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Boston Pizza and the Appeal of Mediocrity
Apr. 18th, 2010 03:34 pmWinter War illustrated a point for me: Every event I've gone to in Small-Town Alberta has included a group of people who skip the feast so they can go to Boston Pizza.
I've never seen the appeal of BP. To me the food is mediocre at best. I've never had a good meal there. Yet it seems to be on the level of an Avacal tradition. Hell, I remember helping a cute Machiavelli girl figure out where the closest BP was to Bowness a couple of years ago. This is in Calgary - a city with a million people in it. That pretty much guarantees that there will be a better restaurant and it's likely to be closer to wherever you are.
All I can think of is it's the only restaurant that someone isn't going to veto. Thus we get the lowest common denominator in food. It's like McDonalds - have you ever had a truly bad meal there (and I mean bad as in badly prepared - I know plenty of people who don't like greasy fast food, but they'd object to a lot of similar restaurants). Like McDonald's, I've never had a bad meal there. But at the same time, I've never had a bad meal at Earls or Moxies, or Joey Tomatoes or any of the other restaurants that serve the same market niche. And they're all better then BP, for roughly the same cost.
Let's take yesterday's event. We'll leave off the probable food poisoning I got at the tea house. Later a bunch of us went to a local pub that had (according to those who ate them) the best burgers they've ever had. And this town was full of little restaurants and cafes. You had to go by all of them to get to the highway where the BP was. You literally had to go out of your way to have worse food at the BP. As I was leaving town, I saw a bunch of SCAdians leaving it.
When we were travelling to and from Estrella, my fellow travellers and I made of point of avoiding chain restaurants. Why would I travel 1000 km to go to the same restaurant I can walk to from my front door?
So I put it to my fellow SCAdians. What's the appeal of Boston Pizza?
I've never seen the appeal of BP. To me the food is mediocre at best. I've never had a good meal there. Yet it seems to be on the level of an Avacal tradition. Hell, I remember helping a cute Machiavelli girl figure out where the closest BP was to Bowness a couple of years ago. This is in Calgary - a city with a million people in it. That pretty much guarantees that there will be a better restaurant and it's likely to be closer to wherever you are.
All I can think of is it's the only restaurant that someone isn't going to veto. Thus we get the lowest common denominator in food. It's like McDonalds - have you ever had a truly bad meal there (and I mean bad as in badly prepared - I know plenty of people who don't like greasy fast food, but they'd object to a lot of similar restaurants). Like McDonald's, I've never had a bad meal there. But at the same time, I've never had a bad meal at Earls or Moxies, or Joey Tomatoes or any of the other restaurants that serve the same market niche. And they're all better then BP, for roughly the same cost.
Let's take yesterday's event. We'll leave off the probable food poisoning I got at the tea house. Later a bunch of us went to a local pub that had (according to those who ate them) the best burgers they've ever had. And this town was full of little restaurants and cafes. You had to go by all of them to get to the highway where the BP was. You literally had to go out of your way to have worse food at the BP. As I was leaving town, I saw a bunch of SCAdians leaving it.
When we were travelling to and from Estrella, my fellow travellers and I made of point of avoiding chain restaurants. Why would I travel 1000 km to go to the same restaurant I can walk to from my front door?
So I put it to my fellow SCAdians. What's the appeal of Boston Pizza?
