulse buy a Cinnabon on the way out.

Oh, yeah. That's how you feed a tequila binge. Yeah. With Cinnabon. Yeah. I'll just do some frosting shots after the tequila. You would if you want to bottle up grease. God, you're such a psycho.

All right. Anyways, that's been it for this episode of the Fine Dining Podcast, the search for the most mediocre restaurant in America. We did not find that perfect five out of 10, but the journey does continue. Currently, sitting at the most mediocre we have is Applebee's at 5.02.

But we know we can do better. We can. We can get that 5.00, right? We can do it. So we're going to keep looking. Follow us on our social media, Instagram, and TikTok. At Fine Dining Podcast. Lots of fun videos.

And if you want to see the videos of Garrett wasting away in Margaritavilla as he so eloquently put it, that's where you got to go to check it out. And I'll just say this right now. Sober Garrett cannot make promises for drunk Garrett. Drunk Garrett is his own person. I don't want to meet him. If you have a problem with him.

I've never met drunk Garrett. You haven't. But you will. And if you have a problem with drunk Garrett, you have to take it up with drunk Garrett. Oh, God. We're going to end up in an actual fist fight. It's going to be so awkward doing a podcast a couple

days later with the black eye. Well, thanks for listening. We didn't find it. The search does, in fact, continue. We'll see you next time. Have a fine day. The search continues. We still need the perfect five.

The search continues. Like and subscribe. The search continues. Our journey did not conclude. The monorail search continues. Riders and iTunes review. And hey, while you're at it, why don't you go ahead and make it five stars?

Come on. Follow us on TikTok, the same on Instagram. All the socials at Find Dining Podcast. We have a website. Finddiningpodcast.com. Buy our t-shirts. Then put them on. And don't forget, you can always

suggest where we go next. OK, we're going to find it. Mediocrity. The search continues. See you next week. Heard my throat a little. Have a fine day.