Dining Out: Chicken Biscuit Sandwich at IHOP and Shrimp Alfredo at Olive Garden

Since it's Civic Day long weekend, Minji, Daniel, and I decided to make a little trip down to Buffalo to eat and do some American snack shopping. The rule, of course, was to only eat and/or buy things that we don't have in Toronto or Canada in general. We let Minji make the restaurant decisions on this trip, so our first stop was for lunch at IHOP in Niagara Falls:

Chicken Biscuit Sandwich at IHOP

Since we had quite literally ordered pancake breakfasts at work on Friday, both Daniel and I decided to forego the breakfast options and chose the fried chicken biscuit sandwich with hash browns on the inside. The sandwich itself tasted pretty decent — the fried chicken was crispy and juicy on the inside, and the biscuit was nice and fluffy — but the portion was DISMAL (one thing I did NOT EXPECT to complain about at an American restaurant chain is the portion size), the hash browns were barely cooked on the inside, and the white gravy on the side was quite literally cold gelatin (it was the exact texture of cream soup straight out of the can). Along with a Diet Pepsi, this meal cost just over $44 CAD after tax, tip, and a NIAGARA FALLS TOURIST FEE (an absolute fucking scam). This was by far the most disappointing meal with the worst value I have ever had in my entire almost-38 years of life, and I'm not even being dramatic. We had to console ourselves with Killaloe Sunrise Beavertails down the street (which were excellent, and are under $10 each).

Shrimp Alfredo at Olive Garden

We crossed the border and drove to Buffalo to do some shopping at Target and Trader Joe's, and Minji chose Olive Garden for dinner. Some Canadians may not remember, but we actually used to have Olive Garden in Ontario. They all closed down when I was in middle school — which means Minji and Daniel, who are born in the mid-1990s, don't remember the existence of this restaurant chain at all — but my parents used to take us there once a month as our non-Chinese dining out option. I don't remember it being that amazing — and we do have East Side Mario's, which is basically the same thing — but I agreed so that Minji and Daniel could experience Olive Garden for themselves. 

Except we had to wait 30 minutes to get seated, another 15 minutes just to order our food, another 10 minutes to get water, another 15 minutes just to get our salad and breadsticks, and another 30 minutes to get our entrees. This is actually no fault of our server, who was an absolute sweetheart, but just the fact that this Olive Garden was woefully understaffed (she was already waiting on at least 8 tables with no other help and new guests would just keep coming in). The food was actually quite tasty — the unlimited salad (which is EXACTLY THE SAME as East Side Mario's) and bread sticks were decent (I did get two refills of the salad and both Minji and Daniel got second refills of soup because we were waiting so long) — and the shrimp alfredo I ordered was surprisingly delicious (flavourful, creamy, and contained a great amount of shrimp), but it was the fact that we arrived at 7:15PM and didn't leave until 10:00PM that was the issue. And we still had to re-charge the Tesla and drive over two hours to get home.

Should've just gone to the Cheesecake Factory and called it a day.

IHOP

4955 Clifton Hill, 3/F

Niagara Falls, ON L2G 3N5

(905) 371-3396

Olive Garden

2011 Walden Ave.

Cheektowaga, NY 14225

(716) 683-4670