“I hope they still serve jalapeno poppers,” my friend Eve says as we start our drive to Longueuil, a suburb on Montreal’s South Shore. It’s a frigid night in December, and despite the literal hundreds of more interesting dinner options closer to home, Eve and I are on our way to Jack Astor’s Bar and Grill. Neither of us has been to a sit-down chain restaurant in over a decade. We’re both childless city-dwellers in our thirties with somewhat discerning palates—which is to say, we’re kind of snobs. Plus, we’re queer. The family-style chain, with its standardized menu and atmosphere catered to the heterosexual family unit, wasn’t exactly made with us in mind. 

Our relationships to casual dining spaces weren’t always so lacklustre. For Eve, who grew up in rural Ontario, driving forty-five minutes to the nearest town to eat at Olive Garden was a huge deal as a teen, she tells me as we merge onto the Jacques Cartier Bridge. “We’d split a bowl of pasta and eat as much unlimited breadsticks and salad as possible,” she says. “That’s how I learned economic independence … and how to cheat the system.” Sit-down chain restaurants were some of the first places where she and her friends would go for dinner alone, and where they could order whatever they wanted. In high school, Boston Pizza was a beacon of autonomy. 

My experiences were similar. As a suburban teen, I loved getting curry, pho and chicken katsu from strip mall mom-and-pops, but chain restaurants played an undeniable role in my social life. East Side Mario’s was my go-to spot for a romantic anniversary date with my high school love. Montana’s was where my friends and I first experimented with leaving a phone number on the bill for a cute waiter (he never called). Earls was where I repeatedly tried—and almost always failed—to order bright green pear-flavoured cocktails while I was underage. 

As I grew up, and eventually moved to a bigger city for university, my culinary horizons widened and my habits changed. I swapped Jack Astor’s sizzling fajita plates for cheaper, more flavourful options from well-loved neighbourhood spots. The menus at family-style restaurants felt expensive and bland in comparison—and the chains themselves began to feel like reminders of the suburban boredom I was happy to have escaped. 

For the past decade, news articles have been declaring that millennials are “killing” casual dining restaurants. Many of the family-style chains that dominated the eighties and nineties have been losing revenue, downsizing or disappearing altogether. Millennials, these stories claim, just don’t eat in the same places that their predecessors did, preferring quicker, cheaper, healthier, more novel or more “authentic” options. Eve and I are, it would seem, two such millennials responsible for casual dining’s downfall. Still, as we arrive in Longueuil and pull into a vast strip-mall parking lot, I feel excited. Eve and I agree that casual dining chains are cringe and the food will probably be bad and corporations are, like, soooo over. But we simultaneously sense the pull of nostalgia—and feeling like a teenager again is kind of fun.

I approach the red-and-blue glow of Jack Astor’s neon sign on a mission. I want to know if the rumours are true: whether the family-style restaurant is really over, and if so, whether it deserves the death we’ve served it. I suspect the truth is a bit more complicated than headlines make it seem. Trends tend to wane over time, but that doesn’t mean they disappear altogether—and harried middle-class families will probably always be drawn to the convenience of predictable meals served in a kid-friendly environment. But if millennials really do succeed in killing the family-style restaurant for good, it will be because a highly corporatized, homogenous dining experience is no longer de rigueur—and it’s hard to see that as a bad thing. 

The origins of the family-style chain date back to almost a century ago. The blueprint was a restaurant-chain-turned-hotel-brand previously known as Howard Johnson’s. HoJo’s has an origin story that so perfectly maps onto the American dream that it sounds like a fantasy. In 1925, Howard Deering Johnson acquired a drugstore in Quincy, Massachusetts, complete with a soon-to-be-very-popular soda fountain. Realizing that ice cream was the shop’s biggest draw, Johnson opened a series of Howard Johnson’s-branded concession stands, selling hot dogs (which he called “frankforts”) and ice cream in the summers. In 1929, Johnson took the leap and opened a sit-down restaurant that served a wider menu. He franchised to another businessman a few years later. 

