Few will mourn the demise of TGI Fridays, whose parent company collapsed into administration this week. The restaurant chain’s 87 branches in the UK have been put up for sale. Only a fool would think they could turn around TGIs’ fortunes. The truth is that the British obsession with American food, and specifically American diners, was never going to end well.
Attempts to imitate American cuisine over here are a bit embarrassing
When TGI Fridays first opened in Britain it was, for a time, a roaring success. The original TGIs was a cocktail bar on the Upper East Side of Manhattan which opened in March 1965. It was an instant hit, especially with single young men and women, since it offered a place to drink and carouse in public with members of the opposite sex.
The first UK opening TGIs opened in 1986 in Birmingham; a London outpost followed a year later. By the early 1990s, its Leicester Square branch was the place to be seen. Brits, always keen to emulate the culture and style of America, were eager customers of the diner chain. But it could never last. The last decade, as the novelty has worn off, has been hard on TGIs.
The owners are now trying to flog the restaurants after a failed bid to merge with the US-based owner. A business model rooted in the traditional big greasy charm of American fare hasn’t, it seems, adapted well to the vegan age. But there is also something else going on: the truth is that you can’t recreate the magic of the American diner on a cold rainy night in Stoke. Trying to emulate this experience in Birmingham or Leicester Square was always going to fail. The American diner only works in America.
You have to be in a grubby bit of an American city, or on a road whose end you can never see, to get the real experience – and with it, the brusque but human staff, the angry scrawl of your order in the waitress’s notebook, the ability to do brilliant pancakes as well as a dirty cheeseburger or corn bread or soup, all served up lickety split. Oh, and that coffee, straight from the heater, served in those thick white mugs.
I’ve never been a regular at TGI Fridays, and I look at Five Guys – another US diner chain – askance. Ultimately, I know what real American grease is all about, and the scale on which it belongs. Born of the vast iron ranges of ranch-owners and cattle fields the size of Basingstoke, such a concept of food is simply not in the DNA of Europe or the UK. All that remains of Britain’s pale imitations are inflated prices; though I took a look at the menu online and there aren’t any prices listed (it’s the same at Five Guys). But the sad images of calamari crouching on a plate, and hot dogs sprayed garishly in mustard and ketchup, tell you all you need to know.
Burger chains like TGI Fridays have tried to please everyone. In doing so, they have pleased no one. To really do the American thing, you have to give two fingers to vegans. You must dish up huge burgers, big fries and enormous ice cream sundaes. You must know that, whatever your restaurant is called, you are effectively a meat and dairy factory. You can’t also do vegan burgers and other bits of genuflection to a health and eco-conscious age. Fridays’ charm and appeal was precisely to stay simple, and go big. Booze, burgers, affordability, and maybe a snog at the end of it all. But it forgot all that.
As someone who grew up in the US, with its luscious BBQs, opulent, richly sauced hunks of meat, its inventive ways with fried things and its mind-blowingly naughty sweets, I have always found attempts to imitate that cuisine over here a bit embarrassing. The lesson of TGI Fridays is that Brits shouldn’t bother. Let the demise of Fridays be a warning.
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