Fast food, casual dining and the big chains: favorite menu items, closures, comebacks and how they do business.
Restaurant Chains Article · 6 min read
National Cheeseburger Day, a Vancouver, Washington location that ran out of buns, lettuce, and pickles by six, and a two-hour wait made bearable by free peanuts and better company than expected — plus where this one lands against In-N-Out and Habit.
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Restaurant Chains Article · 4 min read
A Dough Zone opened on Mill Plain in Vancouver, Washington, and the best dish on the menu turned out to be sitting in the noodle section, not the dumpling case. Five out of five, and worth the trip for the Dan Dan noodles alone.
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Restaurant Chains Article · 4 min read
Most people never learn the actual mechanics of eating a bowl of pho — what the little cup of onion and vinegar is for, or how to build the bite. Five out of five at Pho Hung on 82nd in Portland, Oregon, and here's the method.
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Restaurant Chains Article · 4 min read
A Friday-night run to the Jack in the Box on NE 117th in Vancouver, Washington — decent fast food, three out of five, the honest kind of meal you eat because you're busy rather than because you're excited about it. The Sourdough Jack earns its keep. The two tacos might be the cheapest food on the pl
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Restaurant Chains Article · 5 min read
A free Double Char that showed up in the app for my birthday, a surfboard bolted to a brick wall two thousand miles from the nearest one, and the honest case — onion rings and spicy ranch included — for why Habit edges out my beloved In-N-Out, strictly at the fast-food level.
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Restaurant Chains Article · 1 min read
Broken Rice is a Vietnamese cart off 82nd Avenue in Portland, Oregon, serving grilled pork over com tam — broken rice — with a fish sauce that's milder than expected and genuinely good. Five stars, indoor seating if it's raining, worth the drive despite the block it's on.
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Restaurant Chains Article · 2 min read
Philly Bilmos is a cheesesteak shop in Vancouver, Washington, and the sandwich that got five stars here wasn't the cheesesteak — it was the Italian sub, dressed at the table with its own oil, vinegar and parmesan. The best one I've had.
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Restaurant Chains Article · 7 min read
The New York strip was okay at best, the ribeye was dry and thin — ironic, for the cut that's supposed to be the fatty one — and both landed on the table only a little warmer than the room. Everyone who worked there was kind about it. Three stars: glad I went, and next time I'll ask them to hurry.
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Restaurant Chains Article · 5 min read
The new O-M-Cheese Burger at the Applebee's on Mill Plain in Vancouver, Washington, earns its name — melted into a skillet of queso, it's one of the best cheeseburgers I've had in a while. The room around it has had a harder time; the old bar that used to be the neighborhood's actual water hole isn'
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Restaurant Chains Article · 6 min read
A national chain in an East Vancouver strip is precisely what a travel notebook is supposed to skip. Except this one started at a corner in Seattle, there is a photograph of that corner hanging in the lobby, and the MadLove is one of the best burgers I have eaten anywhere.
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Restaurant Chains Article · 6 min read
The kitchen here is doing something genuinely uncommon — 100% grass-fed and finished beef, a menu built to be taken apart and rebuilt. Then some time after nine they padlocked the back gate with my car still behind it, and that is why this entry has one star instead of four.
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Restaurant Chains Article · 6 min read
A New York Steamer ordered "fully involved," a hot sauce bar named after the founders' own father, and the case for why a sandwich chain's branding can be this good and its app can still be this bad.
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