Fine Dining - Cheddar's Scratch Kitchen: Greasy & Fussy feat. Tommy Chong

Episode Date: January 25, 2023

The boys feel sluggish and greasy as their Cheddar's meal obliterated their bodies Tommy Chong from "Cheech & Chong" reviews Cheddar's cheese fries on behalf of Cheese Correspondent Steven Zurita Garrett's You-Must Bowl punishment - where he can only speak to the wait staff in rhyme - tanks our service Michael's dad also tanks our service experience Bathe yourself in the new perfume scent Mediocrité JUB has a ploy to get all the free wood you could ever want from a Home Depot Additional voices: Tommy Chong & Jessa Day We're now on Patreon! Get a monthly free episode, merch discounts, download access to our music including the 7 singles from our Olive Garden musical, the opportunity to get your face immortalized on the Tchotchke of Mediocrity, and more!   Get our 5 Survival Tips for Casual Dining at www.finediningpodcast.com!   Send us your Cheddar's stories at [e-mail].   Follow us on TikTok and Instagram @finediningpodcast   Let us know where we should go next by leaving us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google, or wherever you get your podcasts. We read every one!   Next time on Fine Dining: Chuck E. Cheese! If you have ever worked for Chuck E. Cheese and have a story to share, or if you’d like us to hear your child’s review of the Chuck E. Cheese kids menu, send it to [e-mail].

Hey there fussy little boys and girls, it's Michael. I'm very excited to announce the official launch of our Patreon page. You can find the link in the description of these episodes, it's kind of an opportunity for us to connect with you guys. We're gonna be building it up over time, but right now you can actually go get an exclusive episode where we review Rudy's Country Store and Barbecue. It's literally a gas station barbecue joint. It's fantastic.

I actually perform a brand new song. It's a country song for this episode. We've got a sit-down interview with our longtime sponsor, Job. We've got all sorts of good stuff. It's a full episode and it's up now. In addition to that, you can download the seven singles that we did for our Olive Garden musical. So if you want those tunes in your ears while you're going on a jog or whatever you're doing,

cooking up some homemade Italian food in your kitchen, it's perfect for that. We're gonna be letting you make decisions about the direction of the podcast with polls. You're gonna get discount codes for our merchandise and so much more. We've got three different subscription tiers. It would mean a lot if you just went and checked it out. And now enjoy this episode of Cheddar's Scratch Kitchen. I am a greasy boy, Garrett. I am too.

It's just stuck to my skin. It's not coming off. I feel disgusting. There's grease seeping out of every single one of our pores right now. I can feel everything that I ate. Welcome, everyone, back to the Fine Dining Podcast, the search for the most mediocre restaurant in America. He is your host, Garrett Zwerk.

And he's your host, Michael Ornelis. And we are on a mission. We're gonna find you mediocrity incarnate. Even if it kills us. Which it clearly is going to. It's trying to. It's seeping out of us. It's taking over our bodies and minds and brains.

And yeah, this week we went to Cheddar's Scratch Kitchen. I had been recommended this by my friend, Gabe Alvarez, who, you know, this is the last restaurant we went to when we were in Austin. Gabe hosted us, basically. Austin Audio Lab. We recorded the past six episodes or seven episodes. And I think he got sick of us and he's trolling us with this pic. He's trying to send us to our death.

He was like, enough with these guys. If this is your first time listening, we are searching for the perfect 5.00 restaurant. We're trying to find you the definition of culinary mediocrity. We want to be able to tell you, hey, you know what? This is better than Waffle House, so it's damn good. We want to find you the bar of comparison that you can measure everything. And honestly, we just love chain restaurants. Yeah, we love them.

We love them. We love them. They don't love us. We know what they are. We know what they are. You know, their lot in life is mediocrity. So we acknowledge that. Yeah, you know, we kind of have this symbiotic relationship.

Is that the right word? Symbiotic where you both contribute to each other in an equal way? I'm only contributing to your downfall. That's about it. That is accurate. We are reviewing these places based on their atmosphere, based on their service, and of course, based on the food. We've got to talk about the food.

It's a restaurant podcast. So join us as we dive into Cheddar's Scratch Kitchen. I think our table's ready. Find dining party of two. Yeah, our table's ready. Find dining. Two ledgers on the sign are shining. Neon flickering, irregular timing.

Identify the perfect vibe. How the 10. Find dining. Find dining. First impressions. Hey, fun thing. Yeah. I woke up this morning.

I got out of bed. And where I was laying, there was a grease outline. Looks like a crime scene. This sounds like last impressions. What were your first impressions of the restaurant? First impressions. That's disgusting, by the way. I want to let that be on record that I find that disgusting, but also relatable to my experience.

Yeah. Thanks, Cheddar's. So we see this building. It looks like a weird cross between Olive Garden and a steakhouse. You know, I'm going to divert us now. I'm going to divert us. This is what we get for picking a place with cheese in the name. Yeah.

Cheddar's. We're not cheesy boys. And this is our payback. Cheddar's is out for revenge. Okay. Yes. It looks like a cross between an Olive Garden. An Olive Garden and your generic suburban steakhouse.

Honestly, like I expected good things. Yeah. It looks nice outside. We walk inside and it is fancy. It's also really cold. I'm usually not the one who's noticing the temperature, but I was very cold walking in. But I did like this environment. First thing we see, this gloriously beautiful fish tank.

It was very well kept. It was very nice. It was sizable. Yeah. It was impressive. If I saw that in a home, I'd be like, this person has money. Then there were high end drinks behind like those nice like fancy seller bars. Automatically we're thinking the bar is set pretty high for us when there is alcohol behind it.

Yeah. So someone hasn't stolen it. So we're in a safe part of town. Yeah. We're not alone. No, we are not. I brought my father. This was our last meal in Austin.

We have now traveled back to Los Angeles. So unfortunately he did not join us for this recording. But he very much painted, I think, our perspectives. Would you agree with that? When we rate restaurants, we are influenced by everyone around us. So if the table next to us talks about things that disgust us like the graphic birth process at Chewie's, that lowered my rating. Yeah. And you know, this rating is not the end all be all of this restaurant chain.