Pre-HoJo’s, most roadside restaurants were tearooms, male-dominated diners or rough food stops—spaces unsuitable for children or unappealing to many women. Howard Johnson’s was, by contrast, explicitly family-friendly: its clean, manicured locations offered oversized lollipops and kids’ menus to families travelling with tired, fussy youngsters. Their signature orange roofs and buzzy neon signs became beacons of familiarity for families on the road. Business grew throughout the 1930s, aided by those travelling around by car. Despite the economic challenges of the Great Depression, by 1940 there were roughly 130 HoJo’s locations. 

HoJo’s pioneered the large, multi-concept menu that so many sit-down chains still use today. In the sixties, you could order a “frankfort,” a bowl of clam chowder and a plate of baked stuffed haddock in dugléré sauce all to the same table. By 1975, there were over nine hundred HoJo’s-branded restaurants, including locations in the Bahamas and Canada. Several establishments that would become American family-style chains were also emerging. The wings and ribs joint TGI Fridays first opened as a bar in 1965, while the Tex-Mex restaurant Chili’s was launched as a burger spot in 1975. More were soon to come: Applebee’s, Olive Garden, Rainforest Cafe and Outback Steakhouse would open their first locations in the eighties and nineties. The first stores of many modern Canadian chains appeared around the same time: Boston Pizza in 1964, the Keg in 1971 and Moxies in 1986. The casual dining boom of the eighties and nineties was fuelled by several factors, including a relatively strong middle class and a rise in dual-income households. 

Despite decades of prosperity, these days, the family-style chain is suffering. Last year, Red Lobster filed for bankruptcy in the US and shuttered dozens of North American locations before ultimately being sold. That same year, Hooters closed dozens of stores, Denny’s shut down more than eighty locations and TGI Fridays filed for bankruptcy in the US. Industry experts predict this year will bring more chain restaurant closures and bankruptcy declarations across America. 

Part of the collapse of casual dining can be attributed to broader industry challenges. Canada’s restaurant sector has been struggling since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. In January, industry group Restaurants Canada reported that 53 percent of restaurants were operating at a loss or only just breaking even. Keeping a restaurant running is more expensive than it used to be: higher labour costs and the rising cost of food have reduced big chains’ profit margins.

Restaurants are, of course, not the only entities struggling. Many consumers have seen their cost of living skyrocket during the pandemic. Last spring, nearly half of Canadians reported that rising prices were greatly impacting their ability to pay for daily expenses, according to a Statistics Canada survey. More Canadians are becoming food insecure: in March 2024, visits to food banks across the country reached a record high. A report from restaurant management system TouchBistro found that just 25 percent of Canadians dined out weekly or more often in 2023, marking a 13 percent drop from 2022 “due to high inflation and a need to save money.”

Today, younger consumers who do eat out at restaurants are more likely to favour fast-casual spots over family-style sit-downs—they’re quicker, cheaper and better align with younger generations’ food preferences and values. American fast-casual brands Chipotle, Shake Shack and Cava have all seen their same-store sales grow in recent years. Takeout and delivery have also become more popular, with apps making the process more appealing and convenient. The average Canadian’s relationship to restaurants has simply changed.

Still, whether or not the family-style restaurant is actually dead is, as I suspected, not so clear-cut. While some brands are losing ground and dying out, not everyone is faring badly: Texas Roadhouse and Olive Garden both enjoyed bumps in same-store sales last year, for example. Some chains have succeeded by updating their menus while others have doubled down on providing customers with quick, attentive and friendly service. The key to success seems to be giving consumers an easy, smooth dining experience that makes them feel at home. 

When Eve and I arrive at Jack Astor’s that December night, it certainly doesn’t look dead. As we walk in, we can hear laughter and a thrum of people talking over the restaurant’s loud pop music. At the door, a young woman is running the hostess stand like it’s the navy. “Menus must be on the tables when customers arrive,” she says in French to a co-worker she’s clearly training. While the restaurant is packed, we’re seated within minutes. 

