"Famous Dave's:" overpriced camp

[elfs]

Desperate and unable to agree on anything to eat, we went with one of Elf's Rules: When you can't agree on where to eat, eat at the first place you see that you've never eat at before. This wound us up at "Famous Dave's BBQ," an overpriced middle-class camp restaurant chain.

I have been advised by wordsmith Richard Sher about the difference between "kitsch" and "camp": both describe a design aesthetic that is bathetic, over the top, and in bad taste, but the designer of camp knows it is in bad taste, whereas kitsch is created in all sincerity. Famous Dave's knows what it was aiming for when it hired its design team. The inside is garish, with bright yellow, red, and white signs with cartoons of pigs roasting other pigs, chickens slathering to get into roasters, and billboards proclaiming "If it walks or flies, we'll eat it," "We dig pig," and "Only the best pigs put Famous Dave's on their organ donor cards." (When Yamaraashi-chan asked me what that meant, I said, "It means that this place only buys genetically engineered cognitively modified organisms." Omaha said, "It does not!")

The food was okay. I mean, if you want a lot of mass-produced, fairly good meat, it's not a bad place to go, but I've made better at home. Omaha and I looked up the difference between barbecuing and grilling on her iPhone while we waited and determined that the menu didn't try too hard to confuse the issue for the guests. We had the "garbage can lid" of dinner for two: the meat was generally unremarkable, the five sauces on the table went from too sweet to insufficiently spicy-- this is not a place that can afford a bad hotsaurce experience with a customer, so their "Devil's Spit" sauces plays it way on the safer side. The coleslaw was good, I'll give them that.

I stopped eating well before my plate was clean. "It's a sign of my... responsible maturation," I told Omaha. "You mean getting old," she said. Maybe she's right: it was also too loud in there.

I noticed in the bathrooms that the walls are plastered with ads for men's products from pre-WW2 magazines. Which I thought was kinda funny, since I shave with some of the products on the walls: shaving soap and badger brush, double-sided single-edged blades, big steel razor. Nothing works better.

Anyway, take it or leave it. It's not my kind of place. (I'll tell you about Bennet's on Mercer Island, which is my kind of place, next time.)

Comments

[lisakit.livejournal.com]

You know, if you based restaurant food on whether it was better than you could cook I'd be suprised if you ever ate out.

Thanks for the warning though. Loba and I've been wondering about the place.

[gromm.livejournal.com]

Ah. That's what we like to call "white people spicy."

If you've ever had proper Indian or Thai (or often enough, most any other south-east Asian) food, you probably know what I mean.

We loved Dairy Queen's "Flamethrower burger." We tried it once and were so underwhelmed that we immediately coined that term.

It's kind of weird that Louisiana and Texas have their own brand of kick-ass spicy, and yet pretty much any American franchise makes it so lame as to be pointless.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, every major city has a hole-in-the-wall boutique which sells nothing but hot sauces, hundreds of different brands of them, Dave's Insanity (different Dave, I hope), 10,000 Atom Bombs, Jamaican Jerk, Pain Is Good, Colon Blow (ouch), and the ever-popular Pain and Suffering.

With all that embarrassment of riches, you'd think restaurants would have a clue. Still, a crockpot, some home-made barbecue sauce, and your choice of pain above could make for a great weekend lunch.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[omahas.livejournal.com]

Uh-oh... almost all the meat and fish dishes, and many of the sauces, contain MSG.

And Elf said that all of the sauces contain high-fructose corn syrup as one of their ingredients. I'm trying to get away from that as well.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Up front they have a "To go" desk and the sauces are all there in packets. First ingredient to all five, "High Fructose Corn Syrup."

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[nbarnes.livejournal.com]

(When Yamaraashi-chan asked me what that meant, I said, "It means that this place only buys genetically engineered cognitively modified organisms." Omaha said, "It does not!"

Betcha she can't prove it.