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0 pointsbaldfat8y ago0 comments

Looks like Applebee's is actually starting to cook items. I guess public pressure has changed their ways. Good for them. They absolutely were the king of microwaved food in chain sit downs for decades.

Appetizers are all frozen and pre-packaged they just deep fried at almost all chains.

Heck I worked at Ethan Allen Inn in Danbury CT a LONG time ago and all the meals were frozen and prepared in France and shipped over. Easily $75 to $125 per person in the 90s.

Smell outside a restraunt is certainly a true statement. No HVAC (A/C or Heater) is going to filter the kitchen's vent. Tell me you can't smell the difference between Burger King's fake grilling and McDonald when your outside of them? Same thing with restaurants. The one's that microwave a ton will

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michaelvoz8y ago

I just ate at The Modern in NYC the other day. The Modern is a Michelin star restaurant. I didn't smell cooking. Half the dining experience at Michelin restaurants is all about tightly controlling the inflow of stimuli to your senses. No good restaurant would want you to smell someone else's seafood cooking while you start on desert. Is your experience limited solely to to restaurants with poor HVAC?

baldfatOP8y ago

I stated specifically outside not inside. You smell cooking from outside since kitchen's are vented. Now in NYC sometimes the vents are on top of a 25 story building and that beautiful NYC post winter stench might cover it up.

If a restaurant has a ton of items on the menu I guarantee you that most of that is just prepared food that is microwaved.

Seems like people are mad that I believe that most food in restaurants are not cooked.

eropple8y ago

I don't think people are "mad". But you have a track record of saying trivially disproven, unsubstantiated things on HN and you backtrack poorly from them, then you sprinkle in weirdly fixated antagonism like "NYC post winter stench". It's bad posting, and it's wrong besides--the gap between "they don't cook anything" and "they fry frozen appetizers and cook everything else as anyone else would" is not so small that you can handwave it away with "lol people are mad". I mean, hell, Applebee's has had apply-fire-to-food line cooks for twenty years or more. I knew kids in high school who worked there (and we'd go there because we got a discount).

(And if there's any wind at all, modern roof-mount kitchen venting will ensure you don't smell much of anything if there's even moderate wind.)

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deadmetheny8y ago

>Seems like people are mad that I believe that most food in restaurants are not cooked.

Or, you know, you're just talking out your ass and it's not even remotely true. A lot of menu items just means there's either a lot of prep being done, a lot of the menu items have a reasonably similar set of bases, or both. There's always going to be a certain degree of Sysco stuff that's just bought and dunked into a fryer, but claiming most of a given menu is reheated from a microwave without any further backup other than "lol you can't smell it" is ridiculous.

geofft8y ago

> Seems like people are mad that I believe that most food in restaurants are not cooked.

People should be mad at falsehoods. What better use is the feeling for?

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gamblor9568y ago

That is so false that you must be trolling. I've been to plenty of restaurants where you couldn't smell the food outside the restaurant, even though you could see them cooking the food inside and the air ducts carrying the smoky air from the kitchen to the outside. This ranges from small mom-and-pop taco stops to Michelin-starred restaurants.

On a side note: I've been to both Burger King and McDonalds, and you can smell them cooking the burgers at both. You can't "fake grill" a burger, as microwaving ground beef patties produces a different texture than grilling or pan-grilling.

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