Boioioioinnnng!

Yesterday was Miss Vinegar's Birthday--a dark, drizzly pit of despair and home-fried contact lenses that shall hopefully not be repeated. However, things picked up in the evening as the rain slacked off and she was able to rest herhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif eyes before her friend the PoBoy talked her into a birthday repast involving the word "Lobsterfest."


Franklin Road, Roanoke, VA

The Food--Don't get Miss Vinegar wrong: she is not, a fondness for exotic cheese and teka maki notwithstanding, one of these food snobs who's going to pour vitriol on the chain restaurant experience like the writer Joe Queenan did a few years ago. When you live off the beaten path, and even when you don't but have your favorites, chains help make sure a certain level of variety is available to everyone. Twenty years ago it was McDonald's and Stuckey's; now the proliferation of places like Panera ensures that everybody gets a decent shot at panini and lattés as well. To Miss Vinegar, this is an undoubted good thing.

However, it must be said that Red Lobster has one large deficiency: their lobster is bad. PoBoy and Miss Vinegar both had the same platter with a mix of lobster tail, grilled garlic shrimp, and shrimp scampi; only the lobster tail resisted efforts to penetrate its rubbery mass with a knife and fork. This is a problem, one supposes, only in the sense that the restaurant is not called "Buttery Shrimp." The marketing boffins at Red Lobster's HQ might want to look into that.

The scampi, the grilled shrimp, and the seafood fondue appetizer were all delicious.

The Service--It may be the effect of some of their quantity-based promotions like endless-shrimp, but the servers at Red Lobster usually do seem to have a high, mildly cheerleaderish level of enthusiasm. Very good.

The Ambience--Here Miss Vinegar's cynical head (which realizes that nautical-themed stuff is ludicrous in a mass-produced eatery in the middle of the mountains) and her heart (which laments her removal from an easy driving distance of Virginia Beach the way other, more musically inclined people lamented having to leave Old Ireland) will be forever in conflict. But the decor of Red Lobster remains a guilty pleasure she won't be giving up any time soon.

Special Touches--Anyone who doesn't like Cheddar Bay biscuits should seek psychiatric assistance.

Overall: *** (three stars out of five)