Salad Bar Surprise

I've never been a big fan of pasta dishes but my wife and I used to have dinner at Olive Garden very often. We liked their bread sticks and their giant salad bowl with croutons. They used to prepare their salads from fresh vegetables processed in the kitchen of the restaurants. One day they brought the salad bowl to our table and it looked and smelled different. I ate a few bites and thought it tasted horrible. I asked the waiter what had changed. He said they had started buying the salad in large, sealed plastic bags ready to pour into the serving bowls. I don't remember the chemical they washed the salad in before bagging it. It was a preservative intended to delay spoilage and it tasted horrible. I haven't eaten at Olive Garden in the last ten years. I often wonder if they still use that pre-packaged salad. I also wonder how many restaurants have financial problems because they failed to ask their customers if some changes are acceptable. Small things can make a big difference.

I used to eat at Churches fried chicken a lot. Their chicken was always freshly cooked and they sold pickled Jalapeno peppers from a big jar on the counter. The peppers were always very crisp in texture. I would usually eat three or four of the peppers. Today, the chicken seems to sit under the heat lamps for a long time becoming very greasy and dry in texture. The pickled peppers are served in small plastic cups and seem mushy in texture. I no longer eat at Churches.

Sometimes the difference in two restaurants of the same chain are because of the
franchise owner. We have always enjoyed barbecue at the Dickey's chain. We were happy to see a new franchise opening about five miles from our house. We ate at their grand opening and it was horrible and the service was horrible. We thought it may get better after the opening day jitters are gone. The food got worse over the next couple of months and the service quality got worse. We now drive past that Dickey's to eat at a Dickey's twenty miles farther away.

Ted