They still exist, but the Pizza Hut chain and it’s remain restaraunts are shadows of what they used to be. Pizza Hut was awesome in the 80’s. Now the old one near my house is a church.
Same for Olive Garden. Enshittification and placating shareholders came for them both.
…it’s mind-boggling from today’s perspective just how good the olive garden was in the eighties: we reserved a table for my graduation and it was a properly respectable dinner…
It’s hard for me to explain to people the unique tier that Olive Garden (and separately Pizza Hut) existed in.
There were many nicer Italian places than Olive Garden. It wasn’t pretentious at all, but it was nice and ubiquitous. Maybe a little better than PF Changs today? (Not that I’m very familiar with PF Changs). No one would laugh at you for taking a date there.
Pizza Hut was more casual by far, largely because you’d have kids playing arcade games and whatnot. Pizza Hut was more family oriented, but still more classy than most things we have today.
Maybe Texas Roadhouse is closer to accurate.
