I Fell For Marketing

We ended up at T.G.I.Friday's for dinner tonight. Now I used to go to Friday's with my Grandmother when I was little. They used to have the best ice cream drinks and loaded potato skins. I remember several years ago we used to go there often and get a mushrooms steak and mushrooms dinner and a mushrooms chicken and mushrooms dinner. We each had our own loaded baked potato and shared the meat. The wait staff used to be able to wear their own hats and had buttons on their suspenders. Good memories. We went with friends last year and the menu had totally changed. It was very similar to every other restaurant. Some pasta dishes, some steak, some chicken etc. What made them different was the Jack Daniel's sauce.

Well this time the menu was very confusing. the menu was filled with big bright pictures of the food and happy people enjoying it. Some pages had descriptions but no prices. Others had basically the same thing with prices. Then on yet others was the same thing only smaller portions. No price was listed for soft drinks.

I ended up getting the Crispy Green Bean Fries (over five dollars) with a cool creamy Cucumber-Wasabi ranch dip and Potato Skinny Dippers (over six dollars) with melted queso and chorizo plus cool spicy Southwestern sour cream because I figured be daring, why try one new thing when you can try two. The green beans without the sauce tasted an awful lot like onion rings. The potato skinny dippers were basically steak fries neatly standing in a small soup cup. The chorizo didn't amount to more than a teaspoon of crumbles at best. It was sprinkled over the queso along with onions and tomatoes and there were just enough of them so you could tell what they were. Joe had the Sizzling Fajita Combo. The fire grilled shirt steak was fatty. The chipotle-grilled chicken was very good it was sprinkled with some seasoning that contained cilantro. Pop?? One refillable soda over $2.25!

Note there were no pictures on the menu of the potato skinny dippers (I wonder why??) and no description of what was on the loaded potato skins. The meal just did not match what the description led me to think. I felt taken by fancy pictures and descriptions. I can safely tell you we wont be back any time soon.