09/25/2026
Lord Have Mercy!
A new restaurant opened on Franchise Row on Barrett Parkway to replace Bahama Breeze. A local Social Influencer managed to get 350 comments mostly either upset about losing Bahama Breeze or how great this new spot is!
Realistically, a typical Cheddar’s visit runs about five thousand nine hundred calories nearly three times a full day’s worth. That’s two servings of honey butter croissants, a Trio Sampler appetizer, a chicken tender platter, a loaded baked potato, a large sweet tea, and a hot fudge cake sundae.
I want to present this new restaurant in the light of how Lewis Grizzard would write about it.
I just got back from a trip to Italy, where I learned that Italy has the highest obesity rate in Europe at twelve percent and at the same time, research shows the United States is sitting at forty-five percent. Don’t get me wrong, I decided a long time ago to trade my food calories for bourbon and wh***ey, which is still not very good, but I don’t do franchised restaurants. When I saw yesterday that three hundred fifty people were commenting about this place being the next coming of the Lord, I got very confused, because I’m in this business and I want to know what makes people tick that would actually brag about a place where you’re going in there to gorge yourself.
Now, I love Italy. I love the food, I love the w**e, and I love that the Italians have the good sense to sit down and eat like civilized people instead of treating a meal like a contact sport. But here we are, forty-five percent of us, and the Italians are over there at twelve percent, probably wondering what in the name of all that’s holy is going on in the States. And then this place opens up, and three hundred fifty people are out there praising it like it’s the Second Coming, and I’m sitting here thinking, “Lord, have mercy, what have we become?”
The locals are treating it like the grand opening of the Louvre. “Finally, a real restaurant in town!” they say, as if the town had been starving for a place whose signature item is a two-dollar croissant and whose business model is “what if we gave you unlimited bread and then charged you for the guilt.” The chicken tenders come in platters, the ribs come in racks, the sweet tea comes in gallons, and the dessert shows up whether you ordered it or not wagging its tail like a little golden retriever of regret.
I get it. There’s something deeply American about a restaurant that looks at a grown adult and says, “You know what? You deserve this.” And you do for about forty-five minutes, until the insulin crash hits and you realize you just paid twenty bucks to feel like you ran a marathon in reverse. Cheers to the new place, though. May your croissants be flaky and your cardiologists’ business cards freshly updated.
