Thursday, September 7

You Want a Menu? You Can't Handle a Menu!

Okay, so this morning I sit down with a cuppa and decide I'm going to peruse a few blogs at the bottom of my bookmarks, and up jumps Laurie Byrd:

This Menu Won't Last Long

Glenn Reynolds has some news about Ruby Tuesdays' new menu and I agree with him -- this one will not last long. They have removed all the healthy choices and even removed the nutritional info on the menu. One of his readers pointed out that Applebee's has an excellent Weight Watchers' menu. I had lunch at Applebee's a couple of months ago and had the Steak and Shrimp Skewers and the French Onion soup from the Weight Watchers menu and both were great.


Okay, I am glad that someone saw fit to amplify Glenn's comments--we just can't shed enough light on the problem of shrinking health-food choices among people who get off their butts long enough to get in a car and drive somewhere so they can sit down again and have someone feed them--but...

Ruby Tuesday's? Isn't that like some fifth-tier TGI Friday's? One of those chains routinely located such that, if you were in the parking lot and felt a sudden urge to view grass, or a tree, or anything growing without the aid of a concrete container, you'd have to get back in the car and waste a quarter tank of gas? Are we talking about the same Ruby Tuesday's? The one whose recent teevee ads touted the culinary inspiration of putting onion rings on top of a cheeseburger? Apparently so all the regurgitative elements hit your digestive tract at once?

It's a freakin' fast-food factory. If you're that concerned about being healthy you might start worrying about what you're eating instead of how much, and how many times the cook has washed his hands this month. Mental incapacitation caused by a fast-food joint altering its menu goes a long way towards explaining why these people are still pissing their pants five years later.

I once remarked, only half facetiously, that in a modern-day American Civil War the North wouldn't need to field an army, just find a way to lower the air temperature in Dixie to 37ยบ F and hold it there for three days until the mass surrender was completed. Imagine what easy pickings these people would be if there truly were terrorists lurking behind every mailbox. Sheesh, altering the pick-up hours inside the lid could cause a stampede in select neighborhoods, apparently.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

The fact that these twits are actually DISCUSSING the Ruby Tuesday's menu is just unbelievably sad.

And the praise for the Applebees dreck...as Marge Simpson would say, "The secret ingredient is SALT!"

Anonymous said...

Sometimes I think the South is the culinary equivalent of the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, writ large, where weaponized fast food concepts are callously tested on the unwary populace. Everything is smothered in sauce and/or gravy, deep-fried, salted like cavalry pork, and served in a miasma of Marlboro smoke drifting in from neighboring tables.

I once spent 5 weeks in Mobile, and the fact that there was anybody over the age of 40 still alive in Alabama was a constant source of astonishment and horror.

Anonymous said...

Riley, you're a genius and we love you.

Just saying.

Anonymous said...

Stand off, boys. Doghouse is my stalkee. You can love him, but no sending him dead butterflies and bad poetry. That's my job, dammit. Assuming I ever figure out where he lives, anyway.

Ruby Tuesday's has a salad bar. It's got tortilla chips and a little bowl of sea salt, among other things. Their portobello mushroom burger-esque sandwich thingie is roughly the same texture as a slug after three days in the beer trap.

And French Onion anything is only on the Weight Watchers list on probation.

But, I shan't be happy until Instapundit links to Jonah Goldberg's analysis of the latest offerings at the Krispy Kreme with an approving "Heh. Read the whole thing."

isabelita said...

Well, junkfood has metastisized all over. Canada has its own special forms, such as pudaine, which is French fries smothered in brown gravy and sprinkled heavily with cheese curds. I tasted it up in Squamish, B.C., and it was as revolting as any bacon grease slathered starch from the USA.
Perhaps there is some genetic triggering going on, getting so many people to become lard-assed. In personal ads, obese people are marketing themselves as "famine-proof." Defense against a disaster?
The obesity epidemic is a far worse danger than terr'rist attacks. And we who take care of ourselves are footing hte bills for the greedy overeaters.

julia said...

We take HM to Ruby Tuesdays if she has a low-blood-sugar meltdown in a mall. They generally have something with grilled chicken breast in it, as well as the all-important virgin strawberry dacquiri, which as it's fruit sugar and ice I figure makes a pretty innocuous dessert substitute.

None of which explains why someone without an overstimulated eleven-year-old at the edge of food-deprivation hysteria miles away from another food source would eat there.

My impression of the "diet" food at Applebees was that they just give you really, really small portions and leave the gunk off the top.

Don't mess with D, is all I'm saying.

Steve M. said...

Eat real food? Are you kidding? French people eat real food!

Anonymous said...

I like Applebee's "Blondie". Hot cake, cold ice cream, and hot caramel/maple sauce poured over it...sizzle, the aroma of scorched sugar.... it's been years, but i still remember it like yesterday.

Anonymous said...

How the hell did a juicy bit of InstaHack/bad food snark turn into a round of "let's talk trash about the South"?

I, a Georgia-raised resident of the Atlanta area, am at this moment in Phila-by-god-delphia. And while I would have to agree that this town is in nearly all ways superior to any place down the seaboard, it cannot claim any general culinary superiority. There are just as many Subways, McDonalds, Dunkin' Donuts, and yes, Ruby Tuesdays here in city center as you would find in equivalent areas of Charlotte, Birmingham, or Nashville.

And while Southerners are not materially equipped to withstand extended periods of cold, that does not render us constitutionally unable to do so. We (including several million ex-Northerners) simply choose to live in a place that doesn't require us to.

If you wish to cheerfully assert, a la Garrison Keillor, that enduring a few months of bone-cracking cold builds character, feel free. Just don't turn it into an excuse to insult those of us who prefer warmer climes.

(What, moi touchy? Not at all, why do you ask?)