Read this: How Planet Hollywood withered away by selling food nobody wanted to eat more than once
Guy Fieri and themed resorts represent the chain's last hope for survival
Film Features Planet Hollywood
Back in the ‘90s, there was no thrill more potent than swinging the doors of a Planet Hollywood wide open, knowing that you were in for an overpriced burger eaten below movie artifacts like prop jackets or a big, almost-nude Sylvester Stallone mannequin. The excitement the chain generated at the time was so high that the whole enterprise seemed unstoppable. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Demi Moore, and Bruce Willis had all put money into the business. There were rumors that they might pop into one of its many locations at any time. Then, as Esquire explains in a profile of Planet Hollywood’s birth and prolonged march toward death, people just stopped coming to the restaurants.
Before it details the chain’s fall from grace, the article explains exactly how big Planet Hollywood used to be. Amidst the many, many names of the biggest ‘90s celebrities to visit the restaurant, Esquire describes location openings that came with lavish parties and bizarre sights like Steven Seagal greeting the crowds by riding up on an elephant or Whoopi Goldberg being “carried in like Cleopatra.” We learn that Nelson Mandela once ate at the Manhattan location with Danny Glover and Harry Belafonte—that Stevie Wonder would sometimes sing “happy birthday” along with servers when he was visiting the chain.
You may be wondering: How could an enterprise with this kind of raw celebrity power fail? Well, it turns out that the food sucked so bad that people stopped coming back after they’d already been once. The menu was never great, mostly because the people involved didn’t have a passion for food (though Schwarzenegger “wanted his mother’s strudel recipe” during early meetings). Stallone, apparently, never cared much, saying in 1992 that he’d be happy to have a meal in pill form because “I’m just not prone to chew a lot” and because “It doesn’t go with my personality.”
Unsurprisingly, this approach to its menu didn’t make the restaurant appealing in the long run. “The stock value plummeted, and people just weren’t going back to eat,” the article says. “In 1999, Los Angeles magazine reported that same-store sales—a critical factor in a restaurant’s long-term success—fell by 18 percent the previous year. And the food only seemed to be getting worse.” In 2000, Schwarzenegger sold his Planet Hollywood shares and by 2007 only Stallone and Willis still invested in the business (though a Stallone rep denies that he’s still involved these days.)
Now, what’s left of Planet Hollywood hangs on the flame-shirt’d shoulders of Guy Fieri’s culinary inventions and the hope that spin-off hotels and resorts will carry the company going forward.
For more on how it got to this point, read the rest of the article over at Esquire.
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265 Comments
And they can take Rainforest Cafe with them.
Ate at one of those ONCE. Goddamn what a headache.
Yeah, a ladyfriend wanted to go there when we were in Atlantic City. Never again.
Don’t go to Stew Leonard’s, either. It’s a supermarket with the same gimmick.
I’d be fine if Planet Hollywood just pivoted to a museum or a casino (which I think is what the Hard Rock Café decided to do).
I wasn’t aware Rainforest Cafe was still around.The only one I ever saw was replaced by Chili’s, now a Zinburger, back when Dubya was in his first term.
They aren’t thriving, but they have about a dozen locations:https://www.rainforestcafe.com/store-locator/
So the Chicago location – where I took my date on the occasion referenced above – is closed, but there is still one in Gurnee Mills, IL. Good to know in the event that some cruel twist of fate has delivered me to Gurnee Mills, IL.
I always figured if you can make it to Gurnee Mills, you can make it to Pleasant Prairie. So I’ve never actually been to Gurnee Mills, but I have driven by it many times.
i’m so old i went to gurnee mills when it first opened. i used to spend my days there, returning cards for quarters to buy lunch……
Now that we’re allowed to eat on tables or the seating area again, Actionsdowner needs to get on the Rain Forest Cafe for his Broken Chains blog (https://www.brokenchains.blog/ ).
The food is terrible at Rainforest Cafe, but I’ll admit that I do love getting hammered on neon-colored drinks next to an animatronic gorilla. Similar to how I’m always a sucker for Tiki Bars that have fake erupting volcanoes.
I know, I know, I’m part of the problem.
I went to the Rainforest Cafe once on a date. In my defense, I remember it being her idea. I’m sure I had a hamburger, which I’ve completely forgotten, but I remember it being loud and distracting, as if the franchise was born at the moment someone snorted cocaine just before scribbling “Chuck E. Cheese for adults” on the back of a cocktail napkin.
Chuck E Cheese for adults would be more like a Dave & Busters, no? Which is at least respectable in having a bunch of video games around.
But they should not be allowed to serve food or, especially, drinks.
One visit ever to a RainForest Cafe, and it sticks out as a sad occasion. To be fair, it wasn’t a ‘destination decision.’ It was a new restaurant in the mall nearest my grandma’s house [Oak Park Mall, OP, KS], and over the years, between holidays and birthdays and such, we had pretty much been to every mall and satellite area ‘nice’ restaurant that was there. That worked for AND against RFC. For, because we didn’t put a lot of thought into going there initially [hey, let’s try the new place], and against because even in that first visit we were within a baseball throw of several superior dinner memories.
“The free market is a jungle. It’s beautiful and brutal and should be left alone. When a business fails, it dies, and a new, better one takes its place. Just let business be business and government be government.”–Ron Swanson.
