The artichoke dip is good, writes Colleen McKeegan. The nostalgia — and, now as adult, permission for her kids to be messy — is even better.
inside a roomy wooden booth, sitting atop discarded peanut-shell dust, just past a taxidermied armadillo cradling a beer bottle, at, what else, a Texas Roadhouse. I don’t remember what we ordered — some combination of a Cactus Blossom and Rattlesnake Bites, presumably — but what I can recall, in vivid detail, is the moment our server arrived at the end of our meal with a leather saddle.
Red Robin taught me the limits of independence at 14. The restaurant, known for its wild and seemingly endless list of burgers, opened in Allentown in the mid-’90s and was filled with carousel-horse décor and anthropomorphic bird paintings. It was just one large parking lot over from the local movie theater and upon starting high school, I was allowed to make the three-minute walk alone. The first time I did so, I went with a friend whose mom forgot to pick us up.
I celebrated my 18th birthday under Applebee’s Tiffany-esque pendant lights. And while we loved Café “Eatin’ Good in the Neighborhood™,” like our own personal The Max, I was already dreaming of getting away from the Lehigh Valley. My social life felt like a soap opera rife with peak-2000s double standards — think messy breakups and slutshaming — one where chain restaurants were often the setting of drama unfolding and I was the humiliated star.
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