It is us recounting our night there, our experience there. One moment in time is being rated. That's it. You get your one shot restaurant, put forth your most mediocre foot. And like to be fair, they can't control the people we choose to bring with us. They can control the type of people they attract. And the people they hire. Also true.

Like when you go to a waffle house, you know who you're dining with. Yes. You know who the other patrons are going to be. But at this place, it looked like a very upscale restaurant. It did. So we expected upscale food and upscale service because the atmosphere was like that. Yeah. We were lied to.

Okay. I don't think it's even fair to say we were lied to. They put a good foot forward with the atmosphere. They put a really good foot forward with the atmosphere. There's a nice. It's not an open air ceiling, but it's kind of like the ceiling opens up into this little alcove. Yeah.

And there's like a pot. There's a plant. There's a skylight. This weird fan. It looks like a device. It looks like a device. Yeah, it does. It felt very Vitruvian man.

It was like, it was like a water mill with like. How would you describe it? Like that tan colored, almost leaf like looking. It looked like the wings of the first airplanes. The first airplane sketches. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I dug it. Yeah, it was cool.

I liked the look of it. I liked a lot about the presentation of Cheddar's, the fish tank. You know, they got me pretty quick and you can get me pretty quick too, Garrett. If you want to hit me with some rusty facts, you want to show what you've whipped up in this week's rusty fact roundup. Yeah. So guess where Cheddar's was founded? I don't think this is a Texas chain.

And even though I've been really good about guessing the Texas ones, it's not Texas, is it? It is Texas. It is Texas. Well, all right. So I'm already wrong. I'm guessing a Texas city. Fort Worth.

Irving, Texas. Irving. I don't know where that is. Is that like a place somewhere? I couldn't tell you where in the state it falls, but I'm aware it exists. Okay. Currently, there are 183 locations in 28 states. Damn.

Cheddar's is a juggernaut. Yeah. 52 of those are in Texas. A little over a third. Yeah. And then the next most common location is Florida. Of course. I mean, the mecca of chains.

Yeah. I feel like inevitably we're going to have to do a Florida visit at some point. Oh, we have to. I'm so excited for that. The name Cheddar's came from the decision of a local class of fifth graders. It does sound like it was named by a child. Yeah. So what happened was the founders asked the children to vote on a series of options

and the name Cheddar's was the overwhelming favorite. Do you know what the other options are? I could not find what the other options are because I'm seeing that there are greasies. There are two stories. Where the children choose the name and two, where the children are given a list of options. I believe they're given a list of options. Like, oh, like, yeah, they're not going to just like, hey, children have a board meeting. Yeah.

Like we get the quarterly numbers are down. We got to change the name. Like, OK, fifth graders recess is done. Come on back. It's like you're showing them like facts and figures and they only know the numbers by referring to them as this many. So this many years later, Cheddar's changed their name to Cheddar's Scratch Kitchen in a 2015 rebranding.

What year did you say they were founded? They were founded in 1979. So 30 ish years later, 30 something years later. And that was after a buyout, which makes sense. This isn't the last time the chain crowdsourced wisdom. They're starting to sound lazy. Are they crowdsourcing recipes? You guessed it.

Really? They sent a question. What does a really great burger mean to you to members of their apparently really large e-club? Twenty thousand responses later, they decided on the jalapeno burger and the mushroom in Swiss burger. Now, I will say one of the best burgers I've had in my life, four men's jalapeno burger. Jalapeno burgers are bomb if they're done right.

Yes. You know, if I had known that, I may have ordered that at Cheddar's and they probably would have fared quite a bit better. I imagine it would have. In 2017, Cheddar's was sold to one of the largest restaurant conglomerates in the United States. Darden? Darden, yes. Also, they own Olive Garden.

Uh-huh. And hey, didn't we do a musical about that place? It was a while ago. I don't know. Hard to remember. Let's see. I vaguely remember that. Yeah.

In 2012, Zagat, or Zagat, awarded Cheddar's as the number one full service chain restaurant in the US, along with the top overall American cuisine, top rated food, and top rated decor in facilities. Okay. Atmosphere-wise, for a chain? I mean, rainforest aside, just, but it's a different kind. I mean, Papadeau, I would put above it, but Papadeau, I don't think, it's definitely not as prevalent.

No. You know, it's got way fewer locations. Food, crazy take. Totally crazy take. But atmosphere, I can actually see it. Later, we'll get into the type of experience we had. Yeah. But I think I know why the food experience, at least, can vary greatly.

Yeah. They're Cheddar's scratch kitchen. Oh, because it's all made from scratch. Every single thing is made from scratch every single day. So, this means they're hinges on the chef. Yeah. Their average kitchen is double the size of the average Applebee's kitchen. Okay.

They've got more humans making more food. More stations, probably. Every single day. Yeah. The first serving of their wonderful butter croissants, free. Free for everyone. But after that. After that.

It's $1.99 for two of them. That's not bad. It's not bad, but it's just like, oh, here you go. Here's this really amazing thing. You get one. They're literal drug dealers. They're dealers, yeah. They're trying to give you a taste.

You want a taste? Ah, here you go. Yeah. Well, that concludes this week's Rusty Fact Roundup. Atmosphere. We have a good start. Yeah. To the atmosphere.

It looks nice and almost like a metaphor for our experience. I sit down, my feet hit the floor, and crunch. Like a lettuce crunch. It looked like someone scraped off a plate of tacos. It was pretty obvious. Like maybe there was a family or something that ate there previously. There were a bunch of nacho chips. There was some guac.

There was lettuce. Yeah. Immediately, my feet were there, and I'm having Gattie Town trauma flashbacks. And Garrick Barefoot, mind you. He doesn't believe it. No, I'm kidding. Yeah. I'm sweating.

I'm just like, are we back in Saturday? You were flustered. Yeah, because you got gum on your shoes in Gattie Town. And those floors were, I mean, they upset you a lot more than they did me, but they also gave you gummy shoes. And I did not have that. Yeah, it was gross, though. You know, I looked down and I was like, I can deal with it.

And then when we actually stood up to move tables and I got a clear view of under the table, I was like, how does that go unnoticed? We move tables. I don't actually have a strong recollection of how my dad was in reaction. I don't know. I was flustered. I asked to move tables in a very interesting way. Which was?

