In restaurants, is “chain” still a dirty word?

Into the wild, wonderful world of modern chains. [View on web]( [An illustration of a chain restaurant menu that says ''Eater Bar & Grill'']( Illustrations by Adam Mazur If you’d asked me as a kid which restaurant was my favorite, the answer was, without hesitation, Chili’s. My family actually ate out pretty regularly — we’d take trips into “the city” (San Francisco) from Sacramento every month or so, eating at relatively nice-ish, good-ish restaurants with real cloth napkins and menus without pictures. But did they have tile-topped tables upon which you could stack towers of thick, cardboard coasters? Did they offer a small ramekin of cinnamon apples with your half-rack of baby back ribs? Did they have TVs, and tchotchkes, and a signature birthday song? No, because the only place all those wondrous things came together was at Chili’s. Chain restaurants are almost always talked about within the realm of [nostalgia](; their geographic consistency allows for generationally shared memories of Happy Meals and wee-hour Del Taco runs and prom nights at TGI Fridays. Heck, Eater has done [multiple rounds of essays](exploring our emotional connection to the chains of our youth. But for this [latest Eater package](, which we’re calling the “[Chainification of America](,” we wanted to move beyond nostalgia, honing in on the chain restaurants of today, examining how they behave differently from the chains of yore, and reshape our culture in the process. [an illustration of White Castle burgers, fries, and a soda]( The 2024 chain terrain looks a lot less like my suburban childhood and more like the trendy urban main streets of now: Posh strips like South Congress in Austin, Silver Lake in LA, and New York’s Soho are all dotted with Sweetgreens and Cavas and Philz and Shake Shacks and quick-growing international chains like Jollibee and Din Tai Fung. The formats, too, no longer just replicate other fast-food or even casual sit-down experiences, with ambitious operations from Carbone to Sugarfish to Seasons 52 serving occasion-worthy meals in cities across the country. Not all chains are huge corporate monoliths, either; today, we’re seeing an explosion of three-, four-, and five-location micro chains which are, at their core, prime examples of local small businesses’ success stories. With this package, we specifically wanted to poke at the notion of “chain” as a dirty word. Americans tend to reflexively see chains as signs of bland, rampant capitalism, incapable of being as satisfying — not to mention as good for our communities — as independent restaurants. But the more we looked at the modern, chains of today, the more we saw many of them as ambassadors of culinary diversity, especially in areas where certain immigrant cuisines have otherwise struggled to gain a foothold. The chain model itself is proving to be a lifeline for small business owners who need the stability of a wide reach to ride the highs and lows of an industry that can be unsustainable for one-offs. In many cases, chain restaurants offer employees more avenues for upward growth than single-location operations, and because of strict national standards, some large chains can be havens of accessibility for the disabled community. Our latest package explores the emerging good as well as the persistent bad of chain restaurants, at a time when chains are taking over more and more of our most precious real estate — and also our lives. What new chain restaurant has slipped its way into your regular repertoire? And what established chain do you feel most nostalgic about? Let me know at [Lesley@eater.com.](mailto:Lesley@eater.com) —Lesley Suter, special projects director   [A photo of a shuttered Red Lobster restaurant]( A shuttered Red Lobster in Torrance, California. Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images More for the table: - In more chains news, Cheddar Bay Biscuit stalwart Red Lobster filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and no, [it wasn’t because of the “endless shrimp.”]( - Speaking of nostalgia, if you wondered why you’ve had a craving for lasagna lately, blame Eater’s [Garfield Week](, an absurdist salute to everyone’s favorite feline food lover. - It’s [cold salad plate summer](! Stephanie Ganz hails the comforting power of the multi-scoop “Old Lady Lunch” in her contribution to Eater’s “[How to Do Summer](” series.   [[ratio]  ]( When making this video for the Chainification package, Eater’s design director Nat Belkov and I watched [a number of Chili’s commercials from the ’90s](. We noted which shots were staples of those old ads, like brushing wings with barbecue sauce, the close-up of soda fizzing, and the slow pour of dressing over crisp, freshly washed salad greens. Then, we tried recreating all of it. The only shot we couldn’t figure out how to capture without making an absolute mess was a slow-motion view of salad ingredients dropping into a bowl. Even without that last shot, we love how it turned out, and hope it made people as nostalgic as we felt making it. — Avery Dalal, social media manager   [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [Instagram]( This email was sent to {EMAIL}. Manage your [email preferences]( or [unsubscribe](param=today). 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