In 1936 Bob Wien sold his car for $300 and bought a ten stool lunch stand in Burbank, California called the "Pantry." One late night a customer asked for something "different." Bob sliced the bun twice through the middle, creating the middle bun added two burger patties and the rest is history. The shrinking restaurant chain has now been known as Bob's Big Boy for decades.
If you would like to let go of the gift cards cheaply, I'll take them (provided they still work). Ben really likes the place. Despite having adult-like food tastes in some ways (Nobu is his favorite restaurant), he eats like a kid in other ways, so he gets excited if we take him to Olive Garden. I usually try to take him to one on each (domestic) trip we take, even though there's also one close to home. I'll say that it's better than I remembered. Maybe my expectations of them are just low.Originally Posted by aayjay
my contribution is OG - I used to enjoy quite a few meals there, bread was epic, and salad was too. I would not go to Olive Garden today if you payed me, I have like $250 in gift cards Ive been collecting for 10 years maybe roughly. I think I can use them elsewhere but I digress.
Someone told me OG was created by General Mills in the 80s, not sure if true - but I believe it and spread that to people like its fact lol!
Anyway I'm paying for this anyway, and I will be for the foreseeable future, so if you want to let these go at a discount and mail them to me, we will likely have a deal.
Here's a little story from my Vegas past which I don't believe I ever told.
In 2008 I was single, living in Vegas, and I would occasionally eat at Bahama Breeze. It was walking distance from where I lived. I don't remember how it happened, but I got to know one of the waitresses there, and she gave me her Yahoo Messenger info. Note that in '08 that texting wasn't all that big yet, though it existed.
Anyway, she was 23, pretty, and extremely nice. She was incredibly easygoing, down-to-earth, egoless, and just very easy to talk to. There was a lot to like about her, even though the age difference (13 years) wasn't ideal. She was also clearly interested in me, and in fact it was her idea to give me her Yahoo Messenger name. She kept asking me when we could hang out. Unfortunately, I worried about something. She was a single mom of a toddler, the dad was totally out of the picture, and she was broke. While she had no idea that I had money (I usually hid the poker thing from girls I met in Vegas until I got to know them better), I got the idea that she was looking for a long term relationship with a stable dude who could support her. She didn't say this, but I got the feeling that I'd soon be footing the bills for everything (including the kid) if we started dating.
I could have just hung out with her short term, had sex, and made an excuse to bounce, but I didn't want to do that to her. She was a genuinely nice person, and I didn't want to mislead her like that. So I just faded away with less and less responsiveness to her messages, and eventually ghosted her.
This Bahama Breeze itself actually survived for another 17 years, before finally closing in May 2025.
Big omission from this thread:
Buca Di Beppo translates to "Joe's basement" (not kidding), and it refers to the fact that the restaurant actually started in a basement in 1993.
It quickly expanded, and by the mid-late '90s, it came to California. At the time, it was a fun place to eat. The portions were huge, the prices were reasonable, the food was tasty (and sometimes featured unusual recipes), and the atmosphere was supposed to be kitschy and eclectic, in an Italian sort of way.
This lasted only a short time before it started to degrade.
First the service got worse. Then the food started to worsen, and the meals felt very low-effort, almost like you were at Olive Garden. Then it kinda settled into a state of being a low-middle end chain Italian restaurant, with nothing particularly interesting or memorable about it.
It sat that way through the early 2010s, at which point they especially started skimping on the ingredients and the quality of the cooks, and soon enough the food became tasteless and tough. In 2024, they declared bankruptcy, but are still operating.
I gave up on them about 10 years ago.
This was a case of a self-perpetuating cycle where they cheap out a little to increase profits, people stop coming, and then they cheap out more in order to survive due to the lesser visitation, then even more people abandon, then they cheap out even more, and soon you have a restaurant which is absolute shit. Same thing happened to Cracker Barrel.
Really funny you mention this. Just yesterday I was cleaning out a drawer and stumbled across an old gift card of theirs.Big omission from this thread:
Buca Di Beppo translates to "Joe's basement" (not kidding), and it refers to the fact that the restaurant actually started in a basement in 1993.
It quickly expanded, and by the mid-late '90s, it came to California. At the time, it was a fun place to eat. The portions were huge, the prices were reasonable, the food was tasty (and sometimes featured unusual recipes), and the atmosphere was supposed to be kitschy and eclectic, in an Italian sort of way.
This lasted only a short time before it started to degrade.
First the service got worse. Then the food started to worsen, and the meals felt very low-effort, almost like you were at Olive Garden. Then it kinda settled into a state of being a low-middle end chain Italian restaurant, with nothing particularly interesting or memorable about it.
It sat that way through the early 2010s, at which point they especially started skimping on the ingredients and the quality of the cooks, and soon enough the food became tasteless and tough. In 2024, they declared bankruptcy, but are still operating.
I gave up on them about 10 years ago.
This was a case of a self-perpetuating cycle where they cheap out a little to increase profits, people stop coming, and then they cheap out more in order to survive due to the lesser visitation, then even more people abandon, then they cheap out even more, and soon you have a restaurant which is absolute shit. Same thing happened to Cracker Barrel.
Also, IN before Orko blames private equity for all of this.
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