In rhyme. Yeah. I can't get into that. Garrett was only allowed to speak to the waiter in rhyme. That was his punishment for the You Must Bowl because our previous episode, Lubies scored 6.01 just outside of the zone of mediocrity, and he had to draw from the You Must Bowl and his punishment told him he had to only communicate in rhyme.

So, yeah, we'll get into that later. Let's just not talk about that, OK? I mean, I wish we could never talk about it. So we switch tables. It's fine. Yeah, it's clean. The meal's going along. It's got that nice restaurant dimness to it.

It's not dark in a way that bothers me. It's like, oh, we're setting a vibe. It's an intentional choice. Yeah. So everything they're doing is intentional mostly so far, except, oh, so they're intentionally not cleaning the underneath of the table? Of the one table. It was an oversight.

It wasn't like, hey, this is our policy. We don't clean that. But we did notice, and we'll get into this more with service, that cleaning up after spaces was not Cheddar's strong suit. Yeah. What's a buzzer? Yeah. Yeah.

When you're eating over a literal junkyard pile, I don't like complaining about these things, but man. So we have stuff going on around us. I notice you, you started covering your eyes or something. If something was flashing at your face. There were a lot of lights in this. I thought we were back in the Gattie Town arcade. Oh, yeah.

There were three patrons. I don't know how else to describe them. They are the type to turn on their phone flashlights to read their menu. It wasn't that dark in there. And the menus. They are underneath the skylight. And the menus are also glossy, so that provides its own unique problem. Right.

So you're literally refracting light like ants in a magnifying glass. I thought they were just pointing it down to try and burn little bugs. There's no need for it. No. You're the type of person who's turning on your phone flashlight in dark places. Keep in mind, other people's eyes are not adjusted for that. So you're flashing, you're flashing everyone. But you know, you're literally like blinding everyone.

They're flashing everyone. With your behavior. Can I rant? Go ahead. If you do this in a movie theater, you are the actual lowest piece of shit. People who turn on their phone. I don't care if the movie hasn't started yet, but especially people who do it in the middle of the movie.

If you're the type that uses your phone flashlight, like, look, I understand you need to illuminate your way a little. That's what the phone screen is for. It's a little bit of light. It points away from you. The flashlight is a bold choice. And it's one that will never put me in a pleasant mood. So don't be that person.

And if you are that person, I'm giving you the opportunity to change yourself right now. And better yourself. And this has been the Fine Dining Self-Improvement Podcast. Yeah. Where we are here to turn all of you into the type of people I would want to go to a movie with. Yes. Or a restaurant. Yeah.

And just eat this food with us. Join us in our caloric escapade. Let the mediocrity wash over you. Yeah. Be mediocre. Is that your mantra? That's your little chant. Be mediocre.

See mediocre. Taste mediocre. You sound like a perfume commercial or something. Mediocrity. By John B. Berger. Mediocrity. Like an old Wendy's bag inside a Kievorte on a hot day. Mediocrity.

Mediocrity. The new scent by Jami Der Berger. Mediocrity. Turn heads. But in the other direction. Mediocrity. Be mediocre. Be mediocre.

Be mediocre. Be mediocre. Be mediocre. Be mediocre. Be mediocre. Be mediocre. Be mediocre. Feel mediocre.

Mediocrity. Smell mediocre. Mediocrity. Mediocrity. By Jerky Toad Berger. Only at Complacies. The Fragrance Last Resort. I feel like we've gotten off track here, but-

Yeah. At the end of the day, don't turn on your flashlight of your phone on your menu, don't point it around. Don't keep it on, certainly don't keep it on longer than you need to, like read the thing you need. Don't like start up a conversation while just holding it like in like a weird claw hand out to the side. I'm gonna take this moment.

So when you're in a restaurant, you're having conversations, please avoid talking about bathroom habits at the dinner table. Just do that. Just don't do that. Come on. They were very- Open about- Don't do that at restaurants, guys.

Yeah. It's kind of gross. We don't need the details. We don't even need the broad strokes. We don't need any of it. Yeah. There's this little cute little kid just like crawling over- And you hate kids.

The booth partition. I hate kids, but it looked like he was trying to crawl over. He was waving to us. He wanted to be a part of what we were doing. He was waving. He was smiling. It was adorable. Yeah.

Like he was so innocent and he looked like he wanted to be part of what we were doing so badly. But for every cute child, there is an equal and opposite reaction. It sounded like a middle school basketball gymnasium. Oh, there was this little kid just screeching their shoes constantly. It's like, come on, people. Like pick and roll non-stop. Oh, God.

How about you pick and roll this kid outside the damn restaurant? Wow. You're a genius with your play on words. Oh, I am. I'm very smart. You should write rhymes. I should not write rhymes. I'm really bad at that.

Yeah. You know what? Yeah. That's a thing. Anyways, there's this kid crawling over the partition. It's adorable. It looks like he's noticing our little electronic payment machine on our table. We've had these before.

You were amazed to find out that they have games on them. They have always had games on them. Never knew that. Usually. But I don't know. This felt like another place where, much like Olive Garden, you'll hear me talk about this in our Olive Garden musical episode, that I just think there are certain restaurants where, despite these things being practical and easy to order, especially when the kitchen

is slammed or something like that and maybe the waiter can't come around as much as they should, you can place your order there and you can pay there. I'll tell you one place I like it. But it looks out of play. It works at Chili's. Well, of course. Chili's my personal theory that it is the mecca of mediocrity. Someday we will find out.

We will go to Chili's and evaluate it, but here at this like upscale vibe, you've got a nice fish aquarium and your Da Vinci device. You can't have this now, but it was interesting what it was doing to us. It just kept blinking. It was like flashing red. It looked like it was like Morse code. And then whenever we'd try and take out our phone to take a picture of it, it would like stop.

Oh, actually. It's like it knew. Every time we looked at the screen to see what was happening, it conveniently updated it. Yeah. It started a software update. It was like, this thing is sentient. It knows it's being watched does what's going on over there.

What's going on over there? What is going on over there, Garrett? I think this device was trying to tell us something. What if it had nothing to do with us? What if the machine was trying to get the attention of the kid? We've got adult things to do. We've got conversations to have. We've got taxes to do, but that kid does not care in the world.

