Saddly most "local diners" are now buying premade food from offsite and heating it. It is all the same premade food too, the only difference is the order things are on the menu, and what item they call the house special.

If I get pancakes, eggs, bacon, and toast, which of those was prepared off-site?

The pancakes is the standard box mix - it doesn't have real buttermilk in it.

The scrambled eggs came in a carton, though they are cooked. Other eggs are more likely to be cooked onsite

Bacon is often pre-cooked and just warmed, though cooking fresh bacon still happens.

Toast is factory made bread, though the final toasting was done onsite. Most Americans have never had real bread.

The above is breakfast - the meal most likely to be made on site. Lunch and dinner are far worse.

> Most Americans have never had real bread.

[sigh]

I was about to argue this (because I'm bored!), but then I remembered an anecdote. My mother-in-law (typical rural Midwest small town ex-housewife) mentioned to me one day that the rolls that I made were delicious.

I was a bit confused because I hadn't made any rolls. I had baked a couple loaves of bread though. Didn't think much of it until an hour later I went into the kitchen and thought, "why the hell is the top of this loaf all picked at?"

Then I recalled the comment. I had made challah, a braided Jewish bread. She had never seen braided bread before and thought the braids were rolls all smushed together.

Interesting. I would have assumed CCF prepped food similarly to the other “cheap” chains.

But, I’m not the target audience. I’ll pick a local ethnic place over a chain almost every time. And only use chains when forced by co-workers who won’t deviate from a generic “American” menu.

I fully agree with your points. I’m not sure if it’s class or general inclination to travel etc. but I’m imagining if I went out with friends and peers at a conference, say, the horror at the idea people would have of going to a chain, including CCF, rather than some locally appropriate restaurant—even if a local chain.

But, yeah, most of my friends and people I travel with would think nothing of going to a Chinese restaurant and eating with chopsticks.

Not a judgement and we’d probably have a perfectly good time and dinner at a CCF but it would have pretty much a zero chance of happening.

I do find it interesting though how many people this simple observation seems to upset.

Out of curiosity, why would people have “horror” at the idea of going to a chain restaurant, as opposed to, say, “disinterest”?

Because chain restaurants are generally kinda gross.

The typical American chain restaurant is going to serve you something that starts with low-quality ingredients, then gets a bunch of sugar, corn syrup, seed oil, artificial food coloring, emulsifiers etc added to it until it roughly approximates the flavor, texture and color of higher-quality ingredients (at the cost of being unhealthy). Then it has various chemicals added to it to act as preservatives or maintain texture or appearance during shipping and storage and re-heating. Then it's packaged into cheap single-use plastic bags or containers that slowly leach endocrine disrupting chemicals into the food, or rapidly leach them during reheating in a microwave.

The end result is that you get something that is edible, but probably kinda gross tasting unless your palette gets used to packaged foods and fast foods, and which is going to make you fat, depressed, distracted and tired.

There's a reason America has an obesity epidemic, diabetes epidemic, falling fertility rates and widespread prescriptions of drugs for depression, anxiety, adhd, etc, and it's the food the average American is eating.

You forgot to mention salt.

The "horror" is less about going to the chain restaurant, and more the derision you'd face from your peers at suggesting it. The logic goes "If you like shitty chain food, it's because you don't have good points of reference to compare against, because you haven't experienced a wide variety of cuisine, because you're poor".

The “horror” is that you will only live to eat a fixed number of meals, so why on Earth would you waste one of your “meal slots” eating food at a chain that’s no better than reheated leftovers in your fridge?

Are you asking that question unironically? Why a lunch spent with your colleagues at CCF might be worth considering over the refrigerated leftovers waiting in the break room?

For me, it's like you suggest - more disinterest than horror. But it happens regularly with out-of-town coworkers. There are lots of above average ethnic places near my home and office (same 'hood). But, in a large enough group, there's usually one or two meat-n-potatoes person who doesn't want to try anything new.

There is this thing called hyperbole. The reaction would be more a polite “I’m pretty sure we can find something else.”

> And only use chains when forced by co-workers who won’t deviate from a generic “American” menu.

Completely tangential, but a local Korean place (Haru K-BBQ) has fried chicken as one of the “Western” items. However, the fried chicken itself is a reason to go because they do such a nice take on this item.

There's an Indian fried chicken fusion type thing called pepper chicken that I think is eventually going to take the country by storm

I honestly think that some fusion fried chicken joint might be the next Chipotle type hit. Indian Korean Japanese Chinese Mexican styles of fried chicken all under one house

Oh I'm not alone in this! I have a local Korean place that does 'fried chicken' but Korean style and holy god it is wonderful.

Yea, I've always associated Cheesecake Factory with every other generic chain restaurant--exactly like Applebee's, TGIFridays, Outback, Olive Garden, and so on. It's a place you take large groups that contain picky eaters.

If you are lucky enough to have quality local ethnic places and have no particular love for mainstream American food, fine. Many towns in America can't do much better than a Chinese buffet, though, for which American chain restaurants are competitive alternatives.

Yeah, CCF is well-know for making the majority of its food from scratch. It may be boring food, but they at least try to make it right.

I would like to buy the same pre made meals and heat it up at my home, at a reduced cost. The quality isn't bad, I'd even say "good" in some cases and my kids like the chicken tenders. Kind of a Papa Murphy's take and bake casual dining thing. Does this exist?

I don't know if they have a reach outside the upper Midwest, but that seems to describe Schwan's. They have a wide variety of premade foods ready for reheating or cooking (e.g., cheesy potato puffs). Haven't gotten food from them in a while, but I remember it being pretty good. At least, far better than supermarket frozen meals. I've actually been known to follow a Schwan's truck until it stopped so I could buy on the spot :-)

They typically have a number of households on a weekly rotation and deliver in temperature controlled trucks. You can buy food when they show up at your house or if you're well-organized, preorder.

They probably also ship.

Ignore the "salmonella vanilla" remarks: that was a long time ago :-)

Schwan’s website claims 48 contiguous states.

Most cities have a few local places that do similar things - mine certainly does. Some are dedicated take-home places, others are restaurants that also package prepared meals during their slow hours. The locals always know about the good ones. You'll find the majority of these places/meals are pasta, largely because pasta stores easily and reheats consistently.

As for chains, Maggiano's used to do an eat-one-take-one deal, where for a $5-10 add-on you could get a pre-chilled pasta dish to take home, but I'm not sure they still do. That deal was great for takeout. A hot meal for tonight, leftovers for tomorrow, throw the chilled one in the freezer.

I don’t know but I would assume the big food service providers don’t have some special “secret sauce” versus what you can buy in the freezer cases of the supermarket and at least assemble pretty quickly.

I’ve also definitely found frozen stuff I can order like soft shell crab and soup dumplings that make super easy meals.

Some chains like Lazy Dog have a parallel business doing takeout meals: https://www.lazydogrestaurants.com/blog/tv-dinners

I don’t know about meals but several popular restaurants chains offer branded food in the grocer’s freezer. From what I’ve seen they are mostly appetizers but there are also some entrees and desserts.