French Fry Diary 642: LongHorn Steakhouse

We've been here before. It might not seem like it, but we have. The deep fried breaded onion snack followed by beef is a gig we've done before, both at the Outback and the questionably named Texas Roadhouse. Even the Lone Star Steakhouse, sadly no longer in our immediate area, used to do that.

It makes me wonder if all three are the same restaurant, but no, each onion is trademarked. So each restaurant is just a competitive twin. Are those onion things really that good? Yes, decadent, but good.

My buddy and podcast partner Ray and I had been making an accidental tour of steakhouses lately, so the LongHorn Steakhouse seemed as good a place to go next as any. I was a bit tentative as the Cherry Hill location has gotten some bad word of mouth. I decided we should see for ourselves.

That is of course, once we got there. Ray set his GPS to the Lone Star Steakhouse, which as I mentioned is nowhere to be found around here. It took a while for us to meet, obviously. While the parking lot was full, the dining room was not. Not sure if that's good or bad.

The menu, supposedly brand new at the time, was huge, and thick as a textbook. The decor was very wooden and old school. There were some cowboy and western motifs, but the big attraction (or at least what my eyes went to) was the huge chandelier made of antlers. Don't know if they're real, but wow.

We got the Texas Tonion, trademark, but it doesn't need the trademark. It really doesn't need it. It's nothing like its counterparts, it's just a long plate of just meh onion petals. For the price, a little over seven bucks, comparative to the Bloomin' Onion, I feel ripped off. An order of onion petals, and only okay onion petals for that matter, is not worth the price of the exotic wheel of deep fried death and goodness I expected. I was not happy.

My chopped steak came with thinner longer onion straws. They were better than the steak. The fries were natural cut regular cuts, only warm but okay. The baked potato was very hot and very good. There's not much else to say about the food. The service was okay. There was nothing though that I would come back for, even though Ray said the LongHorn near him was better. That's too far though. And I'm still a little steamed about that Texas Tonion...

French Fry Diary 344: Muscle Maker Grill

This is not the usual place you would expect to find here on French Fry Diary. When you think French fries, you think fast food, and when you think fast food, you usually think unhealthy. Well, the tag line at Muscle Maker Grill is "Great Food with Your Health in Mind."

I was enticed to go not by the ad line, or even by the potato products available, but by the teriyaki chicken nuggets. They sounded really good when I'd first heard about them, so the potato side, and the health, they were just happy bonuses.

I was kinda surprised but happy to find Coca-Cola in such a healthy place (again), but oddly, all in all, the menu seemed very fast food junkie friendly. Not on the menu but as a special was a real burger, but alas, I came for the nuggets. Maybe next time. I ordered and sat down in the crazy red neon lit dining area to wait for my food. If it wasn't for the big screen TV with ESPN on it, I might have gone blind from the red.

Nuggets came with crisp celery and sesame seeds on them, nice touch. They also came with a fork and knife, weird, but plenty helpful with the nuggets, and the potatoes. They were really big (you won't leave hungry) and tender but only slightly teriyaki-ed. Not as good as I would have hoped but still good. I guess I could have asked for more teriyaki, but didn't.

The Western Potatoes also came in a bowl the same size as the nuggets. They were chunks of potato, most the size of the nuggets, soft and spicy, and baked. I couldn't quite identify what the spice was though. I do know that I was as fond of the green leaves in the potatoes as I was of ESPN and the red neon. Otherwise the potatoes were quite good. Both chicken nuggets and potato chunks came apart easily with a fork.

At dinner time on a Thursday night there were not many folks in the restaurant, but it is notable that there was a brisk business coming in and out with take out. Also notably they deliver. I would definitely come back, but with a bigger appetite. It may not look like much, but this meal was very filling.