It was flashing bright lights to attract the kid to try and climb over. That's really dangerous. So it's a beacon to attract children from all around the restaurant. That's why there was so much sneaker squeaking going on because the kids were rushing and they were running into each other and they were having to box each other out and they were like, only one can get to it. It determines which kid is the next king of Cheddar's. So does this king of Cheddar's child then proceed to cook all the food?

Probably not. Child slave labor, yes. Whichever child is the king of Cheddar's gets to feed the fish. That's pretty cool. You know, that's actually a pretty solid system to determine how those fish get fed. You do a little competition, get all the kids in the restaurant to do it. I don't know why our Ziosk machine was so special and was the one that has that determining factor for all the kids.

Oh, because it was in clear sight of the fish tank. The fish tank could communicate with the Ziosk easily. The fish were like, hey, we're hungry. Get another king of Cheddar's determined and the Ziosk is kind of like nonchalantly just like, yeah, okay. Yeah, no. I bet the fish would be. Let me flash some kids.

Nope. No. There's a flash signal out there and some kids will see it and race to me. Yeah. And the fish couldn't communicate with any closer Ziosk because of those annoying people with their phone flashlights. It was refracting the fish signals all over the restaurant. So we were the only one that had a clear shot.

I think we did it. I mean, it's a very convoluted series of steps, but make no doubt about it. We are correct. We have figured out what's going on over there. You know, one thing that happened that hasn't happened in all of the restaurants we've reviewed yet. I think I know what you're talking about, but let's see. Let's say it on three, one, two, three.

Broken plate. Yes. We got that big clatter, the big porcelain loud noise that you hear that rings out. I don't know why, but I enjoy that so much. I do too. I think it's the sign of a busy restaurant. Yeah. It might be the sign of shaky fingers, but I don't think about that.

I don't think about the misfortune of the person dropping it or the financial impact on the restaurant. I just think of that was a fun noise to hear as long as it wasn't too close to me. And I'm like in the, you know, in the chatter zone, the shrapnel zone, where you can get like a purple heart because of your time on the Cheddar's battlefield. You got like plated in the leg. Now you have to like walk with a cane like I do. Like you do.

I was like, who do I know that walks with a cane and would be offended by that? It's you, but you can't offend me. That's fair. You are inoffendable. This was just a big hodgepodge of fancy constantly being taken down a peg by things that undercut it. That's kind of how I feel overall about the atmosphere at Cheddar's. If I have to give it a rating, you know, fancy Vitruvian man machine, nice fish tank, nice

the whole design of the place inside and outside, nice. You know, the sounds of kids screeching around in basketball shoes, not nice dirty floor underneath, not nice machine kind of flashing red lighted us patrons flashing flashlights at us. I'm going zero thumbs. Everything was kind of canceled out. I'm not going to hate on it too hard, but I'm not going to praise it. I'm going zero thumbs on Cheddar's.

I agree with you there. The entire place was set up like true fine dining. So my expectation was I see the fish tank. I see the liquor. I see the dim lighting. I see the mahogany, but wait, no, that's not mahogany on the booths. That is pine stained to be mahogany. I mean, I'm not that picky, but I just like, there's the first shortcut they took.

Oh yeah, there were a lot of shortcuts here underneath the booths, mess, another shortcut. And it's a gross one. Here's the thing. If it was just like, you know, a wrapped up like silverware thing, or if it was something that didn't have like actual food residue on it, I would be way more forgiving. Like, oh, there's accidentally a stack of plates under here that are clean. I'd be like, yeah, whatever. You know what else I noticed that I forgot about until now?

Yeah. There was a hostess that was continually just standing, watching over the room and running back to communicate with another host. So instead of, well, they didn't have two distinct areas. They had their bar room and then they had kind of the, so instead of having a radio system or some other form of communication, it was old school, one human literal runners running around and leering at people like this didn't seem like it would fit in a fancy fine dining establishment.

Yeah. It just, it was inconsistent. The standard was set high the moment I walked in and I just continued to be disappointed. So zero thumbs, zero thumbs. And now a word from our totally not made up sponsor. Oh, hi there, it's Job and I am back again with a brand new business. My last one didn't work out too good because it turns out there's a lot of liability if you build a pit right next to your restaurant booth, especially when there's a lot of old

people there. These octogenarians will take a tumble for anything. That's why I'm so adamant that you put dentist balls on the bottom of your walker. But it's fine. I'll collect myself, dust myself off and get back on the horse. Are you a restaurant who's looking to cut corners? Give off a nice presentation, but you don't got a huge budget for it. Hire me.

I can get you all the supplies that look good. Just don't study them with too much scrutiny. I got a guy at Home Depot. He's four foot three and he snaps real good inside of those polypropylene containers. You just got to make sure you don't zip tie it shut and poke some air holes. And when the establishment closes at night, he just pops on out of there and he'll grab all the wood that you want. He can make it look like mahogany.

He can even do balsa. He can make it look like anything you want. So if you want the good stuff at a price, it's basically free. Call job. I'm not going to get a phone. Just lick the tip of your index finger and trace my name into the wind. I'll come to you and we can work this out. Okay, bye.

Okay, bye. I'm sorry. This is going to be a segment. Yeah, dad. Come on. He is a strongly opinionated man and a little bit grumpy sometimes. And today we got Grumpy Dave. Daddy is a fussy little boy.

I want to preface this by saying he's a lovely man. I think his expectations were also set high walking into the restaurant and this frames all of our experiences. We were expecting traditional fine dining. I don't know. I mean, yes, you're hypothesizing how he may have looked at it. That very well may be true. Yeah, I don't know.

He was, okay, so our service, I believe, was impacted twofold by two separate events. One of which my dad being a little bit crabby. And the other of which was the punishment. Yeah, so Garrett from the you must pull you drew that you had to communicate with the server only in rhyme. I'm going to just play some samples of it right now for people to hear. Oh, God, please don't. It's so embarrassing.

I'll just have a water. I'm sitting next to someone else's father with the chicken tender platter with the bomb ass batter go classic and I promise I'm going to smash it. If you want more where that came from, you can follow us on Instagram and TikTok. That's right. We're on Instagram at fine dining podcast. We're on TikTok at fine dining podcast and you can email us whatever you want fine dining podcast at gmail.com.

