things i miss about america, part 1

as is to be expected whenever one moves not just to another city, but especially to another country, there's bound to be places one will miss. it happens to everyone. no matter how many chains you think you eat at, you'll still find yourself missing something local. combine that with the fact that i'm in a country where a lot of american chains don't exist, and yeah.

chain restaurants

of course you can go pretty much everywhere and still get mcdonald's and starbucks, but there's still so much in america you can't get here. when i say chain restaurants, i don't mean fast food but that awesome level of casual dining where you get seated, are given a menu, order at the table, etc. chili's, tgi friday's, all those places. sadly these places aren't in nz and there's really no equivalent here. there is denny's (still haven't determined if it's owned by the same company or what, but they are very similar at least) but that's it. at least like denny's in america, you can expect okay food and terrible service.

i miss it though, being able to get food brought to you but being able to go somewhere cheaper than a nice restaurant. sure the food's all mass-processed, i know that, and that's what can be nice about it. it's a nice familiarity to know no matter where in the country you go, you can sit down and order something at any chili's and it (well, it should anyway) taste the exact same everywhere. chili's isn't my favourite restaurant by any stretch of the imagination, but in terms of this genre i suppose i'd say it is. their food's got a nice flavour (probably because every dish seems to have 80+ grams of fat even if it's something grilled) and they have a ton of variety. i could go there for weeks and not order the same thing twice.

nz is in many ways as up-to-date as any other country on a lot of things, but i suppose due to the distance from countries like the us and uk, in many ways they seem to be just slightly behind the times on some things (such as internet and mobile phone pricing) and in some ways, hopelessly behind the times. this instance falls under the latter, i'd say. chain restaurants have been big in america for decades and many have spread to other countries, though somehow nz has managed to avoid them. even australia has a couple, the only one i can remember off the top of my head is tgi friday's (though they're only in victoria). there's also at least one hard rock café in australia, but none here, even though new zealand has a wealth of musical history.

it's one of those things, if i had the money, i could easily go to one of these chains and show them what a potential cash cow they have on their hands and start up a franchise here. but i don't, so i can't. i think it's going to happen soon, though. while someone can argue there are such restaurants like that here - pubs, it's not the same. like chains, pubs to tend to offer a fairly similar menu from pub to pub, but it's not varied. most pubs can fit their menu on one or two pages, while a chain restaurant spans several pages (or is a small book if it's the cheesecake factory).

anyway, i think it'll happen soon, maybe later this decade a chain will finally have the courage to open a couple locations in nz, even if it's just in one city to test the waters.