Today as we were going home from the Town & Country Symphony holiday concert, my mother-in-law made the simple comment, "Does anybody want to stop for a burger?" When everybody stopped and paused and was quiet, I knew it sounded like, hurray, we were going out to dinner! But now the big question... where to eat? When my son started deciding between Wendy's and Jack in the Box, I knew we needed some "restaurant choice intervention" so we did not end up in some sad little fast food joint. My wife came up with the clever idea of listing a bunch of choices and allowing each one of us to eliminate a restaurant. Unfortunately, my son was seated at the back of the minivan and would have the second to last choice, so I had to eliminate a fast food place from the list (I eliminated Wendy's.) After my son narrowed it down to Steak 'n Shake and Applebee's, my wife had the final vote and we were headed off to the Applebee's at Maplewood Commons.
Now just yesterday we had a not so impressive lunch right next door at the Olive Garden, and I remembered our last dinner at the nearby Red Lobster was pretty bad. So I was hoping we would not experience a "Maplewood Commons Bad Dining Trifecta." Luckily, Applebee's is usually pretty consistent, nothing super exciting, but usually not really bad either, and their menu has a lot of variety and has reasonably priced choices even for dinner. My son ordered the appetizer sampler, and since he did not want the boneless wings, I took those off his hands. I added that to the chicken fajita rollups with fries and that made a fine Sunday evening meal. My wife and daughter split a plain burger and a small oriental chicken salad, and my mother-in-law ordered the oriental chicken salad and a chocolate shake.
The background music was some tame, non descript Christmas music, but that easily beat the really weird jazzy Italian Christmas music they played at Olive Garden yesterday. All in all the meal was not super exciting, but at least it was not a big let down either. It was just a reasonable, expectantly solid meal at an acceptable price and with a decent atmosphere. Hey, it's just Applebee's but sometimes that is good enough!
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