Forum - View topicAnswerman - What Are Japanese "Family Restaurants" Like?
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Covnam
 Posts: 3678 |
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Funnily enough, when I went to one a few years ago (I think a Jonathan's, but it might have been a Denny's) it looked just like Wagnaria. So while I can't speak for the staff, they at least got the design down 
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Redbeard 101
Oscar the Grouch
Forums Superstar  Posts: 16939 |
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And that is where the problem is. Diner chains that specialize in breakfast food are not as risky a bet as others. In my experience as a cook and food lover breakfast items are more easy to prepare, and also quicker. This is a gross generalization based on your normal simple breakfast type dishes such as sausage, pancakes, eggs, etc. The real issues become service and personnel. Yes some chains may offer better quality ingredients or recipes compared to others, but even if you have A+ quality ingredients if you have a cook who's stoned off his ass and scratching his ass and then making your food...it's probably not gonna be very good. Case in point my local Denny's is a shithole that only stays in business thanks to being 24/7 and all the aforementioned stoners going there. Used to be the late night goth kid smoker hangout. Our IHOP however is quite good. I know other areas near by where the roles are reversed. I would also add that the whole diner experience with the 24/7 hours is really a unique bit of American food history. Diners had such a huge impact on communities in the past. They were our "pubs" basically. I would agree with you though that Wafflehouse beats Denny's. Though my favorite, of the bigger breakfast diner chains, remains Bob Evans. Though they are disappearing even more than most I feel like. On topic I am very curious about trying out a Japanese Denny's now though. Should I ever finally make it to Japan. |
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Greboruri
Posts: 378 Location: QBN, NSW, Australia |
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I don't know if either of these statements is true. Generally if I go to one, I'm almost always the only westerner in the restaurant. I've maybe seen only one other westerner in the restaurant other than me in the numerous times I've been to Japan over the last seven years or so. Even in the more popular areas that tourists visit, I seem to be the only westerner there. In my last trip during summer, I decided to go to Gusto for breakfast in Akiba on the morning I arrived. The staff acted as if a westerner had never been in their restaurant before. As for the fact they're harder to find, not sure if that's true either. I stayed Ota ward last time I was over there and there was a Saizeriya outside the station that was always full or near full and two Jonathans within a kilometre of each other, while not full, did a decent trade from what I could see. |
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Brand
 Posts: 1028 |
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OMG, the last time I went in to my local IHOP every single employee was so stoned out of their minds. I'm still shocked they manged to serve us food. Sadly(?), we don't have a local Denny's anymore it's actually a hibachi place now. When I visited Japan I saw Denny's but we did not eat there. But thinking about it I don't think I really saw any other family style restaurants. |
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enurtsol
 Posts: 14790 |
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Anna Miller's 
Sadly, they've disappeared one by one, but one. |
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DerekL1963
 Subscriber Posts: 1116 Location: Puget Sound |
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Still seems to be one in business... https://www.annamillersrestaurant.jp/index_e.html And it's not a zombie page, the News & Events tab is current. |
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enurtsol
Posts: 14790 |
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Wait, isn't that what I said? One by one, but one
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crosswithyou
 Posts: 2892 Location: California |
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I miss the Steak Gusto near where I used to live in Kawagoe. It was just a short bike ride away (like 2 minutes) and you could get a really decent meal for 1000 yen with salad bar. It was practically worth it alone for the salad bar since that included all you can eat curry rice, soup, and dessert.
It's too bad Steak Gusto doesn't have as many locations as the regular Gusto. |
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Phrunicus
Posts: 34 |
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After doing it many times early in college, for me, Waffle House (which I now live too far north in the US for) is only appropriate for those 2am "why am I still awake?" food runs 
Actually, while I was in grad school, said Waffle House closed down their original location, and then they built a new one across town, but it was supposed to be 'nicer' or something, instead of the classic Waffle House building design like the original was. After that, it REALLY wasn't the same... |
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Scalfin
Posts: 249 |
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Yeah, my perception is that the chain diners have their meals set up for kitchen staff that may not have seen an oven before being hired and was only trained in safety and the health code after arrival, such that it tastes like the MRE's you can get off the shelf in grocery stores. While the traditional diner chef received his training from the army, he still knew how to use the griddle and grill. Howard Johnson's, at least at its height, had surprisingly high standards for its chefs despite not allowing them much autonomy (they were expected to stick to the recipe, but the recipes could often be quite ambitious and fashionable). Local diners similarly have people who know the essentials but don't want to do anything too technical or pricey. Higher end chains can actually have the opposite problem, hiring real chefs they allow to use a traditional brigade de cuisine but not always attracting the best chefs to do it (such that the head chef is holding that position for the first time), leading to high quality variability. Legal's is a good example of this, with some locations being stellar and some being mediocre at best. |
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WingKing
Posts: 617 |
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I actually have some good memories of Denny's from my younger days. When I was a kid and we made the 7-hour drive to go visit Grandma, there was a Denny's around the midway point of the trip where we usually stopped for lunch. And then sometimes when I was a teenager we'd hit Denny's if we'd been out together, it was late, and we were hungry (similar to your friend's 4 AM rule, our group's rule-of-thumb was "You can only go to Denny's after midnight"). Nowadays I have a Denny's right down the street from me, and I occasionally pop in there for breakfast if I'm in the mood. The service is pretty good there, at least for the breakfast shift, and it's usually pretty crowded too; the bulk of the clientele at mine seems to be working class families and senior citizens. I literally cannot remember the last time I ate at a Denny's for anything other than breakfast, though. |
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Violynne
Posts: 128 |
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Go for it. I recommend a breakfast platter with the steak. I love the steaks served at Denny's. We once went to Ruth's Chris Steakhouse (reputable for having some of the best steak money can buy), and the server asked how the steak was. I replied, "Denny's is better." Shock hit the faces of everyone at the table and the server, but I stand by those words. (I bought a filet, which if prepared correctly, should melt at the touch of a fork. I needed a chainsaw, and because I didn't finish the filet, my meal was "comped" based on the amount left remaining. It was still nearly $80 for meat cooked poorly.) Final note: this isn't a statement fact, just opinion. I've a feeling many will disagree.
