The Reality of Restaurants

I’m pretty vehemently anti-chain restaurant. Part of this is genealogy; as the son and grandson of small business owners, I’m wired to be suspicious of corporate overlords dictating menus and sucking local dollars back to their hollow volcano, generally suspected to be in the vicinity of Wall Street or Atlantis.

But for the past seven weeks, my Sunday nights have been invaded by America’s Next Great Restaurant (ANGR). ANGR is an NBC show suffering from a grievous misnomer. Rather than rooting out a great place to eat, it’s really searching for America’s next “great” corporate restaurant chain.

Celebrity chef Bobby Flay, cheeky Australian reality T.V. vet Curtis Stone, Miami restaurateur Lorena Garcia, and Chipotle founder/boffin Steve Ells are the judges, or as the show prefers to call them, “investors."

The show is a mishmash of food focus groups and endless analyses over whether or not a “concept” is “viable.” Essentially, it beams boring corporate boardrooms into our home, complete with sweating new employees desperate to please exalted bigwigs. I hate it.

Of course, you may be asking yourself, “So why does he watch it?” Suffice to say, I do not always wield the remote control, and I’ve now grown so accustomed to bemoaning everything in and around ANGR I kind of look forward to it. Also: not-to-be-missed recaps from David Rees.

We’ve reached a new level of homogenization when even our reality shows are attempting to generate another national brand. (Anything related to Donald Trump, of course, excepted.) ANGR aims to squeeze every morsel of potentially offensive or challenging life from whatever “concept” remains standing, victorious, at the end, leaving behind only an eatery beige enough to be adequate for anyone. ANGR seeks to end that endless circular conversation you have whenever a bunch of mismatched casual acquaintances goes to lunch and everyone is too timid or apathetic to take a stand with a strong suggestion. “Sure, I’ll eat there” is the muttered standby slogan for every such place. ANGR calls it “fast-casual”; I call it soul-sucking.

Here in Elkridge, we’ve done a pretty commendable job of supporting a bevy of local establishments. Sure, we have a leavening of the usual suspects, especially along —fast burgers, fast sandwiches—but we also have an incredible assortment of locally owned and operated establishments.

You might not want to treat your coworkers to lunch at the pricey  perhaps, but there’s always . Stay in the same strip for a quick trip around the world with Japanese at  or Italian at .

Just down the street from my ‘hood of Harwood Park, and bring some Asian to Elkridge. Although Chopstixx is justly famed for its fresh take on Far Eastern street meals, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the fantastic service at Great Wall, where they know our order before we call. Of course, this may be more of an indictment of some poor eating habits in my household than a celebration of attentive customer service.

ANGR makes me fear for the future of American eating. While the Mark Bittmans of the world tell us to make our home cooking more local, more sustainable, our restaurants are under constant pressure from corporate incursions. I’ve driven from coast to coast, and finding a “local place” in a small town controlled by Dairy Queens and Sonics can be a surprisingly hard thing. Here in Elkridge, we’re lucky to have a strong, readily visible community of restaurants we can claim as our own.

Although chains have their place, for my money, the last thing we need is another Chipotle or Panera. To paraphrase Patrick Henry, give me local, or give me (figurative) death—by starvation.