At Red Lobster, do you choose your own lobster from the water tank to be cooked?

[levenshulme31]

On some of the outings I lined up for my trek through the cultural undergrowth, I honestly suspected that someone had phoned ahead to ensure that the staff would maximize my discomfort. Typical was the night I dragged my family over to the local Red Lobster for our first-ever visit to the garish establishment. Red Lobster, I quickly learned, was a chain geared toward people who think of themselves as just a little bit too upscale for Roy Rogers. Even while waiting in the anteroom of the bogus sea shanty I could detect a certain aura of proletarian snootiness because of the way people were looking at me and my son. While Gordon, age ten, and I had turned up in nondescript T-shirts and shorts, the Red Lobster patrons were bedecked in their best windbreakers and their very finest polyester trousers.

"Next time, show some respect," their expressions suggested. "After all, you're eating at Red Lobster. This ain't some goddamn Wendy's."

The Red Lobster menu consisted almost entirely of batter cunningly fused with marginally aquatic foodstuffs and configured into clever geometric structures. I immediately began to suspect that the kitchen at Red Lobster consisted of one gigantic vat of grease in which plastic cookie molds resembling various types of food were inserted to create a structural resemblance to the specific item ordered. This was the only way to determine whether you were eating Buffalo wings or crabcakes. Technically, my dinner--The Admiral's Feast--was a dazzling assortment of butterfly shrimp, fish filet, scallops, and some mysterious crablike entity. But in reality, everything tasted exactly like Kentucky Fried Chicken. Even the French fries.

Red Lobster was a consummate bad experience. It wasn't just the Huey Lewis & the News ambience, it wasn't just the absence of mozzarella sticks from the menu that day, it wasn't just the party of twenty-nine seated next to us complaining about the service, it wasn't just the Turtles singing "Happy Together" overhead, it wasn't just the absence of root beer from the menu that day, it wasn't just the titular head of the party of twenty-nine incessantly referring to different members of his entourage as "landlubbers," and it wasn't even the way those social-climbing townies gave my son and me the once-over as we came through the door. No, it was definitely the food. The food tasted like baked, microwaved, reheated, overcooked, deep-fried loin of grease.

Admiral's Feast, my ass.

A snippet from Joe Queenan's wonderful "Red Lobster, White Trash & The Blue Lagoon"

 

[1gayguy]

I haven't been to many Red Lobsters, but I've never seen a live lobster tank in any of them.
I can't stand Red Lobster, Olive Garden or any of the big chain restaurants.
Everything is prepared (in mass) at big food factories. Then precisely measured out and sent to regional distributors and then to individual franchises.
They have enormous advertising budgets and destroy individually owned restaurants.
I prefer eating pasta and a sauce that were prepared that day and didn't come out a a giant can and plopped in a warming tray.
They represent corporate America and will eventually have a stranglehold on us similar to the oil and phmaceutical industries.

I agree 100%!!!
Near by we have any number of those places and it amazes me that people will wait 2 freaking hours to be served mediocre food!!! People will wait that long at the Olive Garden for PASTA!!! Something you can make at home in less time, including the sauce, for less money!!!
Right now my favorite resturaunt is a little family owned Italian place in Salem NH at a strip mall, called Almolphi's. I get this wonderful dish of cheese tortolini in a creamy pesto sauce with veal and chicken medalions and mushrooms and roasted onion.
Back on track...
Never been to a Red Lobster, unfortunately I'm allerigic to shell fish

 

[jonboy1645]

Although rare, certain locales do have a live lobster tank at Red Lobster - including Orlando which is where the home office to Darden Restaurants is located. The chain has achieved business success through their economy of scale, and catering to a mass demographic. This, along with Darden's other flagship brand, Olive Garden, which uses a similar strategy have given shareholders fair value over time.

 

[just_mills]

Went there the other day, whilst in Peterborough, and just ordered it from the Menu..
Was just as good as it could get. It's all fresh anyways..

 

[Spiff]

There's one by where I live in Columbus, OH that has a tank.

I don't think I've ever been dissatisfied with a meal at Red Lobster. The service is always above average. The food is plentiful. One drawback that it's also pricier than average for a chain restaurant. But, seafood isn't cheap unless it's canned tuna.

 

[Ninja108]

I hate sea food of all kinds. Just the smell of it makes me go bleh!

 

[mark1111]

Lobster feeling pain when boiled? Don't think so. Around here we call them bugs, and treat them as such.

Want to try something different? Slice them down the middle, when live, brush with butter and wasabe then toss on the grill.

I have a friend that teaches scuba diving and in the off season, steals lobsters from the traps. Free lobster, yeah! Haven't seen him in a while, maybe a local fisherman turned him into chum?

The Lobster Pot in Provincetown is rather good and not to expensive if any of you are in town. Go upstairs for the view of the harbor.

 

[nwdavis]

Red Lobster? Yuck! It's the McDonalds of seafood.

I completely agree if you live in a state or country near the ocean there are always better choices in local restaurants. But where my sister lives in Colorado its the only decent seafood place to eat.

And know I just can't refuse to post it.

 

[mark1111]

Hey Cherry, you're just down the coast!

NW, that was funny. Remember only tourists wear the bib.

 

[sonny10305]

Well this weekend, here in New York, it's Fleet week with lushes horny sea food all over town.
Ohhhhhhh, my bad, your talking about fish
well I am a total pussy, I can't even look at those poor little guys in the tank as you wait for a table.

 

[Swellegant]

I've only once eaten at a Red Lobster, and the food was ghastly... everything deep-fried, and the lobster tasted like margarine and freezer-burn. But now I'm allergic to lobster, as well as crab and crayfish (though shrimp doesn't bother me), so what the hell. Nevertheless, I don't think you should eat things that you don't want to see killed... if you can't bear to sentence a live lobster to death, you should probably just stick to a pasta dish and some salad.

Of course, if you're not experienced, it's hard to know what to look for in a live lobster. Ask the waiter to pick one out for you, but be sure to see which one it is. As a meat-eater, I consider it my duty to see animals being killed... not each and every one (who has that kind of time?) but each kind at least once.

Oh, and by the way, lobsters don't scream. They don't have vocal cords or lungs. The "screaming" sound is of internal gasses escaping through the tight joins of the carapace. It's really more of a whistle.

 

[Inwood]

Red Lobster? Yuck! It's the McDonalds of seafood.

AMEN mark1111. That place is vile.

 

[flyingfree]

There was a story I heard a long time ago where Paul McCartney went into an oceanside restaurant late one night somewhere in New England that had one of those lobster tanks. He purchased all the lobsters in the tank and released them into the water.

 

[angedelune]

I worked at Red Lobster for 3 years and yes, they all have lobster tanks, and yes you do pick your own lobster, and yes they do cook the one you pick. However, they don't just chunk the thing live into boiling water, the prep cook in the back takes him and slices him in half with a huge butcher knife, then they chunk it in the steamer. I always hated selling those damned things, I can't stand to kill animals