Fine Dining - We Found the Greatest Server in the World at Outback Steakhouse

Episode Date: October 19, 2022

Michael & Garrett review Outback Steakhouse The boys bow to the greatness of the perfect appetizer JUB will punch your lights out Michael & Garrett are mistaken for corporate quality control/private shoppers as management rolls out the red carpet 9 year-old Miles reviews the kids menu Michael issues an apology to Anthony Anderson’s brother A former Outback employee remembers the time a couple got 5 orders of the Aussie Cheese Fries Michael challenges Garrett to The Headline Game   Get our 5 Survival Tips for Casual Dining at www.finediningpodcast.com!   Send us your Outback Steakhouse stories at [e-mail].   Follow us on TikTok and Instagram @finediningpodcast   Let us know where we should go next by leaving us a 5-star review on iTunes. We read every one!   The Search Continues: next time on Fine Dining we dine at Buffalo Wild Wings!

Hello, and welcome to the Fine Dining Podcast, our search for the most mediocre restaurant in America. I am your host, Michael Ornelas. I'm Garrett's work. And in this podcast, we're going to be eating at places that are fine. Yeah, they're just okay. You know which ones? Applebees.

Olive Garden, Red Robin. Chillies. Ooh, chillies. Love chillies. I like chillies, and that's the appropriate way to feel about it. Okay, sorry. Got to keep the excitement under control here. You know what you're going to get when you go there.

They're fine. They're fine. Just okay. It's like in the name, they're fine dining, okay? And we are searching for that perfect five, the 5.00. The moment we get that 5.00 podcast done. We have found it. We have found the most mediocre place.

This week, we're going to Outback Steakhouse. One of my personal favorites. I've had three of my 33 birthday dinners in my life at Outback. Did they sing to you? I don't remember. I don't think they did. I know they didn't last year. Yes, one of them was my most recent birthday.

So pandemic birthday at Outback. Yeah, also my 16th birthday was at an Outback. Okay, so you get a car? I didn't get a car. I got a hand me down. I got to drive my brother's old car. How rich are you, Garrett? I'm poor, currently.

Great. Our rating scale is going to be looking at three different categories. We've got atmosphere, we've got service, and we've got food, naturally. So join us, won't you? Our table's ready. Your table is ready. Follow me. Have you tried our chicken breast?

Serving pancakes and ribs, I recommend the spaghetti. We're here to satisfy, not to impress. Your table is ready. Complimentary butter and bread, these walls have road signs. Knit, knack, cowboy hat, good luck hat, autographed guitar, some crap from your city. Behold the trash key of mediocrity. Fine dining. It's just fine dining.

Fine dining. Two ledgers on the sign are shining. Neon flickering, irregular timing. Identify the perfect vibe. Palatin. Fine dining. Fine dining. First impressions.

When we walked in, prominently displayed were their magical 17 spices. They advertised that there's 17 spices inside the blooming onion. Not even the employees supposedly know what those 17 spices are. It's a mystery. They have 20 jars that are filled up with spices, and then it says 17 spices. So either there are repeats, or they are lying, or they don't know how to count. I don't think they care what we think, because of the knives. I do get a very threatening vibe from Outback Steakhouse.

Yeah, you walk in, there's also a big block of steak knives. It's like they removed the bouncer, and they're like, ah, shit, what do we do now? Okay, knives. There we go. Yeah, the rules just kind of enforce themselves. First one to the knife block wins, I guess. Yeah, you win a knife. So our weight was about half an hour.

We had time to walk to Target. I bought a live laugh love journal. And then as we were walking back, we were able to see the big neon sign on the side of Outback was not fully illuminated. Only the C and K were illuminated. So it's CK Steakhouse. And then when you look across the way, they had another like big marquee sign to the shopping center, and it's an ACK Steakhouse. Make some personal growth. It grew into ACK Steakhouse.

It grew by one letter. I'm team ACK. Team ACK. The sound you probably made when you got home and sat on the toilet for the first time. For the first time ever in my entire life. I've never sat on a toilet before. Garrett, he always stands even for number two. He can't be trusted with your animals.

Oh my God, that'll bring up a story if we ever do Denny's. Oh God, okay. More of a love story. Don't morning drink with your dad. Oh, cool. Okay. Cool. I look fine doing this.

And now, a word from our totally not made up sponsor. Oh, hi there. My name's Jub. J-U-B. And I need a job. J, I want to say U-B. But no one will employ me. That's why I make my own job.

Like this one. Are you a restaurant owner who's struggling to get people inside your doors? Well, the problem is what's going on outside your doors. I'm talking about that neon sign, baby. It's got all the letters lit up and it looks too bougie. So that's your problem. The solution is me. I'm going to come in.

