UPDATED: off the chain

Everyone who lives in a large metropolitan area boasts about how awesome it is to have cool, independently owned, non-chain restaurants.  This is neat, but every once and a while, I just want to eat at a damn Olive Garden.

Due to my location in Dallas, the closest easy chain restaurant is a 15 minute drive up a major and usually busy highway or toll road.  To add insult to injury, around dinner time, traffic is at its peak, and I would rather watch a Pauly Shore movie sober than deal with that.

I don’t even like trying new restaurants.  I stress out, because ordering is ALWAYS a gamble.  You might be pleasantly surprised or it can be like meeting a new friend and thinking they are interesting, and then you invite them over for cocktails and they drink too much and take a dump in your closet. 

On the other hand, chain restaurants are like dependable, uninteresting, and predictable friends.  You are never completely blown away by them, but you always know what you’re getting yourself into and your expectations are low enough that you always leave pleased.

Also, when I’m in the middle of slothing on the couch, I don’t see commercials for the lesser known, independent eateries.  What I do see is a beefy hand squeezing a lemon over steaming piles of seafood in Red Lobster commercials that make me want to move to Lewisville and eat my weight in cheesy biscuits.

The only thing worse than not having access to a chain restaurant is visiting one after a long time and find out they have completely revamped the menu.  It’s like that dependable friend you haven’t seen in a while got a sex change and gave birth to a tranny baby.  I’m looking at you, Chili's!   What the hell happened to the Margarita Grilled Tuna?!

Analogy alternative – Chain restaurants are a lot like Britney Spears’s music.  Not winning any awards or life changing, always more or less the same, inappropriate, addictive, and you usually hate yourself for loving them as much as you do.  But, Indie music, like the Indie restaurant, sucks!  

Finally, I had to cross-reference a lot of information in Revelations, but I’m 99% sure Heaven will have a Chili’s.

UPDATE: One of my readers informed there is a Chili's on Knox somewhat close to where I live.  And an On The Border.  And, if I liked Mexican food, I would really excited about 100% of that information.  But, Knox is one of those parts of Dallas I never seem to find myself in.  Like Lakewood.  I swear to Kabbala that every time someone mentions Lakewood, I am fairly certain they are speaking of some strange world like Narnia.