As someone from outside the USA who has traveled fairly extensively in the US, this is true, to an extent. There are obviously lots of great restaurants and some of the best meals I've ever had were in the US, but if you're staying on the general tourist track it can be very hard to find something good. The bad restaurants in the US are really bad, and in a lot of small towns I've been too all you can eat is fast food.
I see you are from around New York, and there is certainly no lack of great food in NYC. It is even possible to find a decent coffee there. And I have had great meals in other parts of the US too. A Mexican meal in San Diego still ranks as one of my all time greatest. Beautifully presented and full of flavour. BBQ ribs riverside in San Antonio was another highlight. Mexican should be a good standby in the south-west. A restaurant in Scottsdale was fantastic, while a cool looking place in downtown Dallas was so-so and recently in Pismo Beach the local Mexican was decidedly ordinary. I remember driving through the beautiful historical district of Victoria, Texas, on my way from the Gulf to the Dallas area, looking for a café or anything original. No luck at all but as soon as I was back on the highway out of town there was a long row of dozens of chain "restaurants", my only option. Other experiences, a hotel lunch buffet in Houston consisting of 5 different flavours of macaroni and cheese, wandering round the loop district of Chicago looking for somewhere decent to eat. Even the "upmarket" restaurant next to the skating rink in Millennium Park had a menu that largely consisted of hamburgers. The internet is not such a great place to find good eateries, especially in smaller towns. I am a planner and on an early road trip through southern California and Arizona I did search Yelp trying to find good, interesting places to eat. First stop was to be Barstow after leaving LA. I had found a Mexican restaurant in Yelp with excellent reviews and comments like "great food" and "first of the chain, maintains original character". The restaurant? Taco Bell. What did I know? I think the problem is locals tend to write up their favorite eateries as great, whether they are or not on a more global scale. Anyway after several similar if not so extreme experiences I don't bother any more. When you do find a proper restaurant very often the meals are too complex, over sauced and over salted. I was once given a cheese platter with five different types of cracker. Why? Too often quantity is seen to trump quality. Rather than making a good coffee, you are given a big coffee. I remember stopping at a small café in somewhere in Texas for a decent enough light meal but the coffee was terrible, far worse than normal. I mentioned this to the girl when paying my bill. She apologised, the "good" coffee machine was broken and they knew the substitute did not make very good coffee. The locals did not seem to mind, however. I think the problem is the sheer dominance of chain "restaurants", the banality drowns out the good. This makes it very difficult for the traveller to find anything decent. Even if you can get a recommendation to a good restaurant do you really want to hop in the car again after a long day on the road and drive across town, perhaps to be disappointed or find it closed? The reason we were wandering the loop district was the blues club we wanted to go to was closed for a private function. When travelling, either as a tourist or for business, you often only have one or two nights in any one place so there is no going back tomorrow night.
There are good chain restaurants though, at the risk of sounding like a contrarian. Zaxby's, IHop, and KFC. However, an outsider might not know about the quality of these places.
I wouldn't go that far to call the latter two good... I'm not familiar with the first one so no comment. Going to disagree with you there.
The attraction of chain restaurants, of course, is you know what you are going to get no matter what city you are in. Eating out at a new place is always a gamble and also a luxury for most people. Spending hard-earned money on a sit down meal that turns out to be no good is frustrating to say the least. Although I do not eat at fast food places, I have been to my fair share of Olive Garden's across the country (and honestly I don't think I have met an American who does not like Olive Garden). Still I understand the enjoyment of finding a great local place with local character and also understand the difficulty. Also in my experience small town Texas (alluded to above) is somewhat lacking in this regards.
I like to gorge on KFC as much as the next 20 something year old with a fast but increasingly slow metabolism but i’m not sure I would bring it up in a debate about good chain restaurants. The U.K. casual dining market is struggling right now but at the moment there are still some gems and if I do need to eat at a chain I’m happy to usually shell out a little more for something like Wagamama. One proper fast food chain I will stick my neck out for? In-n-Out burger. That place is peng. In my own experience, I found Olive Garden distinctly average for what it was. It has also become a bit of a meme with under 30s online.
In regard to culinary experiences: I've experienced the good, the bad and the ugly both in Europe and the USA. The prevelance of chain restaurants and the use of convenience food products might be more prominent in the USA, but "thanks" to globalisation, this is becoming more and more common all over Europe, too. I've eaten great food in America: home-slaughtered bison stew and BBQ in South Dakota, freshly boiled shrimps, crawfish and snow-crabs, po'boys, beignets, bananas fosters, gumbo, jambalaya (...) in Louisiana (oh, NOLA...), grilled mullets, alligator ribs / tail bits and homemade Key Lime pie in Florida, giant steaks in Southern Texas, all kinds of pizza in Chicago, great Chinese noodles in NYC's Chinatown, black bear sausage in Montana, enormous American versions of Mexican dishes in Arizona, California, New Mexico, homemade apple and blue berry pies in some remote diners in the Midwest, and even those weird buffalo wings when you're invited to a Superbowl party...there is so much culinary diversity and creativity in the US if you look beyond the general junk / fast / convenience / XXXL food. Good American (Southern) BBQ is still in a class of its own in comparison to most of what Europe has to offer. One of the best dishes I've ever had in a zoo was actually at Woodland Park Zoo (salmon). Never understood the hype about KFC sauces, White Castle sliders etc., though...
People typically don't like White Castle burgers from what I've seen. I think they're amazing though.
To try and get this back on topic I generally have had a better culinary experience in European Zoo’s over those in america (and the UK!)
Was wondering if there is rules that make US zoos avoid walkthrough exhibits with mammals not caged? Lots of European zoos have rainforest exhibits where u walk around marmosets, tamarins, Sloths etc. but I haven’t seen that in same extend in US in the few US zoos I’ve had a chance to visit. Anyone knows or have i just not been around enough in the US Haha
I think TZDugong hit the main point there. That said, I do know SDZ Safari Park has a walk-through with Ring-tailed Lemurs, and many places have walk-throughs with wallabies.
ok, thanks, makes sense i guess .. what a pitty though.. Its my favourite exhibits and i normally spend the longest time spotting animals in these.
Quite a few have sloths over paths. The only primates I’ve seen in this style exhibit here are lemurs and the only one of those I’ve been to is at Omaha. Of course kangaroos and wallabies are common in walkthrough exhibits.
I've seen some tamarins and titis in walkthrough enclosures before in addition to the previously mentioned species. Bats are another common one, too. ~Thylo
There's also the squirrel monkey walkthrough at Phoenix. How many walkthroughs with bats are there in the US, though? The only ones that spring to mind for me are Brookfield (where the bats are nowhere near the people) and Omaha.
Are flying foxes not common in walkthroughs? I remember bats in walkthroughs at Bronx, Franklin Park, Tampa, and Tulsa at least in the US. ~Thylo
I had forgotten about Bronx, didn't know the other three had free-flying FFs. I guess they're not uncommon in some indoor rainforests, but my understanding is that (with the exception of Omaha) they are rarely if ever close to the visitors and never a focus of the exhibit, so I tend towards thinking of them as walkthrough* exhibits (as in *technically a walkthrough, but not in a very meaningful sense). I'd be interested to know if you've had different experiences, though.