I'll punch your lights out. Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba. I don't mean that in a violent sense, okay? I'm done with my parole. I'm not that kind of person anymore. I did my time. But now it's your time to shine, unlike all the letters on your sign. Because if you're just an ACK steakhouse,

you're going to be wall-to-wall working Joe's. We're talking plumbers. Non-union. We're talking electricians. Non-union. We're talking about mechanics. Apprentices. Non-union.

These are all people making underneath the median income. So I will wrap my fist up in a towel and come out. I will come and punch your lights out. If that interests you, call me. I'm in between phone numbers right now, but if you just crank down your window and scream my name, I do have a sixth sense for that sort of thing. So call me.

Jump. J-U-B. And I will punch your lights out. I hear sirens in the distance, so I got to go. Atmosphere. We walked over the table and we saw classy walls, black and white photos of kangaroos, different national monuments of what's that one like?

Oh, the Sydney Opera House. Sydney Opera House. That was there. There's that big rock. I don't know what it's called. But these are all things you'd expect at a fancy steakhouse, but then giant surfboard. Big boomerang.

It's just like what? I get it. They're Australian, but it's also like corny. It's like they would put googly eyes on every single kangaroo. I kind of wanted to do that. It is exactly like googly eyes on a kangaroo. I think every picture of us should have googly eyes. Oh, God.

Audience, all pictures of us need googly eyes. Get on your Photoshop game. It's so weird. The bathrooms are themed like blokes and shilas, which is just, I guess they're slang for guys and girls. Their website admits that the founder is from Tampa Bay, Florida. Has never been to Australia? Yeah.

There's like a cookies notification that just says, we value your privacy, might. It's just like. What are you trying here? You say you're upscale, but Australia is an inherently like fun and not like fancy theme to have for your restaurant. Then we start moving toward the table.

We get seated and there's a big ass light fixture dangling down. Overhead light is about forehead level. You can't lean in without bumping it. They also had a photographer. Yeah, they're trying to be classy. If you go to those really upscale things, they'll be like, oh, can I take a picture? They'll take a picture of everyone at your table,

and then they'll try and sell it to you at the end of the meal. Outback Steakhouse did that to us. Every single table. Yeah. They had this really tall Russian woman who smelled like vanilla, came over to all the tables, and I think she had the same three photos that she tried to get. One where you're across the table from each other,

the normal person, and then she would have you move around to the same side of the table and have you sit next to whoever you're with. So Garrett and I did that kind of staring lovingly into our blooming onion. Yeah, I know. Because of that light, the only way we could lock eyes is if we were close to each other. Lock eyes with the blooming onion. Please put googly eyes on a blooming onion.

Yes. Don't eat the googly eyes. Don't eat the googly eyes. Or like a cake boss, make edible googly eyes. Is it cake or is it a blooming onion? Yeah. That would actually be really funny. So at the end of the meal, the Eastern European camera lady

brings us this photo that she took of us and was like, that'll be $20 or $35 for all three. Well, there's really only one good one. So we spent $20 and got a photo watermarked with the Outback logo of Garrett and I staring at a blooming onion. But there was actually another good one. Yeah, it was me reaching across the table trying to interlock fingers with you and you avoiding touching me like I have monkey pox.

I didn't want your shit food essence on my hands. Okay. We'll talk about this later, but my half the blooming onion, pristine is not so much. Mine was crumbling. So yeah, we just bought the one photo. We got the one of us staring into the blooming onion and that'll be probably the first thing we post on our social media.

That's right. We're on Instagram at Find Dining Podcast. We're on TikTok at Find Dining Podcast and you can email us whatever you want. Find Dining Podcast at gmail.com. We might regret that, but I don't know. Maybe we won't. How was the quality of our tabletop, Garrett?

You brought up the first story you brought up. Very interesting. It was something about Anthony Anderson? Yeah, not the actor. So when I was in middle school, I had a friend named Anthony Anderson. This was like a year before the actor Anthony Anderson was in Agent Cody Banks with Frankie Muniz, right? Yeah, Frankie Muniz was like that.

Yeah, and I'm pretty sure Anthony Anderson, that was kind of his first thing that I ever heard of him and I remember being like, oh, this guy has my friend's name, but is nothing like my friend in any way. I was at a birthday party which was like a sleepover at Anthony Anderson's and there were a bunch of people there and I'm a big stupid wrestling fan and everyone left me upstairs to go get breakfast.

First mistake. First mistake. And I was like, oh, cool. I'm going to do a moonsault which is like a backflipping body splash off of a dresser onto the bed. So let me get this straight. You're alone in this man's bedroom and you're like, how am I going to get into his bed?

No, it was like the game room had like a guest bed in it. So it was like the room that we all slept in that night. Okay. There were like six or seven of us probably. Did you all sleep in the same bed? No, there were like couches and like the floor and like stuff like that. Stop trying to turn this into something it's not.

