A word to any Hollywood screenwriters working on a scene where old cops go back to high school disguised as implausibly believable students — put those characters at a mall and real teenagers will know you don’t know what’s cool these days. Namely, malls are out, and restaurants are in as the new spot to hangout. [More]
restaurants
What’s In A $100 Grilled Cheese Sandwich?
By 4.10.14
I have a hard time justifying paying $3.50 to my corner deli for a grilled cheese sandwich when I’ve got all the makings of the comfort food classic in my fridge. So I’m having some difficulty imagining what it would take to get me to fork over $100 (plus tax and tip, etc.) for any sandwich, let alone a grilled cheese. [More]
At The Melting Pot, Kids Eat Free For $15
By 3.31.14
At Erica’s local Melting Pot, they have what sounds like a super fun event, a Little Chefs dinner where kids can cook macaroni and cheese fondue and a chocolate dessert fondue, while wearing chef hats and learning the magical ways of cheese and chocolate. That sounds fun…but Erica received an e-mail from the restaurant that made this all seem very confusing. [More]
10 Meaty Secrets Of The Steakhouse
By 3.27.14
Steakhouses are one category of restaurants that are experiencing a boom right now. That’s great news if you like classic meat, potato, and booze meals, but there are some secrets that come along with that boom that no one is necessarily telling their customers. [More]
White House Calls For Raising Minimum Wage For Tipped Workers
By 3.26.14
While the federal minimum wage for hourly workers has increased from $4.25/hour in 1991 to the present level of $7.25, the minimum wage for workers earning tips has remained at $2.13, meaning tipped workers have had to increasingly rely on tips because their base wage has not kept up with the rest of the workforce. This morning, the White House made the case that it’s time for tipped workers to get a pay raise. [More]
Pastor’s Website Lets Waiters Vent About Skimpy Tips On After-Church Meals
By 3.11.14
Following last year’s firing of an Applebee’s waitress who dared to post a receipt from a cheapskate customer claiming to be a pastor who gives “10% to God” and thus shouldn’t be required to pay the 18% tip mandated for large parties, a real pastor at a church in Tennessee decided to create a website to remind churchgoers that they shouldn’t stiff their restaurant servers. [More]
Travel Channel’s Andrew Zimmern Suggests “Crowdsourced Expertise” Over Generic Yelp Reviews
By 3.10.14
Andrew Zimmern, chef and host of Travel Channel’s Bizarre Foods, has never held back his feelings about crowdsourced review site Yelp, once calling it a “tremendous forum for a bunch of uninformed morons to take down restaurants.” It’s all well and good to slam the site, but what are people to do when they’re looking for insight on where to eat? [More]
This Is What It Looks Like When A Wave Crashes Through A Restaurant’s Window During Breakfast
By 3.3.14
There are a lot of things one would reasonably expect to happen in the course of a normal breakfast — bacon, toast, coffee, a sense of satiation after a night of growing hungry in your sleep. But a ginormous wave crashing through the window of a restaurant? Not so expected. [More]
Così Franchisee Bets TV Reporter $10,000 Restaurant Will Stay Mouse-Free
By 2.28.14
A franchise of the sandwichery Così in Washington, D.C. was closed down yesterday due to a failed health inspection. What were the restaurant’s violations? Meats stored at unacceptable temperatures, improperly labeled food, food preparation surfaces not clean or sanitized, and mice. So many mouse droppings. [More]
How Technology & The Power Of Suggestion Are Getting People To Leave Higher Tips
By 2.28.14
Most American restaurant-goers are used to writing a tip on the receipt after they enjoy a sit-down meal, but with a growing number of eateries — like food trucks and pop-up restaurants — that straddle the line between traditional dining and fast food, it’s unclear whether customers are expected to leave a tip or just be on their merry way. That’s why some new payment systems include an extra step to put the idea of tipping in the consumer’s mind. [More]
3 Tips To Writing A Yelp Restaurant Review That Is Worth A Read
By 2.25.14
As helpful as crowdsourced review sites like Yelp can be, not every write-up is of use to a consumer trying to figure out whether a restaurant is worth the trip. Sometimes it’s because the review is too vague (“The menu wasn’t amazing” is one I come across too often). Other times it’s too specific (“The napkins didn’t match the table cloths! Never going back!”). And many reviewers tend to let their emotions get the best of them, giving slightly subpar meals a single star or throwing a restaurant a 5-star rating without really thinking about what that score implies. [More]
Famous Philly Eatery To Pay $8.5 Million For Short-Changing Servers’ Tips
By 2.21.14
More than 1,200 current and former employees of a well-known bar/restaurant chain in Philadelphia are going to share in an $8.5 million settlement over allegations that the eatery’s owner illegally demanded servers’ tips and also failed to pay minimum wage and overtime to tipped employees. [More]
Restaurant Defends Chloroform/Rape Sign As “Harmless”
By 2.20.14
Because nothing lures in potential diners to your restaurant than a rape joke, an eatery in Montreal has defended its decision to display such a joke in public on a sandwich board outside its front door. [More]
Chef Apologizes For Calling Yelper “Mentally Ill Raging Alcoholic”
By 1.30.14
Oh Yelp, thou art a ceaseless font of stories about restaurant customers overreacting to bad meals and service and the chefs who make headlines by flipping the f&@! out on social media about a review that most people would probably have ignored to begin with. [More]
The Pasta Crapresse At This Restaurant Is Surprisingly Tasty
By 1.27.14
Don’t let the menu at this New York state restaurant fool you — the pasta crapresse does not live up to its name. [More]
Good News For Fans Of Deconstructed Strained Peas: Babies Still Allowed Inside Alinea
By 1.17.14
The recent fuss over the question of whether babies should be allowed inside Chicago restaurant Alinea struck a nerve online; some people were sympathetic, others baffled as to why someone would bring an 8-month-old along for a four-hour tasting menu. It turns out, though, that many readers and even media outlets made assumptions about the incident that aren’t true. [More]
Video: Restaurant Mocks Drone Trend, Uses Flying Bot To Chop Celery, Take Out Trash
By 1.3.14
While Amazon and others prepare to darken the skies with the flying robots that will one day enslave all humanity and turn us into organic batteries, some restaurants have already opened the door to the pernicious plague of aerial drones. Now one Austin eatery has produced a video showing all the ways in which it employs the hovering harbingers of the robo-pocalypse. [More]
Consumerist’s Most Popular Stories From 2013
December 31, 2013
2013 ends in a few hours, and in the year since we last popped champagne corks and pretended to know the words to “Auld Lang Syne,” we’ve posted more than 5,000 stories to Consumerist, covering everything from Wall Street to Capitol Hill to the drive-thru lane. Some of these posts attracted a few more readers than others. [More]
