Hard Rock Cafe

Considering the last Hard Rock Cafe I went to served taquitos that gave me food poisoning and ruined my trip to Universal, this establishment immeasurably improved my opinion. A popular restaurant for no particular reason besides being a famous brand, Hard Rock sells American food while playing American music and then sells you merch to commemorate your freedom-filled experience.
Seating: As with most places when a group comes in with a voucher, we were ushered to the crappiest seats and seated immediately. People don’t like speaking up for the most part, so restaurants can make it more comfortable to stay in the crappy area than to complain and get only barely slightly nicer chairs. The chairs and table were plain black wood, and felt like hard rock (pun).


Decor: Nice ceiling decorations and lighting. The roof was dominated by a big hanging disk with lights, whose pattern looked like a Mr. Pibb can. The bar had lights under the table illuminated the pastel blue/brown tiling, and looked very pretty. The TVs didn’t show sports, but music videos like MTV used to. I liked the change in what the TV displayed, because everyone enjoys music, while only some people enjoy sports. Unless you’re in the South, then everyone loves football.
Actual Food: I ordered a BBQ pulled pork burger. The sauce didn’t fully saturate the buns, which is good because no one wants a soggy bun. It was good quality food, just nothing amazing. I also tried the mac n cheese, which was amazing! It involved real cheese and felt very creamy, like when your white grandma brings it to Thanksgiving dinner. The fries that came with the burger were also perfectly salty, and not too oily despite it being America. I was in a good food coma by the time their cookies came. They were too sweet, tasting like store-bought ones. Kind of nasty.

Rating: Plain but good. The store reminded me of Cracker Barrel (literally a bunch of white people held in by wood walls), and acts sort of like refined Cracker Barrel. Good food, interesting TV, and American decor make this establishment deserving of the Pier 39’s front spot. 7/8 store-bought cookies.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Douzo and Basho Sushi

Image
For those of you who have never had a monkfish liver, I’m about to take you on a wild ride. PREFACE: I ate at Basho, and then at Douzo the next day. These are not the same restaurant, just two semi-fancy Japanese restaurants who share an owner (or something like that. In actuality their “Apply to work with us!” forms feature both restaurants’ logos at the top and have very similar vibes so I decided to review both in one post) They hid the TVs!!! Atmosphere: With ceilings chilling at a calm ~14 feet, this place is made for giants. That space is also empty in Douzo, which lets you know the restaurant is kinda expensive (Emptiness is expensive, after all). The same overhead space in Basho had weird barrel frames surrounding lightbulbs. Both restaurants had muted lighting, and allowed in a minimal influx of sunlight from their glass front doors. This place did a lot of things right that most restaurants don’t. Though they had TVs, they were small, and perfectly angled behind ...
Read more

Cipriani Dolci

Image
You know when the only words you can read on a menu are “Daily Recommendation” you’re in for a real treat. Atmosphere: Overlooking the Main Terminal of Grand Central Station in New York (fat name drop intro) is a corner restaurant with its own bar, 4 streetlights, and seemingly no kitchen. Welcome to Cipriani Dolci, a pricey Italian restaurant that has succeeded despite heavy local competition (Little Italy AND New York pizza (and yes, I am counting NY pizza as Italian)). The restaurant’s confined space only further accents the ~4 step height gradient between the bar floor and the other section’s floor. Basically, big height gradients and I loved it. Besides the floor, their custom streetlights do little to affect the mellow yellowed archival light coming from the ceiling mural of the Main Terminal anyway. The view from either area is wonderful, and I think the lateness of the hour was the only reason there wasn’t a large hubbub coming from the floor. The chairs were nice, compl...
Read more

Pelicana Korean Fried Chicken

Image
Accidentally texted my mom that I ate Pelican chicken after eating here. Also this was a Korean fried chicken restaurant, or a KFC. Environment: I think the concept of a dining hall hiding behind a draped curtain is underdone in the modern restaurant meta. Everyone is running for open-air bullshit and is too afraid to reduce ceiling space cause “we’re too cheap to hide the pipes in the ceiling so you’re just going to deal with it”. Pelicana upends this canon by not only making the ceilings ~8 feet tall, but also hiding the table area at the end of a long hallway that in any other restaurant would lead to a bathroom.  The decor was minimal, but did include a painting of a rooster and a poster that told me to “eat chicken!” I vibed with the music, which was a lively combination of old Kanye/J. Cole type hip hop. We were seated at a booth for 6; being 3 people, this blessing of space can only be a reward from the food blog gods. We ordered an entire fried chicken to split among...
Read more