And so I climbed up onto the dresser and I did like a backflip onto the bed and just collapsed a corner of the bed like completely blew out the, what's it called, just the post underneath. Yeah. And just the bed was like one corner of it just completely deflated basically.

Like the wooden slats underneath were broken too. Now imagine if this was a water bed. Okay. No one seemed to hear it. And so I like, you know, look around. Coast is still clear. I reach under the bed and I just start pulling on that post to straighten it out to just give it a semblance

of the appearance that it's not broken. And as soon as I do that, Nick Anderson, his younger brother, runs into the room and jumps on the bed and it re-collapses and all the heat is off of me. I don't know if he got like grounded or in trouble for it. I was just kind of like, oh shit, I'm going to go get breakfast. And I just left him to dry.

And I'm glad to get it off my chest. So Nick Anderson, the fine dining podcast officially apologizes for your childhood trauma. Is that a recurring segment we're going to do? We're going to apologize to one person every week. Well, I'm sure we've caused enough people trauma. That's fair. So another part of the atmosphere is who are we dining with?

Who's amongst us, right? There was this, I'd say average couple, a few tables over. How do you define an average couple? There was really nothing interesting about them. Most people aren't interesting. That's not true. There was something interesting about them. They ordered a blooming onion and for the 40 minutes

that we overlapped in our dining experience, they didn't touch it. Monsters. They didn't talk to one another. They were on their phones the entire time. I'm just like, what's going on over there? Oh, you said it. What'd I say?

What's going on over there? What's going on over there? Should I wear it? Should I tan? What is going on over there? What is going on over there, Garrett? I think they're trying to create an alibi. I think they're trying to throw off the police's timeline.

They just came back from a sit and sleep. Uh-huh. And they tore off every single mattress tag. Oh my gosh. Animals they are. Full sentence. No mercy at all. I hope they get a tough judge.

They went through every single mattress row by row and just ripped it off. They didn't even use two hands. One hand only, grabbing that, manhandling that tag. And then they jaywalk in a hurry over to Outback. They're like, can you sit us right now? And they're like, that's worse. They're like, we have a 30 minute wait.

They're like, here, take this. And they like hand them all the mattress tags and it feels like money in your hand. Yeah. The hostess has the most bizarre look on her face. It's like she's never seen a grown manhandle 100 mattress tags at once. What a rookie.

I see that every day. Um, and they, yeah. And then they sit down and they're like, quick, take a picture of the, of the blooming onion to prove that this is where we were at this time. It actually worked out the photo woman came over right at that exact moment. They sat next to each other, the look on their face

was a little suspicious. Yeah. But never said a word. No. Didn't even think her. I wish I had that level of solidarity with my significant other. Be like, hey, we're the Bonnie and Clyde

of mattress tags and we'll go down in a hail of bullets if need be. Well, that's what was going on over there. I think we got it. So Michael, what did you think about the atmosphere overall? Uh, I think the identity crisis of Outback really drags it down.

It's so weird. Um, I'm going to give it a thumbs down. I didn't hate it. I was just confused. How about you? I actually kind of liked the confusing atmosphere. I want to look to my right and not know if I'm going to see a fancy black and white photo

or half a neon boomerang. I like that mystery. Fair. Plus, I'll say the photo service that was an added fancy touch. Sure. You don't get that every day at Outback. Yeah.

So one thumbs up. Okay. Just one. So your thumbs up, my thumbs down. That's the verdict for atmosphere. We'll be back after a quick story from a former Outback employee. All right.

We've got former Outback employee Jeff McCarthy with us. Jeff, if you could give any advice to someone who wants to work at an Outback, what would it be? And also, I don't know, maybe your worst table or most memorable table. The floor is yours. You know, the advice that I would give to somebody who wants to work at Outback's steakhouse,

I would tell them that it's a good place to work. I would tell them it was, if not my favorite, then my second favorite, employment experience of all time, way better than the job I currently have. But I would tell them to stay busy. If you don't stay busy, like as often as the case in the food service industry, the store manager is going to sort of target you and make you do things

that are even worse than waitering. Some of the tasks they would make us do is stacking the hot just out of the dishwasher glasses. They would make us wipe down the various decorations. I've literally spent 20 minutes just wiping down a crocodile, all right, by the waiting area near the front door. And the other piece of advice I would give to somebody is to treat it like a job.

If you go in there and you expect people to be friendly and you expect them to tip you a certain amount, you're just going to walk out if they're really bitter when they don't. So I would be maybe a little bit cold and a little bit mechanical at the job. And when you have a friendly table, well, enjoy it. But don't let the bad tables affect you so much.