We took our daughter once when she was three, on the horrendously misguided notion that she would find the atmosphere engaging, and be distracted enough to plow through a meal sans screaming fit. Ironically (or not, I suppose, as I should have seen it coming), the grotesque talking tree at the entrance, animatronic jungle beasts, and simulated torrential downpours were a cocktail of Lovecraftian horror to the three year-old mind, and she was basically inconsolable while we were inside. We ended up moving to an “outdoor” seat, which was just in the fucking mall hallway behind some flimsy ropes. To this day my daughter (now six) still remembers the terrifying talking tree, so she will literally run in fear from the Rainforest Cafe when she sees it. So… I guess it was a win? Anyway, yes – please let them all die.
I liked Rainforest Cafe. But then I like the Enchanted Tiki Room which they ripped off.
The Enchanted Tiki Room has better food.
Maybe. Although I remember that the portabella mushroom sandwich at Rainforest Cafe was pretty tasty.
I went a couple of times with the kids to RFC – terrible food, and the pools of faintly stagnant water gave the whole place a sulphurous undertone.Oddest thing I ever saw there was two well-dressed ladies dining alone, looking like they’d missed the entrance to Claridge’s.
I remember being so mad at my dad so, so many times as a kid as we’d travel and I’d ask to be taken to planet hollywood or rainforest cafe and he’d refuse every single time and remind us that if we’re traveling, we’re eating local or else there’s no point in traveling in the first place.
I generally get it (and I’m not a food snob by any means either) though if I’m in Denver, I’m going to Casa Bonita, and no one is going to stop me. Unless it’s still closed, I guess. Then I’ll be stopped at last.
If a chain restaurant has a theme that isn’t a food, you’re going to pay 300% market value for something 300% worse than average.
The theme restaurant died for me when Marvel Mania lost its lease at Universal Studios. Back when no one really gave too many shits about Marvel.
I’ve in the past honestly enjoyed going to Rainforest Cafe. I found the food just fine, but it was obviously just about the crazy loud novelty of it. There were many more of them before, but from what I can see they chopped it down to almost all “destination” locations, at tourist areas where it’s fun as a one-off. I just don’t think it works as a local restaurant. Like, maybe if you make one visit to Disney World or Las Vegas in a few years, why not go? But if it’s at a shopping mall in Pittsburgh, how many times are you going to go before the novelty wears off?
Stallone, apparently, never cared much, saying in 1992 that he’d be happy to have a meal in pill form because “I’m just not prone to chew a lot” and because “It doesn’t go with my personality.”I mean, that just sounds like a rejected Brooklyn Nine-Nine plot about Captain Holt opening a restaurant with Boyle that was rejected because even the B99 writers thought that would be a bit much for Holt to say.
I’m sure Sly approved of future Taco Bell entress.
BONG
That’ll lead to long lines in the restrooms while people try and figure out the three seashells.
Looks like something from Chopped.
I was going to copy that same text. What a disturbing and baffling window into Stallone’s mind.
It stood out to me too, but then I remembered he has nerve damage in his face from when he was born. So actually chewing might not be the most comfortable experience.
It depends on which nerve was affected. The nerve that controls chewing, which is also involved in facial sensation, is different from the one that controls most of the facial expression muscles. The latter also has a small role in taste.
Huh. Well that makes a whole lot more sense than Stallone just being a weirdo.I mean… he still may well be a weirdo (he did invest in Planet Hollywood, after all) but this specifically at least seems eminently reasonable, ultimately.
Also he was probably eating a bunch of protein just to maintain the physique. So I get the whole tired of chewing food angle.
Fully appropriate, as Stallone’s mind is disturbing and baffling.
I feel like a lot of people say that, especially people really into fitness. They think it makes them sound tough and stoic and disciplined. That they must have an amazing body because they never eat for pleasure.
Nah, it’s not about being tough or stoic. It’s just that we eat tens of thousands of meals in our lives and we’d rather be doing other things with our time than trying to satiate whatever precise food craving we may have. It’s a chore.I’ve always thought people who are finicky about every meal or are endlessly descriptive about the food they’ve eaten are tedious as all hell.
Steven Berkoff used to tell a story that he was lobbying Stallone to do Shakespeare, specifically Coriolanus, and Stallone said “Yeah, but you’re like…a real actor.”
Stallone’s on that Celery Juice diet because, let’s face it, celery’s been around since…who knows.
Ooh, the Maintenance Phase podcast recently did an episode on celery juice and it was fantastic. They tried some and Michael said, “It tastes like a hate crime!”
Helps though with the three seashells.
the only other dude i’ve known who talked like that (said almost the exact same thing, would rather eat a pill, doesn’t care about food at all) went on to become drake’s manager.
I’m wondering if Sly’s facial nerve damage affects his sense of taste as well as his speech.
I think his mouth was fucked up from nerve damage when he was born. Maybe it’s a pain in the ass to eat food he has to chew a lot?
Makes you wonder why he chose to invest in a restaurant.
Stallone is world renowned for taking shits in the shower stall and leaving them there for the maids to clean up, sometime while he watches.I’m saying that maybe he’s not really the type to be a culinary creative director…
I hope every woman in Sly’s family is dead, because saying shit like that is how you get old Italian ladies to kick your ass.
After watching many many Stallone performances the man cannot claim he doesn’t like to chew a lot.
In 1995, I worked for the SF Giants and many players and staff were invited to the grand opening of the SF location. We were encouraged to drive to the front for photos on the red carpet and I was accompanied by a couple of rookies who didn’t have a car.I pulled up, handed the keys to a valet and we started to walk down the carpet after standing in a queue while paparazzi were taking pictures of other celebrities. When I started to walk, there was a lull in the noise and I heard someone ask who we were and someone very audibly said ‘Forget it. They’re nobody.’ That was the only really memorable moment of the night.
