The Trip: Part II

Which brings me to the funniest/most eye-opening story of the trip. Later that same day, after a big day of hiking, we wanted a good sit-down dinner. We drove around the outskirts of Estes in search of something that looked at least mediocre, yet found nothing, so we decided to head out of the mountains and into Loveland, which was about 30 miles away.

We didn’t have a map with us, so of course we wind up making a wrong turn that takes us out into aforementioned desolate housing division where people must never leave there homes (because we went about 10 miles through dense housing without seeing a gas station, grocery store or restaurant). We made our way back in town and headed out towards I-25 hoping that would yield at least something. It was getting late and we’d already pretty much relegated the dining experience to a chain of some sort. But the one that we were forced to (because it was the only one that was open) was quite hilarious considering the circumstances: Old Chicago. Here I am in Colorado, trying to get away from the city — away from pizza, pasta and plasma screens — and I wind up at a watered down rendition of what many of the bars in the very city I’m trying to get away from look like.

While this moment was tragically comical, it also shed a clear light on why chains are so prevalent there and many places in America (often touristy ones): Because we know what we’re going to get at them. And this isn’t always a bad thing. Case in point, the salad and nachos we had at Old Chicago were surely better than the ones we would have had at some locally-owned place in Estes. And the beer selection wouldn’t have been anywhere close.

In many ways the blame for the escalation of restaurant chains in America should lay on the shoulders of many of the locally owned joints, because they simply aren’t as good. I mean, in Chicago, that’s not the case — you sometimes have to go out of your way to find a franchise in this place. But Chicago is one of the culinary gems of all of North America. You go to a place like Loveland, Colorado or even my hometown of Council Bluffs, Iowa (were there’s less than a dozen independently run restaurants, almost all of which are poorly run) and people are gonna go to Applebee’s and Cracker Barrel instead. This is because the quality of food and service is almost always more consistent. Same thing with Starbucks, for instance. The brilliance of Starbucks’ scheme is that everything with that company is so regimented — all the way from the ingredients, from how they make the drinks and how they present them — that people know what they’re going to get almost every single time. The Carmel Machiato you order in New York will likely taste the same as they the one you order in Des Moines. If you go to most independent coffee shops, the quality and contents of you drink and the service that comes with it depends mostly what the particular barista that’s working that day. Sometimes that’s good. Sometimes that’s bad. And when it’s bad you could possibly lose a customer forever. Starbucks, in all their ridiculousness, usually doesn’t let that happen. Apparently, neither does Old Chicago, cause the meal I had there, while it wasn’t necessarily transcendent, was pretty fucking good. (Sadly enough, it was likely the best meal of the whole trip — beer included.

So as I sat there munching on a Cobb Salad, sipping an import beer, watching baseball highlights on a plasma screen, listening to bad 90s juke box music, wondering why it was we had to drive 30 miles outside of the mountains to get a good meal, I realized that restaurant chains do have their place in society. And in some cases it’s not that bad of one.