Regional chain restaurants that are near and dear to American hearts

We suggest adding these seven regional chains to your restaurant bucket list

Today's expression: Go well with
Explore more: Lesson #341
February 25, 2021:

Everyone knows about the mega American fast-food chains like McDonald’s, Burger King, and Wendy’s. But America’s regional chain restaurants are some of the most loved. Several of these chains hail the type of enthusiasts that sport sweatshirts with the restaurant’s logo and post selfies while eating there on social media. Warning: this lesson might make you hungry. Plus, learn “go well with.”

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The best regional chain restaurants in the United States

Lesson summary

Hi everybody, Jeff here, and we’ve got a bit of a light-hearted lesson for you today, number 341. JR is behind the controls as always and the full lesson is at PlainEnglish.com/341.

Coming up today: We all know and love McDonald’s, Dunkin’ Donuts, Starbucks, Subway, Wendy’s, Burger King, the big, famous fast-food restaurants. These are big, national, global brands, some of them. And we all have our favorite local restaurants. Some of the best places to eat are the places with just one location.

But there is a special place in Americans’ hearts for their regional chain restaurants. So for today’s lesson, I thought I’d share with you some of the best regional chain restaurants in America. Have a listen and see if you have been to any of these seven chain restaurants.

We have an expression—“to go well with.” It’s an easy one. It’s almost like a day off for you, but it’s good to know how we use that expression. And JR has a song of the week.

Best American chain restaurants

Let’s start in the northeast, in the New England states of Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Connecticut. The regional chain to know about here is Friendly’s. Friendly’s is like an old-style diner, a family restaurant. The signs are red, with “Friendly’s” written in white script. Friendly’s is good for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and it’s usually open late, some until 2 am. But it’s famous for its ice cream sundaes. Most Friendly’s restaurants have a take-out window, so you can just walk up to the window and order ice cream to go without going inside. They sell ice cream in to-go containers too.

Heading south on I-95, you get to Philadelphia. Around southeast Pennsylvania, southern New Jersey, Delaware, that area, you can’t go wrong with Wawa. Wawa is a chain of gas stations and convenience stores, but it is a regional favorite around Philly. They have good lunch sandwiches and they’re famous for their breakfast sandwiches, coffee, and the local kind of pastry brand called Tastykake. The kind of breakfast sandwich you can get at Wawa would be a sausage, egg, and cheese sandwich on a bagel. It’s kind of strange that one of the region’s favorite restaurants is actually a gas station, right? But that’s eastern Pennsylvania. If you go to western Pennsylvania, though, you’ll find their favorite chain restaurant is also a gas station! It’s called Sheetz, with a z at the end.

Next we’ll continue our journey to the south: Waffle House territory. Waffle House was founded in Georgia and it’s now in 25 states, but the vast majority of them are in the south, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, around that area. If you ever find yourself in a Waffle House, your job is to order coffee and breakfast. It doesn’t matter what time of day it is. They’re famous for their hash browns, which are shredded potatoes cooked on the skillet, so they’re crunchy, brown, and buttery when they arrive in a huge pile on your plate. They go well with eggs, toast, waffles, bacon, you name it.

Just north of Waffle House territory is the Queen City: Cincinnati, Ohio. And in Cincinnati, they have a chain called Skyline Chili. Chili is a thicker kind of soup, made with a tomato base and it often has beans, ground meat, veggies and spices. At Skyline, the chili is a watery brown liquid, and they pour it over a plate of spaghetti (not sure why), and top it all off with a mound of shredded cheddar cheese. If you don’t like it that way, you can have the chili and cheese on top of a mini hot dog; those are called Coney’s. They love their Skyline Chili in Cincinnati: there are a handful in Cleveland, a few in Indianapolis, but if you want this special blend of cinnamon-flavored chili over spaghetti, you’ll have to have it in the Queen City.

Time to go north again, we’re going all the way up to Wisconsin. Wisconsin is nicknamed “America’s Dairyland” because of all the milk and cheese they produce; fans of the local football team even call themselves “Cheeseheads.” So if you’re in Wisconsin and you go to the local chain restaurant Culver’s, you need to get fried cheese curds. Cheese curds are what cheese looks like before it’s processed; they’re great fresh, right out of a bag, but if you go to Culver’s, you can get them battered and fried, too. If you’re there, you should also get the Wisconsin-style of ice cream; it’s called custard, and it’s a little thicker than soft-serve ice cream, but thinner than traditional ice cream. They can mix it up with all kinds of toppings—fruit, nuts, candy, whatever you like. Culver’s is in Minnesota, the Dakotas, and a few in Illinois, but they’re most popular in Wisconsin.

In Texas, they’re crazy about Whataburger. The name says it all: it’s burgers, and because it’s Texas, there’s a little bit of a Mexican flavor to it. They have jalapeño burgers, poblano pepper chicken tacos, and they even serve spicy ketchup. That’s the famous burger chain Texas, but that’s not the most famous and most popular burger regional chain in America.

That honor belongs to our last restaurant chain on the list, famous in the city of angels, Los Angeles, California, home to the world-famous In-n-Out Burger. They are only in seven states, but the majority are in California. In-n-Out Burger has a famous sign; it’s got red lettering in front of a yellow zig-zag shape. People from outside the region will go take their pictures in front of the famous red and yellow In-n-Out Burger sign.

The original In-n-Out Burger restaurants were the early kind of drive-thru restaurant. It was popular to drive up, order from the kitchen, and either eat in your car or sit outside at a picnic table and eat. There were also walk-up windows. Today, many of them have dining rooms to sit down and eat inside, but the drive-thru is still popular at In-n-Out Burger today.

They advertise on the radio, they have colorful billboards, but their most popular publicity comes from their crazy fans. Fans of the restaurant willingly put In-n-Out bumper stickers on their cars, they wear sweatshirts with the company’s logo, and post selfies on social media. Despite its popularity, In-n-Out Burger is not franchised, meaning that the company owns all its own stores. It has spread slowly, but when a new location opens, it’s a big deal. On the day it opened its store in Scottsdale, Arizona, there was a four-hour wait for food and television news helicopters were circling overhead, covering all the action.

Good memories

I could get in trouble for saying this, but I think In-N-Out Burger is a little over-rated. You have to go there. If you find yourself driving around southern California, you’ll see them. Stop by, get a burger. But there are better burgers out there—just in my opinion.

I have good memories of some of these places. There was a Wawa right down the street from my college, on 15th Street in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Good memories there, of course. Friendly’s—my grandmother used to take me to Friendly’s. She lived in Massachusetts and we’d go for lunch. I’d get a burger, ice cream for dessert, and then we’d hit up the freezer to take a Friendly’s sundae home for the next day.

What else? Waffle House. I’ve had a few late-night breakfasts at Waffle House in my time. In fact, we talked about Waffle House in one of the early Plain English lessons. We talked about how Waffle House is usually one of the first places to re-open after a natural disaster . It’s in the south and they get hurricanes and tornadoes and storms and such, and Waffle House is usually one of the first businesses to open after a bad storm knocks out power in an area.

Did I miss any? I know a lot of you are living in the US, many more have traveled here. What regional chain restaurants did you see? And better yet, where you live, are there any chain restaurants that are popular only in one city or region? Let me know in our Facebook group just for Plain English listeners. You can go to PlainEnglish.com/Facebook and through the magic of the internet, you will be transported right to our Facebook group. PlainEnglish.com/Facebook, and you can tell me your favorite regional restaurant chains in there.

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Expression: Go well with