And don’t you ever forget it, godspeed aquaboy.
I’m sorry — people suck.
But sometimes it’s funny how much they suck.
“I’m sorry — people suck.”
Hey, it was his decision to walk a red carpet like a sad loser, you don’t have to tell him he sucks too.
I was going to a lot of Giants games in those days. Wasn’t like it was hard to get a ticket at the ‘Stick.
It was dead. From the dugout you could hear people having conversations in the left field seats. The only game that sold out was Hideo Nomo’s first game at Candlestick. On the upside, Barry Bonds could hear all the very specific taunts leveled at him. That was the year that he let a flyball go over his head, thinking it was a home run. Instead it plopped right on the warning track. On ESPN that night, I think it was either Patrick or Olbermann that commented on the ball that went over the statue of Bonds in left field. He was not amused.
I remember going to a game on July 3rd 1999 or 98 – shit, I can’t believe it was that long ago. Went with friends because of fireworks show afterwards. I dressed like I was going to summit Everest. I was still freezing my ass off. I ran into Barry Bonds at Ft. Funston when he was doing rehab on his knee – evidently running in sand in a thing. Other than taking up three parking spots with his Hummer, he was extremely gracious to everyone who came up to talk to him. Lastly, Garlic Fries are overrated.
I’m still dubious when I hear stories of him being ‘nice’ since he was such a phenomenal tool back then.Garlic Fries are meh, but Asada Fries are everything they aren’t.
It’s true. His interaction with “the people” didn’t reconcile with his image of kicking puppies and stealing candy from babies. But he did have he biggest head I’ve ever seen on a human being. Like a proud farmer’s prize-winning pumpkin.
Sorry to nitpick, but after checking baseball-reference.com I have to report that the lone 1995 Candlestick sellout wasn’t Nomo’s first game there. He actually made his MLB debut at Candlestick on May 2, 1995, a game that drew just over 16,000 fans. His only other appearance there that year was on August 5, in which a sellout crowd saw him get a complete game shutout(probably not as fun for Giants fans as the first one, which the Giants won in 15 innings).
When I started to walk, there was a lull in the noise and I heard someone ask who we were and someone very audibly said ‘Forget it. They’re nobody.’That was the only really memorable moment of the night.And that story, my friend, is enough to get you an entire series on Disney+!
I love that your quote is exactly like Steve Martin’s in L.A. Story. Almost as good as when Chevy Chase is asking the maitre’d for “a good table this time”, and he deadpans “I can get you a table by the restrooms”. Chase: “Part of the new cruelty?”I cannot believe it’s been over a year since I re-watched that film. I find it highly bizarre that I found myself talking the the owner of my restaurant about the movie and I flat out told him, I can’t believe they still haven’t released this on DVD. This is in 2015, and I would not take his word at all that it had been.Dude shows up the next day with a brand new copy and says, You’re Welcome.
I find it hard to believe those aren’t wax figures in the header photo.
Stallone appears to be in the middle of having a stroke.
Well we all get lonely.
nah, looks like Demi Moore grabbed his ass out of the blue
I think I ate there once, but plenty of chain restaurants serve mediocre food, and they’re still around. I, um, appreciate the header of a young, buxom Demi Moore, evidently standing next to the homeless man she decided to help out.
plenty of chain restaurants serve mediocre food I think most of them get their stuff from the same suppliers. The difference between hamburgers at, say, Islands, Chili’s, and even Hamburger Hamlet is only discernable by what they’re called on the menu. (I don’t know, maybe they’re owned by all one corporation.)
Eh, Islands and Chilis aren’t very similar unless you consider themed family restaurant that serves a variety of food including burgers, to be similar.A better comparison would be Chilis and Applebees.
There are still a fair number of Hard Rock Cafes which are basically the same deal.
I was going to comment, how can Hard Rock Cafe, which serves equally bland, uninspiring food, still be around when Planet Hollywood is almost gone?
My only thought is that I never went to a Planet Hollywood as an adult. Does Hard Rock Cafe have more/better/larger alcoholic beverages that compensate?
I think that’s Hard Rocks Café
Chili’s is not Great, or even good, acceptable might be a stretch, but it is not Applebee’s.
They are the same thing with different branding. I’m not here to argue about which one is better.
Islands was actually good. And I miss them now that I’ve moved back to the East Coast. Chillis and Applebees I could live without.
With you there. Islands is still a place I enjoy visiting but I haven’t been to a Chilis or Applebees in years.
This was the bane of my existence going to college in a small town. Pretty much all the non fast-food local restaurants seemingly got their food from the same supplier (Sodexo) as the food for the school cafeteria, which meant everything you ate tasted the same. All criticisms are fair, but all the same I will always have fond memories of Subway, because in college they were a godsend simply for no other reason than they tasted different.
Sodexo is a (food) service company, not a supplier. Their supplier is Sysco, I believe. They do have centralized recipes, so that’s why their food tastes kinda bland.
Apparently Rain Forest Cafe is owned by Landry’s Inc., which also owns Bubba Gump Shrimp Company, Houlihan’s, Joe’s Crab Shack, and several steakhouse chains including Del Frisco’s, Morton’s The Steakhouse, The Palm (that’s a steakhouse?), Saltgrass Steak House, Strip House and Vic & Anthony’s Steakhouse.
