Brown's Social House | 809 Douglas Street | Victoria

Back in 1991, when U2 were still releasing albums worth listening to, Bono wailed on about a young woman who was “even better than the real thing”, which the band said was meant to reflect the 90s obsession with instant gratification.   It’s been ten years since I bought my last U2 album and I’m more impressed with the 130 square metre bedroom Bono added to his Dublin home than I am his recent musical output, but I’ve got to admit that the little Irish devil had a point.  As it turned out the 90s were only a signpost on the road, ever since then the cultural landscape looks like it has been trampled by the Persian army as led by a metrosexual, yuppie, Xerxes.

Earls | 1199 Government Street | Victoria

There are a lot of reasons why it might seem pointless to review a chain restaurant:  the recipes are mostly the same at every location from San Francisco to Jacksonville, and, as a friend pointed out, if a formula is successful enough to generate franchises who am I to argue?  Well, over the years I've eaten at Boston Pizza, Red Robin & Ricky's All-Day Grill, and the only thing they do well is back up what H.L. Mencken said about getting rich by underestimating the taste of the American public.  The quality of a restaurant depends more on the competence of those preparing the food than it does on recipes alone so if the folks behind the scenes have as much enthusiasm for food as I do honest work then your dining experience will be as much fun as mopping the floors in an adult theatre. 

Almost any franchise that opened up in my hometown of Revelstoke over the years has either folded or maintained a consistently execrable standard, the only obvious reason being the available pool of listless halfwits willing to work for the wages on offer.  Paying peanuts will most assuredly get you monkeys.  Dan has always been a devoted fan of the Earls chain, for which I've hassled him endlessly but his ability to ignore me is almost unparalleled.  Only my wife does it better.  So when Dan informed me that Earls would be the chosen venue for his 26th birthday I figured there was no point poking fun and that inferior factory-prepared food would vindicate my snobbery.  And you know what?  The bastards made us a great meal and I barely had enough room left to eat my words.