The Atlantic: The Best Free Restaurant Bread in America

Culture, Media, General
21

I was impressed with the emphasis on Red Lobster and Diet coke. Then I started to find it amusing.

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22

My point was that if youā€™re not familiar with that style, itā€™s easy to misinterpret. And of course, one might interpret it correctly and still not like it.

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23

Someone relented and informed me itā€™s walnut cranberry bread.

:woman_shrugging:t2:

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24

Thanks! Iā€™ll do this with my next loaf of sourdough, maybe.

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25

I thought the silliness and hyperbole were going to end somewhere like the Red Lobster biscuits.

(I remember the first time I ate them ā€“ from a box rather than at the restaurant ā€“ at a college roommateā€™s home some 20 years later. She was shocked that I had never tasted them before, and her boys were accordingly very respectful of my being allocated the last biscuit, over which they had been fighting after eating several :rofl:.)

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26

My God, reading that was a slog!

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27

I donā€™t read that and I got it.

Different strokes for different folks. If ya donā€™t get it, ya donā€™t get it. (Hat tip WaPo.)

Thereā€™s no accounting for taste. Now, who wants to argue about ketchup on hot dogs or whether to tip before or after tax? :rofl:

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28

Iā€™m very happy to say that Iā€™ve never been to Red Lobster. What did you think of the Red Lobster biscuits?

I did grow up in North Carolina and my mother made biscuits most days, from scratch. I love to make biscuits occasionally. Iā€™m not great at it but even if they donā€™t look good, they taste good.

My husband loves diet Coke, and decades ago when it was available, the even more vile Tab. He only gets it, however, on the very occasional foray to McDonaldā€™s. I think the McDā€™s biscuits are okay and I love them with a real ā€œround egg.ā€ Wouldnā€™t diet Coke numb your taste buds for real food and real drinks?

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29

Tip before tax. I donā€™t like hot dogs or ketchup. My husband and young adult son eat both.

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30

Iā€™ve only been to Red Lobster for a drink while waiting for something to be ready for me at a nearby store. And Iā€™ve never been to Cracker Barrel, a fact that infuriated a woman I met. It was weird.

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31

But before that, whatā€™s your favorite / ā€œbestā€ bread? :laughing:

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32

The biscuits were like more seasoned drop biscuits ā€“ I think garlic and onion powders, and chives. Tasty, and easy out of a box, took her 5 mins to mix and 15 or so to bake!

That said, I mentioned the ATK easy drop biscuits with melted butter and cold buttermilk elsewhere, and they take about the same time :grin:

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33

There are chains that so integral to peopleā€™s life experiences that itā€™s hard for them to imagine there are people who have no frame of reference for them.

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34

Me neither.

Give me her number. I wanna start something.

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35

Can I watch? :laughing:

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36

Going from her ā€œbestā€ to your favorite:

37

I am old, life is short, and I have better uses of my time than reading that interminable article.

38

Ha ha! She really couldnā€™t conceptualize that not everyone spends time on highways or strip malls.

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39

Thereā€™s a follow-up interview with the author. Possible gift link:

40

Iā€™ve never been to a Cracker Barrel either. It was interesting to me that the former Washington Post food critic Tom did his nationwide reviews of chain restaurants and put them at the top, some years ago. If Iā€™m ever near one, I might try fried okra. I think a drink at Red Lobster is probably the best thing to do there and at Olive Garden. Cracker Barrel I think is no alcohol.