So — yeah, I’m not sure about a healthy, environmentally-sound meal from any place that’s owned by a largely-steakhouse company….
That really hurts. My college town had lots of restaurants that I could only afford to eat at once every week or two, so I mostly subsisted on Ramen noodles and Gatorade. Once you got away from campus, though, food options dried up very quickly. Naturally, if my dad was driving me down to school he didn’t want to eat in campus-town, he wanted to try one of the “mom and pop” restaurants off the interstate. It didn’t matter that, for example, one of the Chinese restaurants in town was owned by the chef (also they didn’t offer forks, and their menu had 15 or 20 items in English on one side and 150 items in Mandarin on the other, it was awesome). It also didn’t matter that most of the diners in the area were obviously operated by a conglomerate – they had the same typeface on their signs, the same uniforms for the staff, the same pink-and-green upholstery, and the same menus.
Yeah Subways are (rightly) today thought of as no better than most fast food but they were godsends when they started popping up in the late-80s/early-90s because they were the only place you could get something decent that didn’t come out of the frier. (I think the ingredients, especially the bread, were better in the early days)
Yeah. Any time you see a Sysco truck pull up to a restaurant in the morning, you are almost always guaranteed to be getting something that falls between mediocre and terrible.
One of the most vicious restaurant reviews I have ever read noted that the appetizers “represented the finest of what the local Sysco warehouse had to offer.”
I once ate at a place that USED to be a Johnny Rocket’s. They said they just didn’t want to pay for the branding anymore, but they still used the same suppliers, so it was the exact same food as a Johnny Rockets. But, you know, missing that all-important Johnny Rocket’s seal of approval.
I once ate at a place that USED to be a Johnny Rocket’s Decades ago there was an ex-McDonald’s in South Central L.A. Same building, same arches, but they called it “R Place” (a play on the old “McDonald’s is your kind of place” jingle). I think whoever had the McD franchise before that just up and left. They did hamburgers as well as barbecue and sausage and stuff. I worked near it and was often the only white guy in the place. I got some looks sometimes, but the food was great so no one thought it was that strange that I would go there.
Oh, yeah. I knew a guy that worked there.
“I think most of them get their stuff from the same suppliers.”This is entirely true. I’ve been in the restaurant business for nearly 25 years, and as far as big purveyors go, you have your choice between Sysco, US Foods, and (to a smaller extant) GFS. There’s a lot of regional suppliers, but their niche is specialty foods or locally sourced product. I’ve used all three of those companies across multiple states and companies, and they all essentially carry the same brands and products. I was kinda surprised that between working for different companies in PA, WI, NC, DC, and now NY, I’ve been using Kettle Cuisine brand boil in bag soups for over 15 years. And again, that was using all three purveyors. I’m no longer surprised by this at all.Side note: I’m still surprised that Sysco’s buyout of US Foods got blocked a few years back, but that would have been such a monopoly it would have been ridiculous.
For your information, Moore is standing next to Ashton Kutcher’s father, who is indeed homeless. I hope you feel good.
Can you explain this joke for my friend? Because that’s definitely Bruce Willis, right?
OVERCHARGING FOR MEDIOCRE FOOD IS AN OLD TRADITION, BUT I BELIEVE THAT PLANET HOLLYWOOD TOOK IT TO THE NEXT LEVEL, AS THEY SAY.NOW I WANT A CURRY.
But what about the Salmon Mousse?
Sheesh…Demi and her PornBoobs. Don’t ever get the outrageous porn star boob job mid-career. We all saw Blame It On Rio, so the certain knowledge that there is 15 lbs of silicone under her shirt reduces the hotness factor by 90%. Her skin is so tight that you can practically read the bar codes.
you are very gross.
Jfc. Never post again.
I would substitute About Last Night, but yeah.
I think the problem was that the food was both bad and expensive.
Willis lives in the gigantic, glistening new tower that was built two blocks from my apartment here in NYC. I’ve seen him at the grocery store twice, and both times he seemed tipsy.
I thought he lived in Nakatomi Tower.
It’s completely possible he thinks he does, too.
Those chains selling point is typically being much cheaper than average, though. Dennys food is shit, but you can feed a family of four for $35. “Like Applebees but twice the price” means everyone visits once to see Rocky’s boxing gloves and then never returns.
I never went to a Planet Hollywood but it felt like a desperate attempt to recreate the Hard Rock Cafe but in movie form. Say what you will about HRC but at least the food is decent.
The one time I went to Hard Rock Cafe my girlfriend complained because her veggie burger was inedible & we got free t-shirts. It is sort of what she deserved for ordering a veggie burger at Hard Rock Cafe though
Veggie burgers are always inedible.
The last time I went to a Hard Rock Cafe, the waiter openly mocked me for ordering appletinis. Fuck that guy, though, because that place uses so much mixer in their drinks that the only way to get drunk is to order something that doesn’t involve any non-alcoholic ingredients.
– “the shirts were delicious!”
It was the 90s. They hadn’t figured out meat substitutes back then.
I last ate at a Hardrock Cafe because the 10-year old child of a friend picked it. I think only the kid enjoyed his meal.