We might regret that, but I don't know, maybe we won't. We post all of our receipts and by that, I mean, the things we talk about where snapping pictures or taking videos, hey, if you don't want to hear that ever again, still follow us and just because we're not going to do that punishment again, we'll never do this punishment again. I promise it was just cringe. Aff. Aff.

Yeah. I'm trying to be clean. Come on. It was bad. Bad is being generous. We warned our server so like, I can understand if I'm that server just wanting to interact with us less. I just, okay, one rhyme was something of, I don't know what I rhyme for that.

I picked up a piece of chicken and ended it with, oh, here's some chicken in my hand. And I'm just like, what the hell? You committed with an amount that I was clenching the whole time, just like my jaw, my fists, just all of me. I was very tense listening to you, kind of half-wrap, half-free style. And I can't do that. It's really bad. It was bad.

Now, to his credit, our server was like, okay. And like kind of like nodding along with it and like, you know, doing like treating it like it's a wrap. Yeah. You treat your like three-year-old nephew that says some words. Who walks in with like a toy plastic microphone and like it like, you know, amplifies her in such a specific way that doesn't sound good to anyone and you're trying to be supportive and you're like, yeah, you're expressing your creativity.

I got humored. You got humored heart. It was, you're a three-year-old at a birthday party vibes. That's what I was getting. And you know what? Bless his heart. I enjoyed our server. I did.

He was a nice human being. He was in a difficult situation. I noticed I always go to the bathrooms, check out everything. Clean bathrooms, by the way, but I, in the complete other room, I saw him have tables in the bar area. So he's, you know, much like that host who's running between rooms. Our server has his attention pulled all over the place, but we didn't see him that often. And it was kind of a problem because the table wasn't huge.

Our dishes were piling up. You know, it would have been nice to have plates taken away. Like it got to a point where like when you would come, I would just kind of lift the plate off the table as kind of like a body language like, hey, could you grab this? And he would, you know, he didn't have like an aversion to doing it, but he didn't have the initiative to do it. So we were kind of eating over a lot of leftover food. And this wasn't just us.

We noticed all of the tables had the same problem. It's as if Cheddar's doesn't have bussers or it's low priority. I don't know. But my dad also, a little ADD, doesn't necessarily process every interaction. If he's distracted by something may have been reading over the menu to decide what he wanted. Or he was distracted by my absolute cringe, Lord behavior. I mean, it looked like he was trying to avoid being a part of the interaction as he probably should have for his own sanity.

And by about the third time our server had come by, you know, he had brought the honey butter croissant rolls and had taken a drink order and brought the drinks and then kind of disappeared for a while. And we wanted to place our order and it had, in my dad's defense, been too long. Yes. Objectively, it was too long. But with us, we're taking notes. So hey, too long for us is just enough.

Yeah. Just enough time to get settled in, make our observations, theorize why the machine is speaking Morse code to us, all these things. And my dad stops another waiter and is just like, do we even have a waiter? Which was a little aggressive because they kind of like, their eyes just popped up like, uh, yeah, like I know you do. Do you want us to find him? And I immediately kind of undercut my dad, but just being like, hey, maybe not so passive

aggressive. And I'm just like, I'm not saying words because I don't want to rhyme. I'm just mouthing. I'm mouthing. It's okay. And my hands are. And it's okay. Technically rhymes with it's okay.

So if you just repeat that over and over, you're good. It's okay. It's okay. Yeah. It's okay. It's okay. It's okay. Yeah.

It's okay. It's okay. It's okay. And so the waiters, the one that's not our server, their eyes just kind of like light up and I'm trying to like diffuse it because my dad came on a little aggressive, I think. And I'm like, yeah, man, we do have a waiter. We've seen him three times by now. We're the reason that he's not here.

We told him, take your time. We're still looking over what we want, you know, trying to diffuse it, but it was clear that the waiter we stopped then went and told our waiter, Hey, that table's not happy. Now if I'm our server and I'm like, I've got an unhappy table and I have to humor one of the people every time he communicates and I'm making things worse. You know, me, Michael is making things worse because if we as a group need something, I'm putting it on you. I'm like, Hey, Garrett, don't you have something to ask for?

Yep. Yep. For the table. So we're a nightmare table. You know, it is like I said, I liked the guy. He was nice. He was not very present. I wish that our dishes had been taken from us and we weren't kind of eating constantly

over all these discarded plates and stuff. Discarded is the wrong word, but you know, done, we're done with them. You know, we got an appetizer, you know, we have a table full of unbust plates and cups. It was kind of a disaster. It was just, I understand the reasons why he wouldn't have been present. I didn't like that he wasn't and it did kind of inconvenience our experience. So as nicely as I can, I have to give two thumbs down to the service. I understand how we contributed to it, but I got to go two thumbs down.

I will also go two thumbs down because objectively it was poor service, although we could have been better patrons. So hey guys, just if you want good service, treat your server as you would want to be treated. That's, it seems like common sense, but a lot of people forget it. And I very much don't want to be spoken to in rhyme. So the fact that we did that to him, I get it. My dad came on a little strong, though it wasn't to his face, but it was, you know, probably

communicated to him. I think it's a common thing for people to get a little agitated when they're hungry, they're waiting on things, they're by an idiot who doesn't know how to rhyme above like a second grade level and they're, they're having flashlight slashed in their face. You know, there are outside factors. You and I, I maintain, we were never mean to him. He was never mean to us. This has nothing to do with like his demeanor.

I like the guy, but yeah, it's just- Poor service is poor service. Yeah. I feel bummed now. All right. Well, let's talk about the food. Oh. Food.

Yum. I'm going to lead with positivity, damn it. Okay. Started off positively with these very delectable honey butter croissants. They were very flaky. They were sweet, tender. They made my fingers very sticky, but I can't knock like the residue of a thing against it because it's, it's part of the dish.

It's like if you were eating a cinnamon roll. We didn't even ask for them. They just arrived. We didn't know they were coming. And you know what? There were some of the better table bread that we've had in this entire podcast journey, I would say. They weren't that poppado bread.

