{"version": "1.0", "type": "rich", "title": "The Bizarre History of Buca di Beppo, America\u2019s Most Postmodern Red Sauce Chain", "author_name": "kontextmaschine", "author_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "provider_name": "kontextmaschine", "provider_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "url": "https://kontextmaschine.com/post/184259577688/", "html": "<a href=\"https://www.bonappetit.com/story/bizarre-history-buca-di-beppo\">The Bizarre History of Buca di Beppo, America\u2019s Most Postmodern Red Sauce Chain</a>\n<p>For some reason \u201cBuca di Beppo\u201d registered as a recognized phrase in my head but I had never heard of the restaurant chain until this article.</p><p>It is a little impressive that a story that explicitly makes comparisons to the Olive Garden frames \u201ccreate a theme-concept chain restaurant with the walls covered in kitschy flair in 1993\u2033 as the result of a particular vision and not just broad trends</p><p>Particularly, the rise of \u201cedge city\u201d exurbanism, with developers appreciating national restaurant chains able to plug proven concepts into their fresh-built highway-convenient shopping centers - I think the current \u201cfast casual\u201d chain boom is pretty similar in terms of how they appeal to urban developers</p><p>Outback Steakhouse was created in Tampa in 1988 by a company formed for the purpose of generating chain restaurant concepts. If you were going to theme steak after a foreign country it should really be Argentina, but for some reason Australia was a fad in \u201880s America.</p><p>TGI Friday\u2019s, weirdly, was <a href=\"https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/how-t-g-i-fridays-helped-invent-the-singles-bar\" target=\"_blank\">descended from a 1965 Manhattan bar</a> that pioneered the concept of the \u201cfern\u201d or \u201csingles bar\u201d through the innovation of appealing to young single women, whose presence then appealed to young single men<br/></p>"}