The first time I went to a Hard Rock Cafe we never made it. One of my c-workers was a die-hard Kiss fan, and on the day Kiss was making an appearance at the Cafe, we played hooky from work and drove over.It was raining, and just when the Cafe was within reach, the car hydroplaned right into the rear of a stopped car about half a block ahead of us. I got whiplash and my co-worker’s car was a mess. The woman he hit promised she wasn’t going to screw him, then promptly turned around and sued him. I (and the other co-worker in the rear seat) were interviewed about the accident, which was eventually declared nobody’s fault. I missed work for a week because my whole body seized up. He missed Kiss and bashed up his car. Our boss felt too sorry for us to discipline anybody for skipping out.My second visit (technically the first) was completely and utterly meh. My ahi tuna was overcooked. My friend’s burger was uninspired. It was too loud and too bright and too expensive. Never went back.So whenever people asked if I’d been to the Hard Rock Cafe, I usually told the first story because the second story is so boring. Like the restaurant.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but I can’t serve you that veggie burger in good conscience. Instead, why don’t I bring you a gigantic glass of vodka and sugar syrup?”
Not Hard Rock, but I left a review of a veggie burger at a restaurant (on a card, no Yelp), saying that is what Soylent Green must have tasted like minus the people. They actually called me to come in twice and asked me to try different variations until they settled on a winner. I was impressed.
Hard Rock is owned by the Seminole Tribe!I love that bit of trivia
I did not know that, as of 2007 per wikipedia.
Gotta get those reparations from the white man somehow.
That explains why the casino/hotel in Catoosa is called the Hard Rock Hotel! I always wondered about that. (They have other locations, but that’s the only one in Oklahoma among the many, many NA casinos we have.) There is no Hard Rock Cafe there, just the hotel and casino, with other restaurants inside.
I was happier to buy Hard Rock Cafe T-Shirts and shot glasses than actually eating there. It was my way of showing off how much international travel I did when I was younger. BTW Hard Rock Reykjavik and Yokohama are in malls several miles from the main touristy city centers as a sort of afterthought.
We went to the HRC at the Beverly Center all the time when I was a kid. I loved that place.I have a long, boring HRC-related story: In early 2019 my family and I were returning from an Antarctic cruise, which had departed from and returned to Ushuaia (in Tierra del Fuego!). Part of the cruise package was a flight to and from Buenos Aires, and then we had a connecting flight to Mexico City, and then back on to Los Angeles.So we landed at BA’s domestic airport and hired a pair of cars down to the big international airport south of the city. But we arrived about eight hours before our flight, and our airline (Aeromexico) didn’t actually have a permanent counter at the check-in area. They only had one regular flight per day out of that airport (a Dreamliner to Mexio City) which was only staffed from about three hours before the flight. So we had to wait around for almost five hours before we could even check in and head to security.So we’re getting hungry, and my wife goes off to find out what dining options exist outside the security area, and comes back to say that she talked to the information desk (my wife is reasonably fluent in Spanish) and that the only thing they recommended was something called the Harro Cafe. I’m like, well, okay, I don’t really know what that is, so we talked for a minute whether we wanted to go try to find it and see if the menu was tolerable, or just wait until after check-in so that we could eat at one of the numerous restaurants behind the security gate…
…and then my eyes glanced past her shoulder toward the upper level, where I noticed a Hard Rock Cafe, and suddenly it clicked. We didn’t end up eating there (the counter opened shortly and we checked in), but ever since then, we always refer to it as the Harro Cafe.(By sheer coincidence, there was also a (rather large) Hard Rock Cafe location in downtown Ushuaia, but we were only in that city for a short time between disembarking from the ship and being shuttled to the airport.)
You really haven’t experienced HRC until you’ve eaten at the McMurdo Station location.
You were right: that was definitely long, and definitely very boring.
The last international vacation my wife and I went on was to Chiapas. We flew Aeromexico to Mexico City and then were supposed to catch a connecting flight to Tuxtla. Our flight to Mexico City made an unscheduled landing in Veracruz, and we missed our connection. Aeromexico agreed to put us on a flight the next day (after some debate), but our ticket had a little symbol on it, and the next day the gate agent drew a little symbol on our boarding passes. We had trouble finding the gate, I asked (in my best Spanish, which is decent) at the information booth; the guy looked at my boarding pass, gave me the gate number, and then said something like, “I’ll print you a new boarding pass, this one is dirty.” When we found the gate for our flight to Tuxtla, it was overbooked. My wife and I handed over our boarding passes, the attendants let me onto the jetbridge, and then one of the attendants looked at my wife’s boarding pass and said (in Spanish, so my wife didn’t catch it), “No, she’s flying standby.” I told them she had to be on the flight with me, and the flight attendants frowned at each other, shrugged, and sent us on our way. I didn’t tell her until the plane had taken off that they weren’t going to let her board.Anyway… Aeromexico!
Aeromexico! *weak trumpet sound*My mother-in-law (who bankrolled the entire Antarctica trip) flew us first class the whole way (well, business class on the L.A. to Mexico leg), but we got those giant sleeper pods for the nine-hour Dreamliner flights, which was great. But in the Mexico City airport, we got to hang out in the first-class lounge between our flights, four hours on the way down and six hours on the way back. It was nice to have somewhere vaguely comfortable to wait, and they had an unlimited supply of free food and drink for us. So I can’t complain too much.
I’ve only eaten at Hard Rock Cafe twice and never by choice, but I found the food rather awful both times.
I won’t argue with you. I’d rather go to a Hard Rock than say, an Applebees though. So it’s not Applebees awful. And apparently, not Planet Hollywood awful either.
Applebees really is the bottom of the barrel for chains.
It’s the 90s thing. Remember aside of Planet Hollywood, there are also Fashion Cafe, Marvel Cafe, House of Blues, etc.
