Posted on 10/15/2008 12:30:17 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
I was in a hurry to get to the chow hall for lunch.
We run two restaurants. They have been up by more than 40% this year over last.
I love it when FRiends have success. I hope it even goes up more next year!
McCuisine
Fast Food High Brow Menu:
McChat — Chateaubriand: 2 All beef loins special spice on a sesame seed bun
McSuzy: Crepes Suzette: breakfast burritos with orange marmelade.
McSole: Dover sole meuniere: fish sandwish with fish dipped in brown butter batter.
I was in a hurry to get to the chow hall for lunch.
Ours is pretty good. I read your page real quick and I see 2004 Iraq and then various dates all down the page...Have you been there that long? Not sure if you can answer the question (if not no problem), but thanks for your service just the same. That is some truly incredible sacrifice regardless of the time over there.
Yep. January 18, 2009 will make five years. I was going to do one year when I came in January 2004. LOL
I kept getting talked into coming back and have now been here in a variety of capacities - everything from participating in building coalition and Iraqi bases, mentoring and advising Iraqi government officials at the Ministry of Interior to infrastructure reconstruction which is what I'm mixed up in now.
But what's cool is that I've seen the worst of the war when it was at its highest escalation and now I'm seeing peace and a return to normality.
I see you're in bella Italia. Can you say where? I lived in Napoli (Pozzuoli) as an adolcscent Navy brat.
Thank you for your service. :)
“Do you live in a free state where you still have a smoking sections? “
I’m in Texas. Smoking is encouraged.
Looks like the restaurants need a bailout too. Some chains are too big to fail!!
I’m in Tennessee where our liberal Yankee governer put a statewide smoking ban in effect and I’m jealous.
That is really cool. I unfortunately have not been able to do a tour in Iraq. I am in Sigonella, Sicily and loving it.
“I quit going to restaurants when they banned smoking. Geez, that’s gotta be about 15 years ago.”
....time was, I couldn’t wait to light up after a good meal and have a cup of coffee....smoked Camels for years and loved ‘em.....quit 5 years ago....now I have to go to pulmonary rehab...I got COPD and only 79% lung capacity...see, I thought once you quit your body heals and you go back to having perfect breathing again...wrong! ....I wish all the smokers good luck....as for me, I ain’t going back to the butts....I want to hold on to what I got left...don’t want to have to carry that oxygen tank around.
From my anecdotal evidence:
1. Menu prices have risen about 20% in the past 2 years.
2. Restaurants are offering more specials during the week to get customers in during slow times (sort of counters #1, don’t you think?)
3. People may not be dining out less, but they are ordering less, looking for values and cutting back on appetizers and beverages.
4. Fuel costs hit the consumer this year and some discretionary expenses had to go; dining out is pretty much discretionary.
I’d eat out again if I could find a restaurant with a nicely ventilated smoking section. DH and I stopped eating out years ago, we used to eat out @3 times a week - now it’s take-out only for us in New England.
It’s absolutely crucial to enforce a top-down, who-cares-what-people-want blanket tobacco prohibition on all bars, clubs, and restaurants. “It’s for the children.”
This should help revitalize flagging sales no doubt.
Do you use a cellphone?...Good luck with that brain tumor....
Are you overweight?...Good luck with that heart attack
Have high blood pressure?....good luck with that aneurysm
I do agree with you regarding mixing smokers and non-smokers in a restaurant. The restaurant should maintain separate sections if they want. The difference is that I believe no government official should dictate this. If you don't like smoke and the restaurant has smokers, then don't go there, period. The market will adjust.
If you don't like smoke in meal....then patronize restaurants that don't allow smoking or have separate sections.....
We won’t eat out anymore. I’m sick of hearing cell phones ringing while trying to eat.
I take my grand kids to both those places and neither charges for condiments.
Not to mention degrading of American principles of liberty, with nanny state regulations trumping the rights of property owners. A little more freedom lost, a little more government control.
"Is it warm in here, or is it just me?" -the Frog
We go out to eat two to three times a week and the parking lots and restaurants are always busy. We usually have a short wait. This is Minnesota, and several bars have closed, but that is because of the smoking ban, not a poor economy. People here have plenty of money to spend in restaurants.
I live in the No. 1 restaurant hellhole in America. The carcasses of closed restaurants liter the roadways. And with good cause.
The food is insipid, over-cooked, under cooked, tasteless and the “chefs” haven’t discovered there are other spices beyond salt and pepper. A “fresh” fish dinner will land you a freezer-burned 4 ounce chunk of two year old salmon. Steak dinners are roadkill sprinkled with skunk spray and cooked over old rubber tires.
Whenever I travel, I hit the restaurants with a vengeance. I love eating out. I recently returned from a swing down to South Carolina and have found a new love - deep fried southern home cooking.
I want to move there. Fried chicken with rice and collard greens and peach cobbler. Yum! That’s heaven.
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