Fuddruckers and Prince's - I was kind of sad to see them go Red Robin is decent Beck's is not . .. well .. it's just a'ight 5 guys is ridiculously over prices What are some other places? (burger places with great shakes too) Rocket River
As a Westside Houston kid in the 80's, it was either Fudd's or Cliff's for burgers. Fuddrucker's was more fun cause you got to look at the meat counter, look at the bakery, and then go nuts with the burger fixin's bar
Plus there are a ton of local non-chain places to compete with nowadays. The kinds of places that have a signature burger with a funny name and will sponsor your kid's soccer team. Everyone in Kingwood knows if you want a really good burger, you go to Pete's or Bill's.
The Cliff's that I went to on Highway 6 had good food into the 90's and then something changed. I don't know if they were sold to new Owners or the same Owner decided to cut costs, but the Meat in the Burger was of a lower quality and I never went back.
I said it in another thread but the Fudds/Luby's failure is squarely on the heads of the Pappas family. They bought controlling interest and proceeded to run both into the ground. They could've made some changes that were easy to implement and not cost too much. Also, many of the locations were in high rent areas (the 2 in The Woodlands were perfect examples). They just didn't care and let the locations go to crap.
Personal Cracker Barrel story....my parents like that place, and one time I met them for lunch at the location on 45 South by Friendswood. My gf at the time had just dumped me and I was very down about it. While there at Cracker Barrel I heard Randy Travis' version of "It's Just a Matter of Time" for the first time on the restaurant speakers...boy the pipes on that guy. Very appropriate song for me at that time and place, and I further comforted myself with some Nestle Chunky from the retro candy section.
I miss Prince's alot. Would go to the one next to Compaq Center. I regret not supporting them at their weird last location on a golf course.
It's weird, but the best thing I ever had at Prince's was their chicken fajita baked potato...that was an all day meal
