Bad Taste On So Many Levels

Hooters is an American restaurant chain (now in many other countries) that trades on sex and horrible things to put in your mouth. Their motto, "delightfully tacky yet unrefined" may suggest candor but it is all quite cynical. The wait staff, the Hooters Girls, are buxom young women who wear tee shirts and shorts as tight as tight can be and patronize the patrons with Mae West eyelash flutters and blue collar innuendo. (Miss West, by the way, was a philosopher of some note. For example, see here.)

The things they offer to put in your mouth cannot be called food - see both sides of the menu here and here. Their web site doesn't even bother with nutritional information. Even Hardee's, condemned to hell by the American Heart Association, manages that much.

I have eaten at Hooter's only once. This restaurant opened in downtown St. Louis about a year ago. A colleague and I were both at our offices on Saturday morning. The restaurant was having it's shakedown run before an official opening on Monday. A manager was out on the street offering free lunch to passers-by. What could be wrong with free lunch? Everything, maybe. The, uh, girls were as much on display as the burgers and Budweiser. Frankly, it was embarrassing. The fried something-or-other was inedible. We left, and that was enough for this incarnation.

TOMORROW: Tum Ta Tum Yum