Dining Diva Review: Texas Roadhouse

If you have a peanut allergy, don't even drive by Texas Roadhouse. Peanuts are everywhere and there are barrels of them all over the restaurant and shells all over the floor. Personally I never liked the shells-on-the-floor ambiance because it's sort of like dining in a landfill, (what's next--beer bottles on the floor?) but it seems to be popular with the other diners and the peanuts are always fresh and tasty so I'll give it a pass on the peanut mess everywhere.
The rest of the food is quite good. Delicious fresh-baked rolls with honey butter were delivered to the table seconds after our waiter took our drink orders. They were steamy and tender and when slathered in the butter made it worth the trip no matter what else went wrong--which in our case was nothing. You are also able to choose a specific steak for your dinner from the refrigerated meat case display, so for those of us who like to meet our dinner beforehand, it's a nice touch. My husband despises gristle in his steaks so I like being able to inspect it for him prior to the cooking! We have made several visits to the store in Fairview Heights and several trips to the one in Newport News, VA and they have replaced Outback as my casual dining steak restaurant of choice when traveling. Their steaks are good quality, cooked correctly and served with your choice of several excellent side dishes. They also have excellent fried catfish, which isn't easy to do consistently. The coating is crisp and the fish is flaky and not dried out with a very nice fresh flavor. I'm not a fish eater, but their catfish is some of the best I've ever had!
The service is friendly and efficient and they brew some excellent iced tea in addition to a full bar and a nice wine and beer selection. It's a good place to take the family and it's a good place to take a date because it's not loud like some casual dining places. I've never had a bad meal at the one in Fairview Heights and the Virginia one only missed once--not a bad record!
HERE'S A SAD UPDATE: Since this post I've dined three times at the Texas Roadhouse and each meal is worse than the one before it. The catfish was hideously overcooked on a subsequent visit, everything has become severely oversalted and today for the last straw they served me RARE chicken and then an overcooked steak. The wonderful rolls were also served cold and hard and the steamed veggies were inedible. I'm crossing Texas Roadhouse off of my list of places where I will eat, they've gone the way of the Outback.

Dining Diva Review: Hooters hits horrendous low in Fairview Heights, IL

The Hooters Restaurant in Fairview Heights has set a new low, and after reaching rock bottom, has begun to dig. How hard is it to cook an unbreaded, well done chicken wing? Apparently for the kitchen staff at the Fairview Heights Hooters, it's an insurmountable task. For the third time in as many visits, they have failed to cook my requested dish of chicken wings the way I requested them to be cooked. One would think that Hooters could manage to cook an order of their SIGNATURE DISH properly, but that would not be the case. Each time I have visited Hooters, I have ordered the same thing--unbreaded well-done wings. Each time the same thing has happened--the first order of wings (after a 20 minute wait) comes out with breading, and then the second time (after sending the first order back because I ordered them naked since I don't like greasy fried breading) after I make the identical order, I receive unbreaded and UNDERCOOKED wings. Each time I waited FORTY MINUTES and left without getting anything to eat. I cannot put into words how incompetent the waitstaff or the kitchen or both has to be in order to screw up the IDENTICAL order TWICE IN A ROW on the same visit and have this happen on THREE SEPARATE VISITS IN A ROW. I have never seen such incompetence at any restaurant IN MY LIFE and for this to happen REPEATEDLY on THREE SEPARATE VISITS is simply beyond the pale. Chicken wings are Hooter's SIGNATURE DISH. If they can do nothing else, they SHOULD be able to manage to cook a batch of unbreaded well-done wings yet they have failed to do this SIX CONSECUTIVE TIMES. It's not a complicated thing and if they can't master something this simple, then they should really close the restaurant and try something they could succeed at doing--such as playing with their lower lips or walking and chewing gum at the same time. I will NEVER go back to Hooters again--I don't know if their wings are good or bad because I've never gotten to eat any of them. So, to the siliconed and nubile waitstaff I offer this advice: Write down the order and to the imbecile in the do-rag I advise him to READ the order. This could possibly result in my actually getting something to eat although I'm not holding my breath.