The worst table I ever had, I want to say that not every customer at Outback Steakhouse is bad. There is sort of a general disrespect that you get from everyone when you're a waiter. I had one guy throw a credit card at me. But surprisingly, that actually wasn't the worst table I ever had. So it was during the summer. I was serving like five tables in the bar, which is challenging.

The way Outback's set up when there's five tables that you're working on, because the hosts don't bring drinks. You have to do all the work at the table yourself. So five tables at once is a little hard. And the bar tables are kind of small. So we had a big fella and his big lady friend were there on a little tiny bar table. And I had a bad feeling right from the get-go

because they were just staring daggers at me from the moment I approached the table. And I'll never forget, they ordered five orders of Aussie cheese fries. The interesting thing about the Aussie cheese fries is they had actually had recently been named the most unhealthy item at any restaurant in America back then. And I'm guessing they're probably still at the top of that list, if not near the top.

But anyway, this couple, they ordered five orders of cheese fries. We could barely fit the five orders on their tiny table. They didn't order anything else. It was just cheese fries and water, no fruits, no vegetables, no lean proteins. And at the end of the night, and I kind of had a feeling this would happen, they walked away with a bill of $33 and a tip of zero.

So I don't really harbor any resentment against them. In fact, I almost enjoy... The enjoyment of telling the story is almost worth the fact that they screwed me on the tip. More than anything, I think I'm just worried that they're still okay. You know, I can't... I don't think... You can only go to Outback Steakhouse

and order five orders of cheese fries in one night so many times in your life and inflict some pretty serious health problems on yourself. Despite the fact that I picked Outback and I like Outback, but let's jump into the next segment of our ratings analysis. Service. Service. We had two servers.

They were, let's just say, very different. One was very good. One was inattentive. He was there. Inattentive. Existed. Like, he brought... He was our first waiter.

We had two waiters, like, in sequence. We didn't have two simultaneous waiters. And the first guy, you know, brought out Garrett's drink and then looked surprised. I existed and didn't have a drink. And I was like, oh wait, would you get again? And I was just like... I had no problem with that.

Yeah, of course not. But he brought out our bread and he did not bring us bread plates or anything like that, which, I mean, I feel like I'm complaining. Like, at the end of the day, I get it. Sometimes things are overlooked. You just ask and you'll usually be helped. Yeah.

But what was interesting was we also placed in order for Blumen Onion and the manager brought it out to us. And I think the manager may have noticed a little something. The fact that we were writing in notebooks because we were jotting down what we noticed in the restaurant. We had the name of the restaurant, the names of the server. Yeah, we wrote down Outback Steakhouse at the top of each of our notebook pages.

And the manager, I believe, took notice to this and assumed we were either quality assurance like QA private shoppers or like food reviewers or something like that. And he brought out the Blumen Onion and was like, oh, is everything to your liking? And, you know, treated us real well. We're like, yeah, things are good.

He walked away. We realized we didn't have bread plates. We need plates. How are we supposed to eat these things? We, like, flag them back down. And we're like, oh, actually, can we get plates for our Blumen Onion? And he's like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And he turns around and under his breath just goes, stupid. Like, I don't know if it was about himself. I don't know if it was about the waiter. I don't know if he's just having a bad day at home. But, like, what? I bet he thought this experience was about to impact his bonus. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And that was the last we saw of our first waiter. All of a sudden, we get a new waiter. Keith. Amazing. Oh, Keith. He shows up. He's like, hey, guys, what are your names? And we're like, Michael and Garrett.

And he calls us by Michael and Garrett every single time he comes to the table after that. He offers me a fist bump, but it's like super weird and almost looks like he's like handing me, like, trash in his hand. Like, like, angled down and his fist is not, like, all the way closed. It was really weird.

I think that was a good touch. He was just asserting dominance. Yeah, I call it. He was making eye contact. I call it the Keith. And now that's how Garrett and I fist bump one another. Yeah, Keith was great. He was super attentive.

Noticed everything. Like, when we had, like, refills came at such a rapid pace. This is one of my things. I like to have my refill given to me before I ask. Yeah. I know I'm a little, little bougie about it. A little bougie. A little bougie.

But I like to have liquids with my food. Yeah. And just super, super positive and nice about everything. Yeah. And always was, like, turning his head at the angle of the writing in the channel. Oh, yeah. Like, he was definitely trying to read what we were writing.

But super great server, even though he mixed up our names a couple of times. Yeah, but I'll say another good thing about him. He knew when to talk and when not to. Yeah. I always appreciate a man that knows when to be quiet when I have a mouthful. So Keith genuinely seemed to care about our enjoyment of the

experience. Night and day, huge asset to this outback. Give us a recommendation for our dessert, which we'll get into later. Other servers. Well, so there was a hostess who, like, walked in from outside. Like, I could swear she was wiping away a tear. Don't know what happened.