They were not, but they were, they were solid. They were good. They were very solid. 8 out of 10 for me, I, I, I respect them. I liked them. I'd get them again. Yeah. 8 out of 10.

They were the thing where if I'm going back to a Cheddar's, they're, they're the thing I'm like, yeah, this. Yeah. And I naturally shy away from the bread. If I go back to Cheddar's, I'm mowing down on that. Mowing down. Yes. Can you describe what ma, define the mowing down?

Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow.

Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Mowing down is totally term, isn't it? I've heard mowing down. I don't know.

Mow. But mowing down usually means hitting someone with your car. So like Pizza Hut. Yeah. Back in, yeah. Pizza Hut has a car crash problem apparently. Yeah. Go check out our Pizza Hut episode and then we actually have a t-shirt about how Pizza

Hut gets hit by so many cars. That's mowing down. That's mowing down, but mowing down I have never heard of, but I. It's an onomatopoeia. Our appetizer. What did we get? Buffalo beer battered shrimp. It was fried shrimp with like a buffalo drizzle served over inedible lettuce.

It. Kale? Was it kale? I don't know. It looked like the. A green. Yeah. Dandelion leaves for all I know.

What a specific. But they tried so hard to be fancy here. They did. They were so delicate with the amount of their sauce drippings. Oh God. The drizzle was way too little. This is. Way too little.

And then like over half the drizzle ended up on like the, the leaves and the lion leaves which are like, that's no man's land. No one's like picking up the leaves to be like, let me put down this sauce. Yeah. I didn't love it. The dish itself was fine. The, the, the shrimp was fine, but fine is about as high as I'll go. The tails were still in it, which my dad made a stink out of.

He was like, they're still tails and love you dad. Yeah. I know you're listening. The tail thing. I've had that happen before. Look, I'm new to seafood kind of like I have expanded my, my boundaries of what I'll eat a lot over the course of this podcast. I've done seafood quite a bit.

I almost never do seafood other than like, I like sushi, but yeah, I've really branched out and it's no rainforest coconut shrimp. That was good shrimp. That was my favorite shrimp that I've had so far. It's not Bubba Gump fried shrimp. I liked those. Yeah. It was certainly below both of those items by far, by far, but you know, fine, six and

a half out of 10 for me. I'm going to give it a six out of 10. There was nothing really offensive about it. They just didn't try very hard in the right ways. Yeah. Now this is where our cavalcade of grease kind of began. Certainly not where it ended. Everything we got was so greasy.

Grissants, grease soaked buffalo sauce, spattered shrimp, and then you and I, actually all three of us got different presentations of fried chicken and all of these things were highlighted on the menu. So the fried chicken, they're all like favorites or specialties. So I got the buttermilk fried chicken sandwich. You got the number eight special, the chicken tender platter. Some racing guy's favorite meal whenever he goes there, number eight, whoever number eight is.

Yeah. And my dad got the country fried chicken with gravy. I had a little taste of it. I know you didn't, but I was just like, hey, it all looks the same. Whatever. It was not the country fried chicken and gravy. I thought was delicious and had the best texture of all three of the fried chicken stuff we got.

Very flaky. The gravy is, is what I wrote was it's innocuous in a good way. Like it doesn't overwhelm, but it gives it that, you know, that, that extra bit of moisture that you want on a, on a, on meat, eight and a half out of 10. I'm going on this country fried chicken and gravy off of one bite. You know, Cheddar's, you had your shot with me. You scored. You scored on that, on that shot.

It doesn't mean you won the game, but you scored on a shot. I had the chicken tender platter. Yeah. And okay, it was strongly battered. The batter stuck to the chicken tenders with every bite. It really annoys me when you take a bite and half the batter comes off. Oh yeah. Yeah.

No, you definitely want like, yeah, you want the breading to be what you're gripping as you continue to eat. Yes. So when it falls apart, that's not good. The chicken itself was a little too dry for my liking, which kind of confuses me because the entire thing was soaked in grease. How do I get a dry item that's sopping wet? So I tasted all three chicken things and yours I had the lowest ranked.

Yeah. It's fried food. I can't hate it too much. Yeah. But I kept eating. I ate almost all of it. It felt thick. It was a thick grease.

And it devolved as I started eating. My first bite, five out of ten, but by the time I was done, the grease built. You. And it built. Yeah. Four out of ten on the chicken tenders by the time I finished. I went six and a half out of ten on them, but again, I only had a bite. So I didn't have the time for the devolve, the de-evolution of them, but they definitely

weren't the strongest of the fried chicken items. And when you're overwhelming yourself, I can see why you have a grease outline when you get up. I couldn't stop. I'll just. So be fair, I couldn't stop eating. While you're sitting on my couch, could you put a towel down, please? Yeah.

We're going to have to get this dry cleaned. Yeah. We're going to have to get it steamed. And then I had the buttermilk fried chicken sandwich. My only note was good enough for a nice casual restaurant. A buttermilk fried chicken sandwich should be competing with the best in the fast food game. This should be better than a Popeyes.

This should be better than Chick-fil-A. I don't think it was. It was a little too like white meat for my taste. Like it just dried out a little. Ah, so dry chicken. This is a recurring theme. But like it wasn't terrible. I wanted it a little bit more. Yeah.

So like the dryness was offset by the condiments. So you know, it had lettuce and it had like a barbecue sauce on it. It was good. I did like it. It didn't outdo the better chicken sandwiches I've had, and especially once you start getting into like, you know, chains that really specialize in the sandwich part of it. Oh man. Out by us.

Like Dave's. Dave's is good, but there's a better place. Hawaiian hot chicken better than Dave's. Yeah. This shady little joint, they use a car wash parking lot after hours. That's so weird. But it's a literal pop up. Okay.

And this is my... Are they there every day? They are there every night. I think it's like after seven or eight, something. Okay. It's in... I'm sold. Like recita.

It's amazing. I'll try it out. As far as this sandwich goes, seven out of 10. Okay. What'd you think about the fries? Because I have... We had different... I wrote down that it had a hollow taste.

It was well seasoned, but the potato wasn't really shining through. And again, greasy. I definitely felt that grease six out of 10 fries for me. Okay. Now, my fries were offensive. Yeah. They arrived lukewarm, slash cold at best. They were no longer crisp.

