It’s a quick Lazy Sunday this week as Dr. Wife and I hunker down in the cold. I’m casting my gaze back to two posts from earlier this week, one based in the coolness of the watery depths, the other in the fiery crucible of the modern restaurant industry:
Happy Sunday!
—TPP
Dr. Wife and I love Chili’s. For my European readers who aren’t blessed with the family restaurant concept (I assume you eat at McDonald’s or at pubs), Chili’s is a restaurant that acts like it’s all about Tex-Mex and Southwestern cuisine (that’s an Amazon Affiliate link to my highly unsuccessful book Arizonan Sojourn, South Carolinian Dreams, which features a chapter about eating a massive burrito on the drive to the Grand Canyon; I receive a portion of any purchases made through that link, at no additional cost to you), but really it’s a great burger place with chips and salsa. The food is very American, with a bit of a Southwest twist.
Indeed, when I was playing the role of brash American in the comments section over at Free Speech Backlash, I kept joking with my detractors—the people who objected to the idea that the United States should take Greenland, because 60,000 defenseless Greenlanders have the right to sell their sovereignty to the Chinese but not to the United States—that we’d soon be dining together at the new Chili’s in Nuuk. Eating an Old Timer with Cheese in Greenland will be one of them any blessings of American imperialism. Who needs independence when you can get unlimited chips and salsa for free with the Chili’s app?
But I digress. Chili’s and Texas Roadhouse were the two most profitable and/or fastest-growing restaurant chains in the United States in 2025 for good reason: they offer patrons tons of great food at ridiculously low (for the post-Age of The Virus inflationary world) prices. Dr. Wife and I can split a burger and get out of Chili’s sufficiently stuffed for under twenty bucks.
However, all is not well at Chili’s.
The Portly Politico 