Hundred mattress tags will do that to you. She got paper cuts from the mattress tags. And the police were asking, though, so did you see this strange couple with hundreds of mattress tags? And she turned toward their table and the guy was just, like, staring daggers at her and dragging his thumb across his throat, like, to threaten her. And she was like, no, officer.

I'm OK. I haven't seen anyone. So their plan worked. Yeah. The birthdays at Outback. If you have a birthday, you know, half of these casual dining establishments have, like, a thing that they do if it's your birthday.

They bring out the entire establishment screen of waiters and they'll come, like, clapping with, like, a sparkler sticking out of a piece of, like, carrot cake or something, like their least popular dessert just to, like, offload it. And then. None of them can sing. None of them can sing. And it's always, like, an off-branded happy birthday, like,

their own version of it that they can't actually sing the real one, despite the fact that they totally could if they wanted to. But under threat of write-up. That's not what happened at Outback. No, we were expecting this. But this is a classy joint. This is a classy place. And they had one waitress.

Beautiful voice. Like, serenade. Yeah. But, like, quietly, like, she didn't want the attention. So I didn't know if it was like they, like, dragged her out there and she's like, I hate being the only one here with a good voice. But we noticed it from, I don't know, 15 feet away. That made me wish that it was my birthday.

But you had your birthday at Outback. That very Outback. I know, and they've never done that to me. Have you asked? No. Next time. Yes. Next time Keith will sing to you.

I actually believe he would try. What's your verdict on the service? Verdict? I'm giving a full two-thumbs-up for this. You're going to. Yeah. Keith was that good. Given that the first waiter forgot my drink and the little plate tour deal,

I'm going to go one-thumb-up. Just still good. Yeah. Actually, a very, very solid score overall for Outback on the service. Hey! Munchkin menu musings. My name is Miles. I am nine years old and I'm going to be reviewing the Outback Statehouse kids' menu.

I didn't want to do the draw the numbat because the numbat doesn't really look like any creature I've seen. I was so happy when I saw that it had animal facts because I have never seen anything that isn't in a book or on TV that has animal facts just for fun. In the maze, it was super easy for me because it literally shows you the path because the dead ends point you in which direction you need to go. The tic-tac-toe I can get really stuck on because whenever I see tic-tac-toe, I normally am used to being able to outsmart but when I saw this one, my mind was blank and I think that's

because the platypus, the bird, and the wallaby, and the crocodile, the whale shark, and the cuckaburra distracted me and I just tried to do it but it was so confusing that once I even thought I saw a crocodile in there. I really liked coloring the whale shark, the saltwater crocodile, and the wallaby because if you color the outside and then you take the dust around the crayon and rub it in, it makes it really cool and I was glad that for once there was no yellow because I always see yellow but I hardly ever see green without yellow. Out of all of the kids' menus I've ever eaten from and seen and done the things on them,

I think this is a 10 out of 10 one because I've never seen a kids' menu with animal facts on it or any animals in general, you're welcome. Okay, so now let's talk about what we ate. I rather liked my meal. We started with the bloomin' onion, the pinnacle of casual dining appetizers. Do you not agree? Oh, 100%. I've never had a better appetizer in my life.

It's perfection. It's the 17 seasonings that no one knows what they are. There's what, 20 ingredients to the sauce or something like that? I don't know about the sauce. I think it's something like that and it's just a perfect combination of crispness usually. So this is where we're going back into dichotomy again. The identity crisis of Outback, the fancy and the falling flat. Which is a very apt description.

Literally happened to your half of the bloomin' onion. So Garrett, describe your half. My half was pristine. Perfectly crisp, the batter stayed on, everything cleanly separated, perfectly seasoned. You bite in just a little bit of grease, slowly oozes out and mine was falling apart and all that grease is like rolling down your hand and no matter I didn't want to touch you. Come on. And so I'm literally scooping it into piles into almost like a, not quite a handful because

I'm not letting it touch my palm but I'm just trying to hope that it doesn't fall to the table or my shirt while transporting it to my face. Still tasted great to bloom an onion. The taste is going to be there but the structure lacked a little bit. I also want to talk about and every restaurant or most restaurants have this but the bread. That's bread is like a German pumpernickel with butter. It's pretty good when hot and as soon as it cools off it is drastically like, I won't say inedible but close to it.

It goes from fresh and moist to burr dry to duck food. Duck food, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Actually you're not actually supposed to feed ducks, bird. Of course you're not supposed to feed ducks, birds. But also not supposed to get that bread. Yes, yes. It's bad for their, I forgot what it is.

