Following up her fun quiz on favorite foods, Karen at Nothing But Knit has come up with one on dining out at restaurants. Since the quarantine for COVID 19, eating out in restaurants has been pretty unusual for many people, if it happens at all. So here’s a chance to talk about your restaurant experiences recent and distant past! Feel free to answer in the comments or on your own blog. If you post on your own blog, please post a link so we can follow along 🙂

Here are Karen’s questions:

• If you could go out to eat today, what restaurant would you go to? What would you order?
• We already talked about the best meal we’ve ever eaten? What is the worst?
• Do you have fond memories of a bygone restaurant? Did you have a favorite meal you miss?
• When I was a kid it was a huge deal to go out to eat. What childhood restaurant memory do you have?
• Fast food and casual dining restaurants are all the rage in the US. Do you have a favorite? How about one you avoid?

And my answers:

• I would go to a diner and order a nice breakfast. We have done takeout at some of our local restaurants, but breakfast really doesn’t travel well, so we haven’t tried it. I really miss breakfast out!
• The worst restaurant meal I ever had was at a short-lived steak restaurant in Allentown Pa, back when we lived there. I am fussy about meat, and was served a gristly, fatty, way undercooked steak. Sending food back to the kitchen is something I basically never do, but I sent that steak back. I was polite about it, but was not going to eat that steak. The cook proceeded to come out to the dining room to yell at me. He was followed out by the manager, who also yelled at me. So really it was the food compounded by being yelled at in public. I did not enjoy that dining experience.
• One of my favorite restaurants for a very long time was The Beirut restaurant in Bethlehem, PA, which you may have guessed served Middle Eastern food. They had such delicious food and a great atmosphere. It was the first restaurant of its kind in our area, and I really just enjoyed it so much. At some point in the early 2000’s they were bought out and became Aladdin. They have much of the same decor and menu, but it wasn’t quite the same after the change.
• Don’t laugh. When I was little, the big deal for our family was going to the Bowmanstown Rod and Gun club restaurant on Friday nights. My maternal granddad was a member, and he and my grandmother, my uncle and aunt, and our family used to go most Fridays. The bar and restaurant was only for members and their families, so my granddad knew everyone there. The food was diner-ish, but very tasty. My favorite meal was veal parmesan, with some variety of potato and a vegetable on the side. I was also allowed a “drink”, which was of course a Shirley Temple or similar. It sounds ridiculous now, but it really was a fun time.
• For fast food, I like either Subway or Qdoba. I’m not a huge fan of most of the casual dining chains. Mostly the food is mediocre. Here in Anchorage we have some pretty amazing local casual dining places, so the chains are always going to lose out to them for me 🙂

Feel free to play along! Answer in the comments or on your own blog 🙂 Looking forward to hearing about your restaurant experiences!