Bennigan’s Files its Last TPS Report

I just read about Bennigan’s going bankrupt. I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise. I haven’t seen a Bennigan’s ad in ages.

The story was particularly interesting to me, because my cousin used to manage for Bennigan’s. He told me that if you wanted decent food, and you had to choose between Bennigan’s and T.G.I. Friday’s, you should go with Friday’s, because they actually tried to cook food a human could eat. He said the beef they used at Bennigan’s was something called “utility grade.” Like, if you don’t eat it, you can use it to make a sturdy doormat.

There are eight grades of beef, and all but three sound horrifying. Prime, Choice, Select, Standard, Commercial, Utility, Cutter, and Canner. Think about the lousy choice steaks you’ve had, and then try to imagine all the things that have to be wrong with a piece of meat before they drop it four more grades.

Now, I am not claiming I know for a fact that they used this stuff, or that the food was generally bad. I do know that my cousin worked for them and claimed Bennigan’s was purely “a money machine,” and that making good food was not a priority.

As for Friday’s, I have two problems with them. First, it is REALLY hard to find anything on their menu that isn’t fried, yet which I consider worth eating. Coming from the guy who thinks pig skin is candy, this is a harsh indictment. Second, they always smell awful. Like rancid grease. Like water in which Michael Moore’s baseball cap has been boiled.

You can make good food with cheap ingredients. Apart from stuff for the cookbooks, I’ve become obsessive about it. When I pay over two dollars per pound for meat, I feel like a sucker. But maybe I’m a little more skilled than some of the people who write recipes for commercial kitchens. Also, I’m a Southerner, and I’ve lived around Cubans a lot, so I have unnatural advantages. You can feed ten Cubans royally for about twenty bucks. Maybe this is why Cubans are so successful. The annual food budget for a family of four is about three hundred dollars. The rest of the income goes into real estate and business leases. And Uncle Sam gets about a dollar and a half. Or he ends up paying THEM.

I think the Bennigan’s story goes to show what happens when people start showing up for work without enough pieces of flair. If the CEO had worn maybe 97 bits of flair, including a codpiece studded with flashing blue LEDs spelling out “PARTAY,” maybe this would not have happened. In fact, when Obama wins the election, I hope we’ll start seeing a little flair in the White House. Like big buttons reading, “KISS ME I USED TO BE A MUSLIM.”

And of course, here I am once again, putting all these great ideas in the public domain instead of trying to get paid for them.

I would say Obama is cutter and McCain is choice, whereas Ronald Reagan was prime, and Jimmy Carter was canner.

I guess that makes Ron Paul Spam, which is appropriate, considering his enduring status as President of the Internet.

I’ll be hosting a wake for Bennigan’s at the nearest Bombay Bicycle Club, after which I plan to feign a heart attack and skip out on the bill.