An engineer, a lawyer, and a salesman walk into the Outback Steakhouse with me in tow (sounds a bit like the start of a joke, doesn’t it?). I think I figured out why I don’t go to the Outback (besides the fact that I don’t eat steak): Despite the Aussie shirts, decorations, and big, semi-large Crocodile Dundee knives in the bread, I can’t get into the whole corporate packaged “ooh, let’s pretend your in Australia” thing.

See, if I want a chicken sandwich and a fries, that’s what I want to ask for. Asking for a “Kookabura Burger” with a side of “Dingaroo Chips” is not something that I think makes dinner any more fun. All it does is force me to translate “chicken sandwich” to corporate theme restaurant-ese, and force the waitress to translate that bull back into “chicken sandwich” before putting the order in to the kitchen.

Now, does making people order a “ridgydidgy jilleroo burger” make eating a chicken sandwich so much more exotic and exciting for middle America that the rest of us have to put up with it, or is there really something in a name? For me, it not only does not add to my dining experience, but I find to be a big, fat pain in the ass that seems to benefit no one but the corporate marketing idiots who get to jerk each other off over how well their new chicken sandwich name did with the middle American focus group. High five. High fuckin’ five.

If they really want me to get into the whole theme of the place, it’s going to take more than stupid sandwich names. It’s going to take releasing either hungry dingos or an Outback Jack / Hacksaw Jim Duggan tag team on them uggy twisty beaks in marketing, AND letting me freely huck the boomerangs around when I sneak them off the wall.

Dingos.

Posted in Misc.