Expands in their stomach, something, I don't know. Sounds like their problem. Yeah. Yeah, outback's bread is very meh. It's very middling. There are many places that do it better. I have some thoughts on what the pinnacle of casual dining bread is but we'll get into that when we go to those places.

Then there were our entrees. I got a burger. I got the outbacker burger but I turned it into a blooming burger because I saved some of the bloom petals. Put the bloom sauce on there. I added bacon. This was the best burger I've had from outback in a while. It's kind of my usual order.

I thought it turned out excellent. It was delicious. I got a medium rare. I got a side of fries that I peppered heavily and I really enjoyed my meal. I think that was the secret to the fries, the added pepper. You really have something going on with that. Yeah, heavily peppered, like doused. They needed the flavor.

Honestly, I also got fries. I enjoyed them. They were good. They were crisp. They were tender on the inside but they were lacking in flavor. The pepper gives them that kick. They used to heavily pepper them. Somewhere probably around five years ago I noticed that they stopped peppering them.

I'm more adding the pepper to get what used to be there, not to do my own take on it. Your nostalgia peppering. Nostalgia peppering. Yeah, exactly. I had pepper fries before pepper fries didn't have pepper. Yeah, I think very highly of my meal. What was your entree? I had a 12-ounce ribeye grilled medium rare.

That you poked. Oh, yeah. Gotta poke the meat. I don't under... I don't get it. What? Before I put... You've told me this is a thing and it looks animalistic for you to just be touching a stake

with your bare hand when you are... I think you're sort of right on the animalistic nature of that. It brings me closer to my food, but really the only reason to do this is to tell the proper doneness. If it's too firm, it's either not done enough or way too done. I want a slight give to it. Okay. And how was your stake?

It was a stake, which is to say fine. It was fine. The first, again, we've got... That's the theme of the podcast. Yeah. So hey, it was a very fitting stake then. The first half of the stake was under-seasoned and it tasted like ribeye. The other half now, it tasted like a seasoned ribeye steak.

Proper amounts of salt, proper amounts of pepper, proper amounts of garlic. Could you do it better? 100% every single time. Just to be clear, I am not a great cook. But it's not hard to put a stake in a pan. And you got fries. You got the fries and also the asparagus, which... Perfect flavor?

Yeah. It's just a little limp. Little limp. Garrett with the limp asparagus over there. Something we all know about you. It's your reputation. But hey, it doesn't matter if it was limp, it tasted great. That's what counts.

Oh, then we got dessert too. Oof. Yep. That was an adventure. Last Keith for a recommendation, because we were between... No matter what, we were getting the chocolate thunder from Down Under. Yeah. We were going Down Under no matter what.

We were in the Outback. Which is their chocolate lava cake. But Outback has gotten a little crazy. As a matter of fact, we're going to award our weekly This Was Way Too Much Award to what we ended up getting. The most ridiculous menu item that the human brain has concocted is the Thunder and Lightning Down Under. Yeah, the Thunder and Lightning, it is whipped cream, vanilla ice cream, chocolate shavings.

Chocolate shavings. Can't forget those. Butter. On top of a butter cake and a chocolate lava cake. And then strawberries and strawberry sauce, nuts, where they're nuts? They're nuts in the cake. Yeah. Very tasty.

Every single element of that tasted great. Almost 2,000 calories, way too much. I was just annoyed I couldn't take a spoon and go from top to bottom and have a solid bite. Half my face felt numb when I was done with it. And I only ate maybe a quarter of this whole thing? Yeah, you were in the booth, it looked like you were in upright fetal position, making noises to yourself.

Leaning against the wall with my feet up on my side of the booth. I call it the Michael Squat. Could you tell I call it that? Like I just made it up on the spot. Yeah, I was doing the Michael Squat, which I usually do when I hit that moment of... The Michael Squat is the elevated seated Asian Squat? I look more like Jeff Goldblum's famous leaning shirt open pose in Jurassic Park, like within a booth.

I think that probably... Life found a way. That gives me way more majesty than I deserve, because it's that plus breathing heavily. Like that's the mix. But very tasty dessert, it was just way too much. I think that covers everything. Yeah. What'd you think about the entire meal?

How good my burger turned out, even though I was disappointed in the texture of the bloomin' onion and a little bit the bread. The burger was great, the fries were great, the dessert was very good. Actually, you know what I'll say about the dessert? The butter cake had no business in there. It just felt like it was added, it didn't feel like it complimented. It was good, but order them separately. If you want butter cake, get butter cake.

If you want the chocolate, get the chocolate, because the taste of the chocolate and the ice cream and the whipped cream and the strawberry all overpower the butter cake. So I will say that dessert could have been better, but was still great. And you know what? I'm going two thumbs up for the food. Wow. Yeah. I wish I could be with you on that one.

