News You Can Bruise for 2003 November 7

Permalink [Comments] (5) Fri Nov 07 2003 20:07:

How are you doing? When I was in Utah I had the privilege of experiencing two chain restaurants I had never before attended. Unfortunately, neither of them was anything to write home about. Despite this fact, I am writing home about them.

P.F. Chang's had delusions of grandeur, but it was actually just a good Chinese restaurant. They did offer brown rice as well as white, which is good because I greatly prefer brown rice. It was while I was eating the uninspired, chocolate-chip-laden P.F. Chang's chocolate cake that I realized it is a waste of time to buy chocolate cakes from restaurants because they are inevitably drier and much worse than any cake you might make yourself (even from a box mix), and they always have semisweet chocolate chips pushed into the side of the cake. This is supposed to make it more decadent, but it just makes it taste weird, like Cool Whip on caviar. Like a free ride, when you've already paid.

P.F. Chang's had things going for it, like good entrees, but The Old Spaghetti Factory was just stuff to keep you from getting hungry for a few hours. They also brought me the wrong thing, although I can't remember what I ordered or what they brought me or how the two differed. Everybody had a plate containing a bunch of yellow-white stuff covered in red stuff and it was all pretty similar.

Verdict: Old Spaghetti Factory: bleah. P.F. Chang's: should change name to P.F.C. Hang's, start serving down-home UGR-H&S chow.

Comments:

Posted by Kristen at Fri Nov 07 2003 23:43

I'll try not to take the P.F. Chang's thing personally since I was the one that chose the place. It is actually pretty good I think, except that night was strange for some reason. We waited about 2 1/2 hours for a table, which I think is a crime. The food wasn't as good and I think it is b/c about 20 of us were sharing all the entrées. I will give you this though...it is way over-priced, especially for us poor college students!

Posted by Leonard at Sat Nov 08 2003 00:19

Yeah, there were not enough entrees to go around, which was my fault since I was in charge of coordinating the order. We should have gotten 1 more order of most of the entrees. As it was each dish was spread pretty thin.

I think the food was pretty good, but nothing spectacular--not worth the price, I agree. That chocolate cake really put me off, though. It was so dry! Chocolate cake needs to be really moist because the chocolate makes you thirsty anyway.

Posted by Rachel at Sat Nov 08 2003 16:28

But I *like* the Old Spagetti Factory...

I guess my culinary tastes are not advances as some. As well as my spelling skills...

Posted by jacob at Sun Nov 09 2003 00:11

did you not use the Official Hacker Chinese Food Ordering Heuristic of n - 1 entrees for n people (as so stated in the jargon file)?

Posted by Leonard at Sun Nov 09 2003 01:02

I think it was about that, or even a little more, but it wasn't enough. Possibly because we were kept waiting outside for 2.5 hours, so we were all ravenous.

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