By this point, they're just soggy and they taste like old fryer oil. I feel like they needed to change their fryers or something because all I was tasting was nasty oil. Yeah. They were heavily salted and peppered by me, so they were edible. These are three out of 10 trash fries. Wow. Yeah.

I don't share that opinion, but they definitely felt like, I think I've used this term on the podcast before. I actually don't know if I have. It felt like busy work. It was just like, hey, here's a food. Work on it while you're not doing anything else. Just eat through these fries. It felt like an assignment given by chatterers where it's just like, hey, can you do us a

favor? We made too many fries. We made Donald's fries that lost their crispness from time that tasted better than this abomination. Yeah. No, I remember you not enjoying them too much. You were making a point to emphasize that at the restaurant, not even just here and in your analysis after the fact. That's the true testament that you didn't really like something when you're complaining

about it while you're eating it. I still ate almost all of them because they're in front of me. They're fries. What are you going to do? Yeah. This is America. I give poor ratings to a lot of food, but that's not going to stop me from eating it, from mowing it down.

Yes. You're mow. Mow, mow, mow, mow, mow, mow. Now, Garrett, you and I got the regular seasoned fries, but also on their menu were cheese fries. Now, you and I, we're not touching cheese. We're not fans of cheese, but our audience deserves a fair perspective on cheese, which is why we have hired a cheese correspondent.

My friend, Steven, he goes to these restaurants with us. He eats the cheese dish. He comes up with a review and every week he's preparing to bring it on in and deliver it to all of you. But that's yet to happen because he keeps getting into accidents and hurting his jaw. This time he was mouthing off to a cheddar's employee and they swung on him. So his jaw is a little bit swollen this week. We had to get somebody else to serve as his voice.

Tommy Chong, take it away. Now, Steven was set to review cheddar's cheese fries for the fine dining podcast, but he hurt his jaw and so they picked me, Tommy Chong. First of all, I'm going to give Steven a speedy recovery, man, hurting your jaw, man. That's, that's, that's, wow, depends on how you hurt your jaw, man. It's going to be very, very mellow, just mellow out, man. Smoke some weed. That's what you need.

You got a bad jaw. You can still smoke some weed. Okay. Now I want to give the following reviews on these cheddar cheese fries. Okay. Now, at first they were so hot they burned his mouth. The fries weren't crispy. They were fairly mint.

Wow. Oh, I don't like that. The top layer of cheese was a star of the dish. Yeah. Here's he is. Okay. The baking bits were an afterthought. Wow.

Well, they were supposed to be an afterthought, though. It's fries, but you got a little taste of it, though. Okay. Came with a side of ranch that was watering. And after top layer of cheese, there was none underneath. So we stopped eating all together. And they were very mediocre, and he gave it a 5 over 10 rating. Wow.

It sounds like he made the review very straight, too, because if you were stoned, you wouldn't have noticed any of that stuff. So, Stephen, good work with your review, man, and maybe the guys that made the fries were the ones that broke your jaw. Don't be just kidding, man. I know better, Stephen. We have a dessert. We had a dessert.

Oh, and before that, before the dessert, before we go any farther, I want to give this week's, this is way too much, oh yeah, to the grease in our food. The grease on all the food had us feeling different. Now, keep in mind, this might be, we're in a different city. We're in a different state. It's a different landscape. Maybe the ingredients are different. Maybe like the regulations on what you can eat are different.

I don't know. I say no, because we have had, throughout our time in Austin, we had many good tasting fries. Sure. I'm just saying the cumulative effort of the amount of food that we ate on that may have all been wearing on us by the time we got to the end of our trip. That said, I am fully willing to attribute it to Cheddar's because my body chemistry is different.

I am, I haven't had a lot of acne in my adult years. I feel greasy. I have had like four or five prominent pimples on my face since returning home. When I sweat, I smell like McDonald's. Like, you know, I'm trying to get back into shape and I smell like the backboard of a hover round. I feel like a used pool towel. Gross.

Oh man, why are we like trying to one up each other? We don't need to one up anything. The grease stains behind us are more than enough. They are not just more than enough. They are way too much. For dessert, we got the Cheddar's legendary Monster Cookie. This was the best dessert I think I have had in our journey. Wow.

Better than the Cinnabon. I see the look on your face. Those counted. Cinnabon from our Pizza Hut episode, not viable. They are another company's product being smuggled in like a mule through Pizza Hut. They do not count. Made by the same employees. We don't need this.

No. You don't get the last word. Cheddar's legendary Monster Cookie. It's a large cookie on a plate. It is perfectly warm. It literally had the perfect texture served with whipped cream, ice cream and chocolate sauce and a cherry. And man, it was a thing of beauty.

It was the word delectable, I think, was invented for this cookie. It wasn't just delicious. It was delectable. I loved it. I'm thinking about it right now and my mouth is watering. 10 out of 10. I can't give this a 10 out of 10 because this wasn't the best dessert I have had in my entire life.

There's no way it is. This was really good. Didn't we already discuss that giving a 10 out of 10 is just a tear? It is not the single best thing. Yeah. I don't think this belongs in the best food I've ever had, tear. All right. All right.

If I ever return to Cheddar's, which I don't know if I'm going to, but if I do, I'll order this. I'll suggest people order this. It tasted great. It's a good seven out of 10. I think our final food ratings are going to go in diverging directions. I'm going one sum up. I thought, one, the bite I had of my dad's country chicken, delicious.

That dessert, perfection. The croissant rolls, very good. I didn't love the shrimp. My sandwich was okay. I didn't love your tenders. The fries were whatever, but overall, there were enough really strong things in my dining experience that I'm going to, I'm going to give a thumbs up recommendation on the Cheddar's food.

Well, I didn't get the country fried chicken. I didn't get the sandwich. So my food was honestly pretty abysmal. And the fact that I still taste and feel the grease. Yeah. That part I don't love, but my rating is what did it taste like on the day? I'm giving this two thumbs down because I still taste it today. What the hell?

Yeah. Not great. Final rating. Got to go to score, got to put a number on it. The Chachki of mediocrity looms large over. Well, it looms medium over. It has literally a bunch of scores on it. And now if you want to see the Chachki of mediocrity, it is a sight to behold.