I seem to recall the Fashion Cafe flamed out rather spectacularly. I don’t recall the Marvel Cafe. If they were a product of the same time period, it would appear the concept was about 15 years too early. But none of these concept restaurants seem to be able to overcome the same problem of bland, poorly prepared food that eventually dooms them all.
I don’t recall the Marvel Cafe. If they were a product of the same time period, it would appear the concept was about 15 years too early.
Oh. The whole reason that Disney owns Marvel now is because the people running Marvel… I’m not saying they did a lot of coke, just that they had the same sort of thought process as someone who does a lot of coke. Basically, for ever success – let’s say the X-Men and Spider-Man cartoons in the 90s – Marvel would turn around and sink that money to a spectacular WTF failure – let’s say Marvel Mania a theme restaurant where the staff is made up of Marvel Superheroes and the food includes The Falcon Burger (bear in mind, this was the 90s and no one knew who the fuck Falcon was).
There was only one Marvel Mania restaurant and it was located around Universal Studios (I don’t know if it was actually in the theme park) but it was by the same team behind Planet Hollywood and there were plans to expand. If you can find the menu online, read it because it is amazing. The whole first page is just alcoholic drinks including martinis with Marvel themed names like Asgard and The Savage Land. I think they turned eventually turned it into a Universal Monsters themed cafe which – although it did have some name changes – lasted for over a decade.
Eh, not quite true about why Disney now owns Marvel. Marvel was in bankruptcy in the 90’s because the comic book speculation bubble (which Marvel did help build) burst. One of their toy licensees ended up buying the company (this is where Ike Perlmutter/Avi Arad came in) and rebuilt it. They didn’t sell to Disney until almost 15 years later, after Marvel Studios had huge successes.
My favourite bit of trivia there is that the toy company that bought Marvel (Toy Biz) had their first big hit product making toys for the 1989 Batman movie. So without Batman, possibly no MCU.
Wow, I remember either seeing an advertisement for the Marvel Cafe or hearing about it from a friend who went to Orlando. I asked my parents if we could go, and they told me that going all the way to Orlando just to eat at a single restaurant was ridiculous. When I offered that we could also go to Disney World, just to make the trip worthwhile, they said that was even worse.
As I recall Marvel Cafe came from the same guys behind Planet Hollywood, oh, and my mistake, it was called Marvel Mania, a restaurant with Marvel heroes theme opened only in Universal Studios Hollywood.
Yes, they are all shared similar, bland cookie cutter menus only interchanged with quirky themed names.
house of blues was a nice time, though. i used to go to the one in harvard square; food was good.
The chief thing helped House of Blues is because it attached to a spacious concert hall, and notable musicians frequented the stage throughout the entire existence. The other 90s themed restaurants don’t have such luxury.
Fashion Cafe is the most egregious themed restaurant. Supermodels known for their extreme diets somehow patronizing a restaurant with all American sized menu? That’s a comedy unto self. Expecting to catch a glimpse of those thin rail models frequenting the restaurant and wolfing the big size meals.
It wasn’t until I read this comment that I realised I’d mixed up Hard Rock Cafe and Planet Hollywood in my head. I was a teenager in the 90s. I remember both, but I’d never been. Without googling I can picture the logo and general vibe of Hard Rock Cafe. Generic family restaurant with memorabilia on the walls, right? What was Planet Hollywood? Same thing but movies? Did people really eat there thinking a celebrity would stop by and, like, announce himself? Or that you’d notice him eating chicken parm at the next table and you’d hang out?How did anyone think this was a sustainable business model especially as a chain? Bruce Willis is going to be in Dallas for some reason?
The Beverly Center Hard Rock Cafe was in my regular rotation in the 90s when my kids were young. We could go there with the kids and their friends and order a bunch of burgers and fries and the kids could literally be as loud as they wanted because the classic rock soundtrack of the HRC was always on at maximum volume.We always struggled to find spots where our kids could just be kids and the HRC was perfect. They could have fun and no one noticed. I could get a beer.I think we even did a few kid’s birthday parties there.
“I’m just not prone to chew a lot”
“I like soft food, and I cannot lie…” ~ Baby Got Baklava, MC Chewalot (1992)
God I think the most touristy thing I ever did, was the first time I visited California with my family, we ate at a Planet Hollywood, because we could eat AND looked at Hollywood relics…that’s a two for one savings, which was music to the ears of my midwestern parents.
Tourist!
I’ve been to every one of those stupid theme restaurants and it’s always because I have family in town and that’s what they want to do.
I live in Kansas City, which has a dozen barbecue restaurants that could all vie for the best in the country, and when family came into town, they elected to eat at fucking Applebee’s. My soul died a little that day.
I had the pleasure of being in Kansas City a couple weeks ago and had what our clients referred to as “White Collar” BBQ. It was good! But also hardly discernible from other regionally-named smoked meats.
Which place did you go to, if you don’t mind my asking?
It was a Jack Stack in what seemed to be an old railyard. So, a little bit of a version of the Planet Hollywood experience, in a way.
I know the one you mean! It’s just a mile or so from where I live. Yeah for some reason locals poo poo Jack Stack, but I think it’s a fine place. The thing about BBQ places, regardless of the food quality you have the ambience to consider as well, and I can understand why depending on the clientele you’re with you may want to take them some place a bit more upscale than some of the places that are a bit more hole-in-the-wall. My main beef (har har) with Jack Stack, is they can be a bit inconsistent. Sometimes it’s great, and sometimes you suspect you’re getting stuff that’s been warmed over. If you come back, the place that is my absolute favorite is Q39 on, you guessed it, 39th street in midtown KC. They’re simply outstanding, and I like that their portion sizes are more modest, so you don’t leave feeling utterly stuffed and needing a lie down afterwards.
