Red Lobster is phooey
Lines. You draw them to demarcate borders. For many foodies (yes, I know many food lovers hate that term, but I can write a diatribe about why if you love food, you are wrong to hate the term. And in fact later I will get into this), there is a line to be drawn against big corporate chains. Fortunately for you, my world is full of gradients and I think lines can be boring and stupid. So I will cross the line that many in the food blogosphere would not, and venture to infinity and beyond! Well, actually it was not infinity, it was just Red Lobster. And it was not beyond, it was just take-out lunch, but who is counting?!
Some of you might have recognized the biscuit from the opening page as the ones from Red Lobster. Maybe you do not know a Red Lobster even exists in New York City... But those biscuits are some tasty things. I do not know if they compete well against real biscuits from scratch from your grandma... cuz you know grandma makes the best biscuits, unless your grandma is Chinese, then she has no idea what a biscuit is and tells you to eat tea eggs for breakfast instead. The best part about the lunch was that RL gave THREE biscuits. Mmm...
Along with the biscuits came catfish and a dinky salad. The salad was useless really so no pictures of that. The catfish was... ok. Passable. I ate it because I was hungry. You get the option of fried catfish versus cajun catfish and I wondered if fried would have been wiser. Then I tasted the fries. Limp. Granted, they sat in the container for about five minutes before I took the pictures... so maybe the steaming effect caused it to become limp. Limp is no good kids, you want your fries to stand tall... wait a minute, I am starting to sound like a blog about Levitra.
The lunch was like $10.05 (I threw away the receipt and this was maybe ten days ago). Not cheap at all. Other options were more expensive, unless you order an appetizer (with no fries). Basically Red Lobster take-out lunch from Times Square was a disappointment. Maybe they would sell the biscuits as a standalone item and you can get that... otherwise meh. I still refuse to draw that line even if Red Lobster was major fail.
Now onto why if you love food you are a foodie. For the sake of this discussion let us create an imaginary world... we will call it.. Tatooine. our imaginary world shall be divided into food lovers and regular people. Let us just say in our imaginary world the two groups are divided equally. It helps the Regular People to be able to refer to Food Lovers versus Regular People. And the term they come up with is "Foodies". But some Food Lovers dislike the possible connotation with the word "Foodies" and do not want to be associated with any of the negative connotations of the term. The world does not work like that. You cannot force people to see you the way you see yourself. You are free to see yourself as a "Food Lover" but you cannot force others to see you as one; if they want to see you as a "foodie" then that is their right.
In the real world foodies do not comprise of 50% of the population as they do on Tatooine (gee, where did I get that name from ;). Maybe when there are more foodies, we can differentiate normal foodies from "fundamentalist foodies" and you will know them when you see one because they sneer at the food you love. They stop caring about the fact that YOU enjoy YOUR food and really that is what matters. From this day forward, I will start a fundamentalist crusade about why food lovers are foodies and you can interpret me however you want.
P.S. - I also want to rant about recipe copyrights. Anyone knows much about the law? And since it is Friday, check out this image. Boy, I have been in that situation before...
(I invite you to follow me on Twitter so you can get more of my non-sense in another medium.)
I think there are different degrees of foodies/food lovers.
Ang
July 25, 2008 6:39 pm
OMG! Friends of mine were going to Red Lobster on Monday night and I almost tagged along. I've never been, but I do want to steal the big red lobster outside and take it home. Btw, Tatooine and its twin suns are real, very real.
Blondie
July 25, 2008 11:42 pm
I have a pretty good copycat recipe for those biscuits on my website here, if you'd like them without the crappy RL experience.
http://www.joyfulabode.com/2008/03/08/cheesy-garlic-biscuits-a-la-red-lobster-step-by-step-easy-recipe/
Joyful Abode
July 25, 2008 11:57 pm
I agree with Ang. I think there definitely are degrees. Also, I feel like the term foodie almost speaks to a certain subset of food lovers who are also into the culture of food (as in celebrity chefs etc.) "Not that there's anything wrong with that. . ."
Jonathan
July 26, 2008 2:49 pm
that biscuit looks good I'm not going to lie..I'm also not going to lie that when I say "Red Lobster" I almost walked away from the post. I'm a total snob that doesn't eat FF unless as a last resort. I had Red Lobster once about 10 years ago and remember it being pretty disgusting.
Those biscuits look good though, like I said :)
Daniel
July 28, 2008 11:53 pm
Ang,
Maybe... it's a matter of if there are enough to start differentiating between the sects. To the general public, they do not care about the minutia of 'food lover' versus 'foodie'.
Blondie,
Haha, go! get the biscuits! The sad part is that giant red lobster is probably bigger than my apartment. NY Real estate = major fail.
Joyful Abode,
That sounds like a good recipe, thanks for sharing!
Jonathan,
I think if you look at the country at people who have shopped at farmers markets versus people who just do not care for those things... you can find people who think it is all the same.
Daniel,
Yea I am not sure if RL does anything well except for those yummy biscuits...
Danny
July 29, 2008 10:03 am
I love the biscuits. It is the best part of Red Lobster. Since I can make the biscuits at home, I don't feel the need to go very often - I do sometimes still go, though. I just can't help myself.
http://cookkatie.blogspot.com/2008/03/chicken-soup-and-garlic-cheese-biscuits.html
Katie P
July 30, 2008 5:32 pm
Well, living in Indiana, I thought all fish was supposed to taste meh so I've always grown to love Red Lobster. It started, of course, with those biscuits, but over the years some of my funniest stories take place in a Red Lobster.
Julie
February 18, 2009 2:33 am