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Compelled to Reply
 Posts: 358 |
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It's adapted to Japanese tastes, as is curry rice, omurice, and tonkatsu, all Western-derived "yōshoku." |
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Redbeard 101
Oscar the Grouch
Forums Superstar Posts: 16939 |
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The quality of the cut doesn't mean jack shit if the person cooking it doesn't know the difference between searing and a hole in the wall. If you have a good place, even a Denny's, that can cook a good steak I say screw it just go there. Save the money if you're lucky enough. Now I have been to a Ruth Chris myself (company continuing education thing so it was free) and it was every bit as good as they'd have you believe. On the flip side I went to an even more pricey local steak house (Loons for anyone who is interested) and they screwed up my steak not once, but twice. The first time it was well done and not medium, and the second it looked like it might still be breathing. Which brings me back to my earlier point of who gives a rats ass where the steak, or anything else, comes from. If they do it right then they do it right. Good enough for me. |
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leafy sea dragon
 Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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Between family restaurants and arcades as meet-up spots for teenagers, and the arcades in Japan are big and clean, it's just a bizarre thing to wrap my head around. Are Japanese teenagers really that upfront and clean? I mean, at my middle school, the favorite hangout spots were the restrooms at the school and dark alleys and corners.
Don't worry about it. The idea behind Denny's is that it's cheap, so it gets the usual derision. From what I hear, Cracker Barrel is at the top of American diner chains as far as the quality-to-price ratio goes, but they're not ubiquitous the way Denny's is. (Denny's also deliberately goes for the diner look.) Even less ubiquitous than Denny's is Norms, which I feel is heads and shoulders above Denny's in both price and quality, but it serves only a very small section of the country. I live in one of those sections though, so Norms is my go-to place if I want to eat at a diner.
I suppose what you mean is that there's no consistency in quality of service from place to place, but based on my experience in multiple countries, the United States tends toward the "doormat" kind of service--that is, the regular minimum wage employees are frequently treated as slaves by the management (though technically by corporate), lacking any agency or authority if something goes wrong beyond their control. As a result, it usually comes down to the managers, who have to follow rules but otherwise get free rein to run the place however they wish. (I can see why corporate would do that though--it's difficult to make sure all of your thousands of locations are running as intended, and it's better to just check how much money they're bringing in.) Though I never worked in a restaurant, I have worked minimum wage jobs before, and I was always quite frustrated by how certain things would happen and I was not allowed to do anything about it. Crimes would happen and I couldn't call the police because corporate didn't want the cops "making a scene." Same thing with parents leaving their children unsupervised (sometimes the parents were somewhere else completely, like work) and I couldn't call CPS. Guests would often act abusively or threateningly toward us employees and we couldn't act on that. (Looking at what transpires in Not Always Right, it seems this is pretty common throughout the U.S.) I found it pretty interesting that said abusive and/or threatening behavior is a lot less common in Europe, where employees are allowed to, and sometimes encouraged, to talk back and insult them if they deserved it.
Well, I survived four years of my high school's cafeteria food, which would induce stomachaches for me without fail. There has never been anything I've eaten at any sort of eatery that's below that cafeteria as far as quality standards go. I've never had any digestive issues at the food at Denny's. Farmer Boys, on the other hand...
Well, parfairs ARE served at western restaurants too! It's not just a Japanese thing.
Well, that explains the look of the Waitress trainer class in Pokémon Black and White...even though Unova is based on New York City and the nearby areas of New Jersey.
Part of it is due to people working evening shifts or graveyard shifts, whose circadian rhythms would be atypical and they would then eat breakfast at different times. More often, what I see is that it attracts people who want to eat breakfast foods at times other than the morning. Me, I don't really like breakfast foods too much, for the most part, so I more appreciate that the regular lunch/dinner menu is available 24/7. I can come in there in the morning and, unlike most other restaurants, I'm not stuck with a menu consisting mostly of eggs, bacon, hash browns, and pancakes/waffles. Nothing against those foods, but what I feel like eating has no correlation to what time of day it is or how long I've been awake. (It's what bugs me about McDonald's having a limited breakfast menu all day. They don't extend it in the other direction and put in regular menu items in the morning. I don't know why, considering this was likely copied from Jack in the Box, which has the full menu available at all hours it's open, and they've since combined breakfast and lunch/dinner in their "Brunchfast" and "Munchie Meals" lines.) |
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