Quote:
Originally Posted by MolsonExport
Nor, of course, is this phenomenon of wilful bad eating unique to Boston Pizza and the Ribber-Winger Combos or Bacon Pizzaburgers it unapologetically serves. The chain restaurant in Canada enjoys a robust and ever-flourishing existence marked by breadth of influence and diversity of style: in any city small or large we can savour, with reliable delight, family-friendly casual-dining establishments such as East Side Mario’s (Italian-American), Kelseys (“Neighbourhood Bar and Grill”), The Keg (nominally upscale steakhouse), Montana’s (Southern BBQ), Nickels (diner-style burgers affiliated with Céline Dion) and Milestones (no one identifiable theme, but they seem to favour chicken) — restaurants of infallible reputation all. To step into any of these well-engineered emporiums of calorie-rich dinner is to find consistency on a scale closer to fast-food than fine dining (or, for that matter, home-cooking).
What you’re paying for in large part is the absence of doubt and the eradication of surprise. The chain restaurant is reassuringly predictable: you know, eating here, what the fries will taste like. There is something childish and conservative about the desire to eat at Boston Pizza or Kelseys or East Side Mario’s, something pitiable about the impulse to slump into those chunky plastic booths for a generous serving of frozen steak and the ice cream scoop of garlic mashed potato you depend upon for comfort or nostalgic bliss.
Maybe 40-million Canadians are merely sentimental — under the wistful spell of the chain restaurant and soothing power of the mediocrity on which we can always depend. Probably there are many people who eat at Boston Pizza or its homogenous contemporaries because they don’t know any better or have never been afforded the chance to dine with real pleasure elsewhere — those surrounded by chains in locations where the only image of local restaurants is a caricature of minuscule plates and hard-to-pronounce meals.
https://nationalpost.com/life/food/w...w-bad-they-are |
The nasty, sneering tone by the writer of this piece is a good example of souls being sucked. I've eaten at Boston Pizza once and it was indeed terrible, and I object to the very name of the chain, but the writer gets something fundamentally wrong.
It is not "childish" to be a conservative eater. In reality, adventurous gourmands are the exception, not the norm. People in great culinary countries like China, France, Mexico, Thailand etc. know exactly what they're getting at that taqueria, that streetside stand, that hole-in-the-wall restaurant. There were about 45 independent purveyors of the unexciting but still delicious chicken-and-rice dish known as the specialty of the Taiwanese city of 250,000 people that I once lived in, and they all basically did it the same. Those who didn't conform to the expected and very specific standard for taste either made changes until they did or didn't last long in business.
You ever see that Jamie Oliver series about travelling through Italy when he turned 30? At one point he gripes about how nobody in the country appreciates his innovative departures from traditional dishes. The highest praise is always "oh yeah, you got it right." Food in Italy is generally better than in Canada, of that there can be no doubt, and Boston Pizza is certainly one of several crappy chains dotting suburbs all over Canada, but people generally don't want to be surprised when they eat.
"Let's go out, I'm craving _____." Comfort food is childish? What a bizarrely shortsighted and stupid thing to say.
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