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Your bread might get soggy, but the view is worth it. At the Villa Escudero resort in the Philippines, you can dine right next to a waterfall. Don’t bother wearing shoes because the water runs right through the dining and buffet area.
Link -via Bit Rebels | Photo: maryan54
Sometimes getting in your car and going down the street is just too much work, but you still have to eat at some point. That’s why Burger King is planning to try out a delivery service in certain U.S. markets. Presumably, if the plan goes well there, the service will expand to the rest of the U.S. Would you order delivery from BK or would you rather just head over to the drive through?
Link Via The Consumerist
Image Via scriptingnews [Flickr]
There’s a Hello Kitty hospital and a Hello Kitty jet, so it was only a matter of time before Hello Kitty made her way into a restaurant theme. Hello Kitty seems to be something you either love or hate, so if you ended up in Beijing, would you take the time to dine in the sickly sweet pink dining room?
I recently posted an article about discontinued snack foods, and many of our readers pointed out that some of the foods were still available in other countries. As it turns out, fast food companies operate in a similar manner, offering local favorites to other countries that they would never consider selling in America. Here are a few American fast food establishments and the dishes they don’t offer in America.
In Canada, poutine, fries covered in cheese curds and gravy, is offered at almost every fast food restaurant, but BK offers their own varieties that fit in with the rest of their food –most notably, the Angry Poutine with fried onions and peppers on top.
In Puerto Rico, mallorcas, sweet pastry buns, are a popular breakfast treat and Burger King takes full advantage of the popularity of these buns by offering the King Mallorca, filled with ham, eggs and three different cheeses. If you want something even more filling, you might want to try their Enormous Omelet, which isn’t an omelet at all, but actually one of the restaurant’s long hamburger buns filled with a hamburger patty, two eggs, bacon and cheese. Later in the day, you can always snack on some King Wings, which are buffalo wings marinated in honey –why aren’t these sold in America yet?
In many countries, including the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Colombia and Mexico, you can enjoy the deliciously fatty Cheesy Whopper, which features a deep fried disc of cheese on top of a standard Whopper.
Personally, I want to try the Hawaiian BK Chicken available in New Zealand, which is like all the other chicken sandwiches Burger King sells, only it features bacon and pineapple. Sign me up!
The variety of KFC’s international menus is simply astounding, as the American version exclusively limits itself to fried chicken and a few sides, while the international franchises seem to have no limits on what they serve. On the more standard side, there is the Fillet Tower Burger, which is available throughout Europe and other locations, which is essentially just a chicken sandwich topped with a hashbrown. On the other end of the spectrum is the menu from Thailand, which features stir fries, a tuna and corn salad, fish fingers (like chicken fingers, but fish) and a donut filled with shrimp meat. China offers a similarly strange menu compared to the standard KFC fare, as it includes corn salad, beef wraps, red bean porridge, shrimp burgers and an egg and vegetable soup.
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Many businesses will be offering free stuff or discounts to veterans and active duty military on Friday the 11th -Veterans Day. If you are, or know a veteran, don’t let the day slip by without taking advantage. You deserve it! Most will require proof of service. Some participating restaurants include:
Applebee’s will say thank you to military members with a free meal November 11 (dine-in only).
Champps Americana Restaurant will offer free burgers to veterans and active-duty military November 11 at participating locations.
Chili’s is offering a free meal to veterans and active-duty military between 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. November 11.
Denny’s will offer a free Grand Slam breakfast 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. November 11 in select restaurants in Arizona, Colorado, Indiana, Maryland, New Mexico, New York, Texas, Virginia and Washington, D.C.
But that’s just the beginning. Check out the list at Kiplinger. Link
(Image credit: Flickr user Garry Wilmore)
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A new sushi restaurant in the Aichi Prefecture of Japan has taken to making some outrageously massive rolls and nigiri. They also serve up some absolutely tiny pieces with each order to absolutely mess with the minds of anyone enjoying their treats. In the picture above, regular sushi has been included to give perspective to the other trays. You can watch a video of it at the link, but be warned the dialogue is in Japanese.
Link Via InventorSpot
If you’re planning a trip based solely on geek culture soon, Oddee’s list of 10 geek bars and restaurants should be a great resource for dining and drinking options. My favorite is The Hajime Restaurant in Bangkok, where robots serve as waiters and entertainers.
A restaurant in Chandler, Arizona will serve free food to anyone over 350 pounds. It’s called the Heart Attack Grill, and its managers just hired a 600-pound man named Blair River to be a model in their commercials:
Blair River stands 6 feet 8 inches tall and weighs about 600 pounds. His weight and his enthusiasm for the food at Chandler’s Heart Attack Grill have won him a $100-an-hour modeling contract.