The menu, which is indeed on the table when we’re seated, has changed since I was in my teens. There are no more sizzling fajitas—and, tragically for Eve, no jalapeno poppers either. They’ve been replaced by more contemporary, yet no less appropriative, food trends: guacamole, a “Buddha salad” and an inscrutable item called "nachos asiatiques," or Asian nachos. 

The decor, on the other hand, hasn’t changed a bit. The Elvis booth, which features Elvis memorabilia and photos of the King himself, is still around, which I’m psyched about. The servers still wear shirts with lowbrow sayings on the backs, and you can still draw on the craft-paper-covered tables. Chandeliers made out of empty bottles hang from the ceiling, alongside giant placards with illustrations and dad-joke captions. Behind our table is a drawing of a man with a pronounced beer belly. “Congratulations on your male pregnancy,” the caption reads in French. “Check it out,” Eve deadpans. “Trans representation.” 

The restaurant does have a certain heterosexual feel—groups of bros watch hockey on the bar TVs, straight couples sit together with their children and there isn’t another visibly queer patron in sight. But on a Saturday night, it’s not the nuclear family hotspot I'd imagined it would be. Tables of twenty- and thirty-somethings out for drinks with friends are mixed in with giant tables hosting children’s birthday parties and end-of-year work parties. Our server tells us that while the restaurant is usually busy, the holiday season and the federal government’s temporary sales tax break have pushed things to another level. Beside us, a table orders wine by the bottle. Everyone seems to be in a fantastic mood. 

Within minutes, the first birthday celebration happens. Staff flock to the Elvis booth and make the reveller stand on her chair and do the chicken dance while they sing a quick-paced birthday song in French. This happens twice more before our food arrives. While the first two patrons are shy, the third isn’t. She hops up on her chair, screaming “IT’S MY BIRTHDAY” in French and doing the chicken dance enthusiastically. 

My cheese tortellini and Eve’s burger arrive quickly, delivered by an attentive, if frazzled, server wearing a shirt that says “I have no idea what’s going on” in French. I’m pleasantly surprised by the pasta. It certainly doesn’t taste freshly handmade, but it’s better than your typical grocery store fare. The filling is generous and well-seasoned, and the sauce is buttery and rich. It comes plated with green peas and onion slices that add an extra, delicate layer of flavour. At about $25, the price tag for the meal feels steep—but I happily eat the whole thing, and feel totally full by the end. 

Eve’s meal comes with fries, which are disappointingly dry and lacking in flavour. They look a bit pallid on her plate. But she gives the burger itself an 8.5 or nine out of ten, saying the toppings have a great tang. She orders a Coke, and our server tells us there are free refills, but it arrives in a glass so big it’s hard to imagine drinking more than one. Her burger, too, is so huge she doesn’t manage to finish it in one sitting. 

When I go to the bathroom I notice that in lieu of an ad on the stall door, there’s a faux-deep quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin. It’s such a strange contrast to the lowbrow humour outside that I wind up checking the stall beside me to see what’s on the door. I’m thrilled to find it’s another quote, this time supposedly from the Buddha. I can imagine a Jack Astor’s patron stumbling into a stall after a few too many beers and having an existential moment of reckoning.

On the walk back to my table, I notice the walls are lined with cartoon strips, just like they had been when I was a kid. Many casual dining spots have swapped the kitschy, maximalist decor that defined them in previous decades for a more streamlined, minimalist look. In the nineties, many Applebee's locations heavily featured Tiffany pendant lamps and a chaotic smattering of random items like film reels, photos and road signs on their walls. Today, many of its restaurants’ walls are nearly bare. Jack Astor’s, however, has maintained its over-the-top atmosphere. It adds so much to the visit—rather than just paying for a medium-good meal, I feel like I’m having a notable experience. There’s something a bit thrilling about having a million details to take note of, and the decor is so stupid that it’s funny. I went in a bit of a hater, sure. But against all odds, I’m in Longueuil having the time of my life.