But I'll say, I'll start off with the bloomin' onion. If it was just the bloomin' onion, I'd be giving this five thumbs up. But we got to the steak. The steak was merely acceptable. It was... Fine. Fine. The fries were fine.

The asparagus was also. If it wasn't for the limpness, it would have performed better. I mean, it's your criteria, whatever you want to do. With the dessert, everything was great except the butter cake. It was a little too thick for my liking. I wish the butter cake was at the bottom. If it was, if you go from most dense to least dense. Starting at the bottom, yeah.

Then you can appropriately attack the dish. But I'd say the butter cake brought it down. Okay. I'm only giving one thumbs up for the entire meal. Okay. Still not bad. That's three out of four thumbs from both of us. Yeah.

Looks like we actually have a sponsorship to go to. So I guess before we give our final verdict on Outback, let's hear from a wannabe competitor to Outback. That's weird. Outfront Steakhouse. Central Florida's only 100% outdoor fine dining establishment. We opened an establishment because of that COVID-19 hoax and two years later, it's tanking our business.

Apparently, an open-air kitchen is not up to code. Just like our manatee burgers, apparently. Sea cow's still a cow though, right? Outfront is the only restaurant in Florida, not including the keys that sells this tasty of what we legally can't call steak. When my late ex-wife told me it was a terrible idea to open a restaurant in an abandoned Sears parking lot, I thought she was crazy, just like you'll go crazy for our catfish milkshake.

Sweet and salty. Now that we're in the heat of summer, get a discounted thing of sunscreen with your swamp fries. That's a trademark, but don't dip them in the sunscreen. It ain't ranch and they're wet enough already. Please, I beg of you, come on down to Outfront. We're not shady like those guys who keep it Outback. We don't hide shit.

Outfront Steakhouse. We don't hide shit. Final rating. Okay, so we've finished our experience. The atmosphere, for me, you know, it confused. It wasn't even bad. It was just like it didn't have its own identity. It was so many things.

It was silly. It was classy, but like threatening all at the same time. That's Australia for you. And then you've got the food, which I mean, I really liked my food. The bread was the only underwhelming thing. The dessert. I mean, the only thing about the dessert that is a criticism is everything was really good except for one part of it, which was just good, which is, yeah, which was just good.

So it's not like a big knock on it. And our service was the pinnacle. We had Keith and he will be the stuff of legends moving forward until he's topped. And I think he's going to be the king of the mountain for a while. I don't see anyone beating him any time soon. So I think for me, and this is biased because Outback Steakhouse is a place that carries a lot of clogged arteries in my heart, but also sentiment and appreciation and nostalgia in my heart.

So my rating is a 7.59 out of 10, which is way over our mediocre range. We were aiming for that 5.00. And as we'll get to in a little bit, there will be a punishment if this final rating goes outside of four to six. If I overshot mediocrity by that much, it deserves to be punished. And we're going to overshoot. So starting off with the atmosphere for me, although it was confusing, it was still fun. And overall, what am I going out to eat for?

To have a good time and to get a classic photo out of it. Oh, yeah, classic photo, good time, OK Steak. But atmosphere, one thumb up for that. I'll take it. I was satisfied. Yeah. Now, the service again, as you said, Keith, Keith was amazing. Two thumbs up.

Keith alone is going to keep this rating high. Yep. I would give Keith five thumbs up if I had five thumbs. You don't have five thumbs. You don't have five thumbs. That would be cheating. No, yet. We want to make that money to be real rich and get thumb transplants to Garrett, so his

left hand can be all thumbs. Oops, all thumbs. Thumb transplant rich. So the food. Yeah. The bloomin' onion was one of the best bloomin' onions I've ever had, my half at least. Yeah. The bread was just bread.

The steak, on the other hand, I could have done better. Right. Not that I'm any good, but come on, it's a ribeye. Yeah. You put it in a pan. What are you going to do? Yeah, yeah. The fries were great.

Yep. The asparagus flavorful, but limp, yeah. It had a little dysfunction. Little flaccid asparagus. Yeah, not even turgid. What a word. What a word. It's a fun word.

Overall, I'm giving this a 7.31. 7.31. Yeah, we overshot four to six by a lot. Outback steakhouse, we're going to slap you onto our spectrum here, the chachki of mediocrity at a 7.45. Not mediocre enough. Draw from the bowl. The you must bowl.

Ooh, you know what that means. I missed the mark by quite a bit, so what that means is that I have a punishment to face for whatever our next restaurant ends up being, and we have a bowl called the you must bowl, and I'm going to dig into this bowl and pick out a piece of paper on which is written something that I must do for the next episode, and you can hear the bowl with all the paper. You can also hear me echoing out of the bowl as I talk into it. Drawing one out.