This week he shot a YouTube video commercial to promote the grill, which invites anyone over 350 pounds to eat for free.[...]
The Heart Attack Grill, at 6185 W. Chandler Blvd. near Kyrene Road, has a medical theme. Waitresses are dressed in skimpy nurses’ uniforms. Customers, called patients, wear hospital gowns over their clothes. The menu features no diet drinks and high-calorie food called such memorable names as Double Bypass Burger. Fries are cooked in lard.
The restaurant is owned by former nutritionist Jon Basso, who ran a chain of seven Jenny Craig weight-loss centers in Oklahoma.
Link via J-Walk Blog | Official Website (warning: sound)
There’s a restaurant in Riga, Latvia, that looks like a hospital. The staff will even wrap you in a straight jacket, if that’s what you’d like. It’s called Hospitalis, and it combines the pleasures of eating out and medical examinations:
Ah, listening to a live band while eating a meal in a gynecologist’s exam room—now there’s a multi-orifice experience few other restaurants can match![...]
Hospitalis also has a small “crazy menu” with entrees like liver-filled quail that are prepared in such a way as to resemble something that might have been surgically extracted from a person. You have to sign an indemnity waiver before ordering anything from the “crazy menu” (no, that’s not a joke) so here’s to hoping that the liver they fill the quail with isn’t being removed from you.
Though you can order a “normal” meal at Hospitalis be prepared to eat it with syringes, scalpels and other surgical utensils. In that same vein (pun), drinks are served in the likes of test tube vials and I.V. bags. If you are the designated driver but can’t resist getting a drink then ordering a Corona beer in a urine sample jar should ensure that you’ll be sober for the trip home.
Link via The Agitator | Photo: Spot Cool Stuff
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Americans know that you are supposed to tip a waiter at a full-service restaurant 15-20% for good service. There is no obligation to tip at all unless the restaurant makes it mandatory, as they sometimes do for large groups. However, in the US, food servers are often paid below the minimum wages as tips are expected to make up the difference. What about outside the full-service restaurant? How much should you tip at bars or buffets or take out windows? This article at mintlife spells those out for you.
Whenever I go through the takeout dance with a host (she retrieves my food, I pay—inevitably with a credit card—and my eyes scan down to that darned gratuity line), I feel anxious. Am I rude if I don’t tip? A sucker if I do? What’s the proper percentage? (Surely not the full 15% to 20%.)
“I’ll leave a couple of dollars, maybe more if it’s a larger order and required more work by the host,” says Heather Chang, a former hostess at a San Diego gourmet pizza restaurant. What constitutes more work? “Things the host would’ve helped put together, like a salad or something that required fancy packaging.” If this turns out to be the case, 10% is plenty.
Link -via the Presurfer
(Image credit: Dave Dugdale)
Celebrity chefs wear more than one hat, figuratively, because they cook for real restaurants in addition to cooking on TV (that’s how they got those TV jobs in the first place). You might recognize the chef, but would you know where to go to enjoy their food? Find out how much you really know about celebrity chefs in today’s Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss. Link
Upon hearing that Rolling Stone magazine plans to open its own restaurant, Slate author Justin Peters imagined reviews for restaurants opened by other magazines and news sites, such as Sports Illustrated, Esquire, and Cosmopolitan. Here’s his review of The Huffington Post restaurant:
What a selection! Marvel at the 47-page menu of hot entrees, most of which are sourced from other, better restaurants. While you can’t beat the price, remember that you get what you pay for: The food is often reheated and many of the “celebrity chefs” who dabble in the kitchen don’t appear to know how to cook. Remember to pay cash, as the staff has been known to “aggregate” patrons’ credit card numbers.
Peters is quite willing to poke fun at Slate, too:
While the dishes are sometimes unappetizing, the kitchen will occasionally convince you that everything you know about curly fries is wrong. The opinionated waitstaff makes it clear that they know what you want better than you do; don’t be surprised if your order of chicken elicits a riff on why you actually wanted trout. We hope the owners know what they’re doing, because the business model—the food is free, but there are ads on the plates, glasses, tablecloths, and forks—seems iffy at best.
In the comments, describe your visit to a Neatorama-themed restaurant.
Link via Hit & Run | Photo: US Department of Health and Human Services
Nothing draws attention like oversized objects, and when you’re traveling along the highway, hungry people notice big food. During the 1930s, buildings that look like something else popped up all over to draw in travelers, and many still exist. See 24 examples of appetizing architecture in this collection. Shown is the Big Duck in Flanders, New York. Link -via the Presurfer