It’s sad how well we’ve been trained to accept mediocre, bland familiarity in the US. Seems particularly pervasive in the midwest and the south.I lived in KC for two years, and I regret not fully exploring their barbeque joints until near the end of my time in the city.
Well, in their defense, proper barbecue is kind of a commitment. You’re going to need to lay down for a while afterwards, at least.
It’s like me here in South Philly and ordering pizza from a chain. Who does that? Why is the local Papa John’s still in business when there are probably ten or more mom-&-pop’s in any given area who deliver?
That’s an excellent question. People are weird is the only answer.
Kansas City, KS or Kansas City, MO? Just kidding.
When we lived in California my wife’s sister from St Louis came to visit with her family. They ate California Pizza Kitchen most nights, and when we had them over to our place they wouldn’t stop talking about all the Chinese people (we didn’t live in Chinatown or anything, to be clear). Anyway, we warned them that cops in the Bay Area take pedestrian crosswalks really seriously, and they still got a ticket the day they left for not yielding to pedestrians, so it a worked out in the end.
My soul died a little that day. — The AV Club
Oh, god. I’m so sorry.I have a friend in KC and she took me to her favorite barbecue place and it was heaven. It was several years ago, so I don’t remember the name of it, just that it was dinky and packed. We had to wait in line out the door. It was worth it.I live in NE Oklahoma. I really should go to KC more often.
I prefer Planet Threepwood, though it wasn’t much better
About the same amount of customer traffic, too.
I went with my parents to the one that was in Vancouver once. The “movie memorabilia” by the hostess stand was a a “Commish” crew hat. This was the same hat I had on my head. The food was garbage and costly, the atmosphere was perfunctory, and the stuff on the walls was chintzy. Lousy experience, all in all.
A more interesting story would be why you happened to be wearing a “Commish” hat yourself that day.
Because he’s Michael Chiklis…
Would that it t’were so simple.
I worked on the Commish TV movies. It was a cheap crew hat. Like the plastic adjustable strap kind. I considered trying to spin that into an exciting story. Couldn’t.
I assume half of Vancouver was wearing Commish or X-Files crew hats at the time.
Perhaps suggest that you were functioning as a live-action advertising mannequin, only to discover you had be functionally replaced by a hatstand.
I remember the local restaurant critics PILING ON when that location opened. “The Caesar Salad is more expensive than at the Four Seasons.”
The Vancouver location should’ve just done a ‘Planet Vancouver’ and filled it with memorabilia from the jillions of TV shows filmed there.Have a wall devoted to photos of the exact same building being used to represent a dozen different cities around the world.
Cleretic, that WOULD be interesting. We have ONE building that can pretend to be NYC. ONE alley that can pretend to be New Orleans. There’s a set of stairs we use to indicate the business center of EVERY downtown core in the world. There’s a grocery store that we use to be ANY grocery store in any slum in America. There’s ONE classic diner we use. TWO plazas we shoot to be a futuristic city. It doesn’t fix the over arching point of the article, though. The restaurant was terrible and it was clear that the memorabilia was the only thing the three faded stars were into. They didn’t give a shit about the food.
Is one of the plazas the Vancouver Central Library? I’ve seen that in at least one movie. I always find it amusing that one of the Resident Evil movies used Toronto City Hall to up its generic brand of “futuristic”. And there was a cheapo 70s version of HG Wells’ “Shape of Things to Come” that used Ontario Place for a moonbase.
Yeah. The VPL plaza is one of the ones I refer to. The other is the Surrey City Hall plaza.On another note: I hear Ontario Place has fallen into disuse. Spent a lot of time there as a kid.
“it was clear that the memorabilia was the only thing the three faded stars were into. They didn’t give a shit about the food.”
That wasn’t clear when it was a restaurant that was owned by a bunch of movie stars with too much money and not enough things to do with it and who had absolutely no reputation for being cooks or even lovers of a good meal?
Even in the 90s, I saw no appeal in PH. Anyone I knew who went there (non-LA locations) never brought up the food, and no one really saw celebrities. So what was the appeal? I would rather go to the local falafel stand and save my money. Damn good stuff…usually.
Where I live there are plenty of taco trucks within walking distance of me where I can get a better meal than any Planet Hollywood and not even finish off a tenner. There’s a little shack on the side of a Shell station right up the street that sells nothing but Tamales. $8 (plus a tip) is enough food from there to make me wish I’d only spent $6, but still think it was worth it. Seriously, 2 chicken and a cheese is a damn fine lunch, but I can’t resist a second cheese. Nom nom nom.
“What planet are you from?” “Planet of Hollywood. Where you can order a Hamburger with Predator Braids! Ya ever been there?”
Maybe they could become Waffle House Brawlers, like Kid Rock?
This is so many restaurants in Manhattan, depending on tourist-y-ness of the area. Little Italy restaurants are particularly not good, but then they don’t have to be; most of their customers wander in and will never be back, so why bother having good food (I know, there are a few okay places)?
Same with any tourist destination. Last time I went to Niagara Falls, I went to the hotel clerk and asked her where SHE likes to eat and drink. Always ask a local.
