Consumer Reports Reveals Results of Massive Restaurant Survey

I’ve always found Consumer Reports to be fairly useful for evaluating cars, appliances, et al. But they recently drifted into some unfamiliar territory for them: dishing about restaurants. OMG! They should have left this one alone.

A massive reader poll released today trashed such American icons as Denny’s, IHOP, Johnny Rockets, Friendly’s and others. Now I am hardly a Denny’s loyalist but the Grand Slam breakfast has come in handy on a number of morning-after-serious-partying occasions. And Friendly’s {Butter Crunch} has some of the best ice cream around. I’ve also had an occasional good hot dog at Johnny Rocket’s and even a digestible meal or two at IHOP.

Now, I rarely frequent these places but they’re not as bad as Consumer Reports makes them out to be.

The survey also praised Cheddar’s (ugh), Bob Evans (???) and the Cracker Barrel (they’re pretty decent for a family chain) along with Original Pancake House (we have one here on Parmer and it’s pretty damned good).

But the CR folks are clearly out of their comfort zone here. They claim that Ruth’s Chris has a per person price tag of $42 (are you kidding me: the side of creamed spinach costs almost that much).

Their “survey” also revealed that their sample respondents were significantly more upset about bad service than bad food. That in a nutshell kind of sums up the lameness of this entire report. So let’s see: the nachos can smell like low tide at Galveston but as long as they’re delivered by a server who is friendly and professional, then everything’s OK? I mean, for the love!