I grew up going to On The Border and Olive Garden, and thought they were good.

Five guys used to be amazing, but really felt like it fell off a cliff in my area. I’m also just eating out less. It’s so damn expensive and the food quality in general seems to be way down compared to the mid 00s to mid 10s. Maybe my tastes have changed, but I swear to God if we had a time machine, the food in like, 2011 would taste way better at many restaurants.

Chili’s and Golden Corral.

Growing up our absolute main spot was The Old Spaghetti Factory, and sometimes we would hit Applebee’s or Chili’s.

Now I’m lactose intolerant so can’t eat a lot of the stuff at OSF, plus it all upsets my stomach now, their quality has gone downhill.

Applebee’s and Chili’s were probably never that good but tasted a lot better in my kid brain than they do now.

Chain restaurants have been garbage since COVID. (TBF they weren’t exactly stellar before.)

You can tell that many servers and cooks moved onto other careers during the pandemic. It seems like servers now are way too inexperienced with little help.

Subway in the 90s was kinda awesome. It was fast and wasn’t a burger place and it had the old brown and yellow subway wallpaper everywhere.

Then they kept expanding locations and the meat and cheese slicers disappeared.

Then they ran $5 footlong.

Then they kept running $5 footlong.

And kept running it. And the quality kept dropping and dropping so they could keep the price peg.

Now, it’s disgusting and costs way too much.

You couldn’t pay me to eat subway, now.