Which one did you get? You must shave your facial hair to look like Lemmy from Motorhead. I'm glad you got that one. I don't even have facial hair. Yeah, that seems specific to me, and you would have had to have a mulligan if you got that. Maybe. Let's just say there are worse things in there. There are.

Yeah, I don't mind this too much. Who knows? It might be a good look for me. Yeah, I don't even think that's really a punishment. Lemmy looks pretty cool. Yeah, I guess I hope that our server at the next place just compliments me on my facial hair maybe. Hopefully.

We'll see. Cool. Well, that is the you must bowl. If you have any suggestions that you would like to see added to the you must bowl, go ahead and email us, findiningpodcastatgmail.com, nothing where there's any victims, but we'll do some fun stuff with that. And remember, we have to do this in public. Yeah.

All right, so that concludes our journey at Outback Steakhouse. The search continues for the most mediocre restaurant, and we got to try out another place. Let's do it. We are going to determine who gets to pick the next restaurant. I picked Outback. We're going to play the headline game. The rules of the headline game are as follows.

Michael will present three headlines to Garrett that include this week's restaurant. They can be made up or they can be actual headlines. If Garrett 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 Michael stumps him, he'll select again. Are you ready to play, fellas? I'm ready. Headline number one, Florida woman attacked parents for not taking her to Outback Steakhouse.

Oh, that's got to be true. Sounds like a South Park episode. Headline number two, missing Ohio man found miles from home at Outback Steakhouse, claims to have no memory of past two weeks. 100% true. I saw you in the booth. Easy to do. Headline number three, he pretended his date stood him up at Outback Steakhouse on Valentine's

Day. Strangers picked up his tab. No, that's false, that man sounds like an absolute psychopath. The first one you actually did get correct, Florida woman attacked parents for not taking her to Outback Steakhouse. I'll actually read you that article because it's pretty quick and pretty wild. Strangers responded to a home on Grand Cypress Circle and said the dining room had been ransacked. The glass dining table was flipped over and there was broken glass scattered throughout

the area. Detectives also found a large kitchen knife on the kitchen counter, the news station reported. Stolen from Outback? Not stolen, she didn't get to go. Or that it was she was like trying to return the murder weapon? Oh, of course. Yeah, she's got her own alibi there. The knife was it out back in the block the entire time?

No, I didn't murder my family with it. The suspect's mother said her daughter began punching her after she asked to go to the restaurant and she told her no. Her father tried to intervene and was scratched on his upper face and upper body. She said her daughter proceeded to scream and flip over the large dining room table, then started tearing up random furniture. She grabbed a kitchen knife and ran toward her father screaming, I'm going to kill you. But her father was able to wrestle the knife away, police said.

How did this woman tear apart random furniture with her bare hands? That's a hell of a drug. The suspect is charged with one count of simple battery domestic, one count of battery of a person 65 or older and two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Headline number two, missing Ohio man found miles from home at Outback Steakhouse claims to have no memory of the past two weeks. You said that was true. Garrett, I actually made that one up.

You mean you experienced that yourself? Yeah, I lived it. You saw me go into a fugue state, curled up in the fetal position in my seat. It felt like two weeks in my head, but it was just mere moments. And finally, he pretended his date stood him up at Outback Steakhouse on Valentine's Day. Strangers picked up the tab. You said that was false. Garrett, that one is actually true.

There is some psychopath who staged a situation where he went to Outback and very calculatedly pretended to be stood up by his date and played on the sympathy of strangers and had them pick up his tab. Was this like a YouTuber or something? I am unsure. But unfortunately, Garrett, you only got one of the three options, correct? Which means I get to move on and defend my title as the chooser. Next week, Garrett, we're going to Buffalo Wild Wings.

That sounds good. Yeah. I love that place. We're going to see some sports memorabilia probably. And if my longstanding history of experiences at Buffalo Wild Wings holds up, we will be ignored for long stretches of time. The last time we went, I remember the server taking forever to bring out food. I am invisible in a Buffalo Wild Wings.

I've never had this problem. I've always had excellent service there. So thanks again, everyone, for listening. Thanks again, Jeff, for sending us your employee story for Outback Steakhouse. If you have your own story for Buffalo Wild Wings, feel free to email us a story between two and four minutes long to finddiningpodcastatgmail.com. That's finddiningpodcastatgmail.com. Well that's all for the Find Dining Podcast.

We did not find the most mediocre restaurant, so we will see you next week. The search continues. We still need the perfect vibe. The search continues. Like and subscribe. The search continues. Our journey did not conclude. The moderate search continues.

Write us an iTunes review. And hey, while you're at it, why don't you go ahead and make it five stars? Good night. And don't forget, you can always suggest where we go next. Okay! We're going to find it. Mediocrity. The search continues.

See you next week. I heard my throat a little. Have a fine day.