When I go home to Ontario for the holidays a few weeks later, I make a point to stop by East Side Mario’s. There are no longer any locations in Montreal, so my quick trip home was the only shot in the near future that I’d get to eat there. As a kid, East Side’s was the stuff of dreams. My younger brother and I would go to town on the free bread, and somehow still have room for a plate of pasta afterward. I remember asking my parents to take me there for more than one birthday, eager to spin the big wheel they’d cart out to celebrate customers’ special days. For years, my order remained the same: cheese cappelletti and Italian wedding soup. I show up at the restaurant hoping both are still on the menu, curious to see if they still hit the same. 

The only time I’m able to visit is lunchtime on Boxing Day, which means the restaurant is somehow both understaffed and almost totally dead. It looks different than I remember. The walls are no longer cluttered with stock photos of New York, and the Statue of Liberty paraphernalia is nowhere to be found. Instead, there are a few Italian words and phrases splashed across the walls in millennial-mom fonts. Behind me is a photo of a giant ball of pasta being held up by a fork, with the words “Buon appetito” scribbled across it in cursive. I stare at it for a while, trying to compute how the human mouth could consume such a thing. 

I successfully place my nostalgic order and the soup comes in roughly two minutes flat. It tastes exactly how I remember it, by which I mean it tastes as though it comes from a can, but in a perfectly satisfying way. I can see the appeal of how consistent the dish has remained over time, and I imagine this level of predictability might be a selling point for kids. When I dip a piece of free bread into my soup and take a bite I feel a comfort that’s sweet on its surface but disturbingly infantilizing if I think about it for too long. I’m experiencing a regression in a suburban strip mall. 

When my main dish comes, I’m disappointed. While I remember the pasta being baked, with a generous layer of sauce and a thick layer of cheese on top, my meal arrives looking dry. The cheese isn’t fully melted—the tiny grated slivers have clumped together to form a strange sheet on the surface of the dish. In the end it’s edible, in the same way the first meals you learn to make as a young adult are edible. 

The one saving grace is my server, who is friendly and funny and incredibly good at her job. She asks me how my day is, tells me about her teenage son and gamely complains with me about crowded mall parking lots. “Hope you come again,” she says as she hands me my receipt, and I almost want to, just for her. 

Here, I can see why some chains aren’t faring as well as others. While the rose tint of nostalgia could be colouring my memories, I suspect cost-cutting has worsened East Side Mario’s food quality over the years. And though the sleeker, neutral decor might be a draw for some, it’s taken the fun out of the brand for me. I could see these changes taking the joy and the pleasure out of eating out for other customers too. 

By the time Eve and I are gearing up to leave Jack Astor’s, we’ve witnessed our fourth chicken dance. We can see a birthday sash slung across the shoulder of a woman seated at a table close to ours, and we know there will be a fifth one soon. While the gag gets funnier every time, we decide to leave before another round of the song. 

In the car on the way home, Eve and I admit we’ve been humbled. Reviewing Jack Astor’s sort of started out as a joke, but after visiting I have to acknowledge that the food was better than expected, and that we both genuinely had a good time. I can see a world, I tell Eve, where I play out this bit again. Maybe for my next birthday I’ll be in the Elvis booth doing the chicken dance. Or maybe the joke will get old fast. Neither of us commits to returning, but we’re open to the possibility.

When I think about it hard enough, I realize I don’t really care whether the family-style restaurant lives or dies. Being in a city means there are a ton of restaurants I’d rather eat at that are healthier, tastier and less expensive. I’d also prefer to spend my money at local businesses that have more favourable practices when it comes to where they source their food and how well they pay their employees. At the end of the day, casual dining chains are a corporate product—should they disappear, it will be due to the simple fact that they didn’t make the rich guys the right amount of money. Families, biological or otherwise, will always find places to gather, to share food and to create memories. With or without underwhelming tortellini, we’ll find a way. ⁂

Ziya Jones is the managing editor, health at Pink Triangle Press. Their work has appeared in the Narwhal, Chatelaine and Toronto Life.