It is on our Instagram. This thing is massive. It is on my wall. It is part longhorn, part guitar, part surfboard, all the things on it that you're going to find at restaurants like this. But most importantly, you've got that coveted zero to 10 scale with the nice lit up five star directly in the middle looking for perfect mediocrity. And we have Waffle House as our most mediocre restaurant at a 5.06.

Yeah. Waffle House coming in very close to mediocre, not perfectly mediocre, but close enough. And hey, it is strongly in the center of our four to six zone of mediocrity, which to remind you all, if we score outside of that, there is a punishment from the you must hole a bowl full of you must statements that require us to do something at our next dining outing. Kind of like you must be a cringelord and scare the waiter away from your table in rhyme or you must inflate a pool toy over the course of your rainforest cafe meal. We're doing all these things.

You can see them all on our social media. It's a fun follow. You'll enjoy it if you go over to Instagram. We're posting all of the receipts. All the things that we're telling stories about. You can find them on our social media. But the board is hungry. It needs Cheddar's.

So you know what Cheddar's does not deserve to be in the zone of mediocrity. I we had could tell that you feel that way more service. I still taste the food today and the atmosphere is all right. Yeah. I'm going to give this overall a three point nine eight point zero two shy of four because it does not deserve a four. So three point nine eight from you. This will fall in the zone of mediocrity.

So there isn't going to be a punishment for me luckily. But I went four point three one on Cheddar's. So when you average them together, that throws it down at the low end, actually the lowest within the zone of mediocrity at a four point one five Cheddar's scratch kitchen going on the chachki of mediocrity. We did not find the most mediocre restaurant. We did. We did not accomplish our mission.

The search has to go on. We need to know where we go next. I don't know. Well, I think it's time to play a game to determine that, don't you? Yes, let's do it. It's time for the headline game. The rules of the headline game are as follows. Michael will present three headlines to Garrett that include this week's restaurant.

They can be made up or they can be actual headlines. If Garrett can correctly guess if at least two out of three are real or fake, he will get to select next week's restaurant. However, if Michael stumps him, he'll select again. Are you ready to play, fellas? I'm ready. I am as well. Garrett, I've got three headlines for you.

First one. Chachachachains, Charlotte Chamset. Chachachachchia, Pat. Chachachachains, Charlotte Chamset, Bittf, at Bitt. Practice this. Chachachachains, Charlotte. Charlotte. You've got grease on the brain.

Chachachachains, Charlotte Chamset, Bitt for Chipotle, Cheddar's, and Chick. Ugh, that's so much alliteration. Ugh, I feel greasy. Or is it the Cheddar's? No, let's go true. Cheddar's Scratch Kitchen gets hacked. That's it. That's all.

False. There's got to, headlines got to take up more space than that. Basement storage for Cheddar's Scratch Kitchen floods, 4,000 worth of food lost. 4,000 dollars worth of grease lost. I'm going to go false. So you say Chachachachains, Charlotte Chamset, Bitt for Chipotle, Cheddar's, and Chick. You said that was true? Yes.

It is true. I did not make that one up. It was the most cringy headline, and I was hoping that you would think that I made it up. However, I think because I butchered it so many times, it tipped it off. Yeah. Cheddar's Scratch Kitchen gets hacked. You said false.

That is true. I picked a really lame headline. Basement storage for Cheddar's Scratch Kitchen floods, 4,000 dollars worth of food lost. You said that is false? Yes. I did make that up. You got two out of three correct, Gary. Congratulations.

You get to pick next week's food adventure. You know what? I am a glutton for punishment, and we... I don't know what that means, and I don't want to find out. We don't like cheese. No. We went to a place called Cheddar's with cheese in the name. So you know what?

Let's double down on these bad decisions. Next week, we are going to go to Chuck E. Cheese. Do you know any kids we can take? It's kind of weird. I don't want you grown men to walk into a Chuck E. Cheese with notebooks. Are you kidding me? Sounds like comedy to me. I have my dad's cousin's daughter's daughter lives in San Francisco.

She's 12 years old. She's a little rascal. She's a total punk. Let's see if we can get her to go with us. Hey, and while we're in San Francisco, I got an idea for a Patreon episode. Yeah? What? Fudruckers.

Oh, yeah, dude. They're going out. Yeah. We used to have them by... Sure. Yeah. Let's hit Fudruckers while it's on its way out. Before they die.

Yeah. Okay. Cool. We'll do a weekend two shot. We'll go to Chuck E. Cheese. We'll go to Fudruckers. We'll come back. We'll tell you guys all about Chuck E. Cheese, and for those of you subscribing to our Patreon,

you will get to hear our thoughts on Fudruckers as well as some other fun things. We like to make our Patreon episode special for you, make it worth the extra time you're spending with us. Well, thanks, everyone, for listening to this week's episode of the Fine Dining Podcast. We didn't find it. No, we didn't, but we did find a bunch of grease stains. Yeah. I'm going to bill you for my couch.

Go ahead. Follow us on our socials. Follow us at Fine Dining Podcast on Instagram and TikTok. You'll be able to see all the things we talk about. Our website's www.finediningpodcast.com. You can grab our five survival tips for casual dining. All you got to do is put in your email address. We'll send you over that PDF of the things we've learned going out to eat and how to

optimize and maximize your experience. And that's where we have our t-shirts too, and we promise they don't have grease stains yet. That is on you. It is up to you. Paint them however you like with whatever amount of Crisco you want. And lastly, check out our Patreon. We just launched it.

We're very proud of it. There's a lot of good content on it. We made a country song for our first episode for Rooties. The search continues, Garrett. Thanks for joining. We'll see you next week. Have a fine day. The search continues We still need the perfect vibe.

The search continues Like and subscribe. The search continues Our journey did not conclude. The monorail search continues Riders sing iTunes review. And hey, while you're at it, why don't you go ahead and make it five stars, huh? Come on. Follow us on TikTok The same on Instagram All the socials at Find Dining Podcast We have a website Finddiningpodcast.com Buy our t-shirts

Then put them on And don't forget, you can always suggest where we go next. Okay, we're going to find it. Mediocrity, the search continues. See you next week. I heard my throat a little. Have a fine day.