Guess it’s a good thing that on my one day trip to NY, I ate at a Jewish deli.
The corned beef sandwich was awesome and wonderfully cheap.
The funny thing is you have to really go out of your way to make East Coast Italian-American food terrible. It’s all pretty simple ingredients, inherently delicious and easy to prepare.
That doesn’t say much for some of the catering companies that operate in the Philadelphia area, then, because I ate a lot of mediocre baked ziti at various functions during my youth.
It has only been in the last few years, almost 20 years after graduating high school, that I can eat stuffed shells again.
Eh. There used to be an Italian restaurant that was owned by a guy who owned a lot of Mexican restaurants in my area. That place was very bad. I do have a really high standard for Italian food though. I did go to a Italian restaurant in Little Italy once and didn’t hate it (don’t remember loving it either).
I’m certainly not saying they don’t exist, they certainly do (especially in Little Italy) but they have to just really not care or actively want to be bad.
It all depends on your appetite.
You lost weight!
“The funny thing is you have to really go out of your way to make East Coast Italian-American food terrible.”
That’s funny since SO FUCKING MUCH of that food is terrible in restaurants.
This is sort of akin to how Indian restaurants in Brick Lane don’t *have* to be good, they can get by on the reputation of the area. Some are decent, most are not.
Yeah. You have to go to Tooting now. Or Birmingham!
Doesn’t always have to be a touristy area sometimes. Food and restaurants in the Upper East Side and much of the Bronx for example are boring and terrible.
Excellent point. Before we moved in together my partner did a stint on 59th and 1st Ave, and that was an absolute food no man’s land. As you said, boring and terrible. I’ll add: expensive! There was an allegedly upscale Greek restaurant on his block that traumatized us with shitty food and bad service (for the record I’m totally fine with shitty service if the food is good). The kind of place you have to flag your server down every ten minutes for things like silverware and water.
I only ate at Planet Hollywood once, but I remember the food not being bad, but being just OK. It wasn’t so much better than, say, Chili’s or TGI Fridays that it justified the extra cost. I do remember the fries being very bland, though.
The Planet Hollywood casino in Vegas is still around! Vegas seems like the perfect place for the last dying breath of Planet Hollywood.
The casino’s owned by Caesars though, and its aesthetic really has nothing to do with the restaurant chain.
I was shocked by that when I was there in November (although it was temporarily closed by Covid). On my previous trip, in ’18, we asked a dealer there if she was going to be working the next day and she said “I don’t know if any of us will be working tomorrow”
We stay at the timeshare that was going to be their condo wing but then was sold to Hilton, so I go through that casino/mall quite a bit every year. It’s fine, but I don’t even think there’s a Planet Hollywood restaurant in there. Not sure because we usually just go through to go other places to eat/play.
My friends and I stayed there while it was being remodeled from the Sahara into Planet Hollywood (saved us some $$) and my room was okay, but my friends had a ‘fun movie prop’ in their room – the shrimp-fingered hand from Beetlejuice. Apparently it was just horrifying and they proceeded to hide it under the bed for their whole stay.
I ate at Planet Hollywood at the Mall of America. I still ate meat then so I had a burger. It was fine, like a burger at pretty much any moderately priced family restaurant, but it was double the price. And once you see the inside, what reason do you have to go back if the food doesn’t stand out? It’s not an amusement park, the memorabilia isn’t really that convenient to walk around and look at, and as they never changed stuff out that I recall, once you’ve seen it, that’s it. I thought they already went out of business years ago.
I actually saw a “celebrity” when I went to the Seattle location in the mid-’90s (then-SuperSonics power forward Sam Perkins, dining with his daughter.) Like many people, it was a fun way to spend an afternoon and I had no intention to go back.
I ate at the Helsinki location once and it was pretty good.
There were Planet Hollywood places outside the US? That just seems weird and pointless. Are there other countries with people stupid enough to overpay for a shitty meal just because it’s served near a washed-up celebrity’s costume accessory?
Celebrity worship is pretty much a global ailment.
My and my then new wife ate at the one in Honolulu, a few decades back on our honeymoon. It wasn’t bad, but the L&L restaurants that were a local chain blew everything else away. Well, almost everything. I did get to see a few places that were still recognizable from episodes of Magnum.
The Planet Hollywood in Montreal didn’t last long. It was a combination of locals not caring about the celebrities, the menu being expensive, and having loads of cheaper, better food options available killed it quick. Gordan Ramsay couldn’t make a restaurant work here, partly because of competition, but mostly because outsiders tend to really misread the local culture to be successful.
I have no plans to visit a Planet Hollywood restaurant in my lifetime but for what it’s worth I’ve heard alot of good things about Guy Fieri on a personal level. On a food level not so much.
The premise of this article is a lie because my dad dragged me to like twenty of these things.
The cake they served was awful
???
WHAT HOOD IS THIS?!
Just to be clear, this is an article about someone else’s article? Huh.
You’ll find this is actually a bunch of journalism if you look around. Especially entertainment journalism; after all, if a celebrity, director or musician says something in an interview that ends up being super important to their work, past or present, what else are you gonna do but report on what another publication reported?Not all of your subscribers are gonna follow the original source, after all.
THE AV CLUB (POST KINJA)
I ate there once in Orlando and this article about sums it up. Planet Hollywood was no House of Blues
And House of Blues is hardly anywhere close to Cabo Wabo.
And Jim Belushi is probably dead right now…
Living it up in that big Señor Frog’s in the sky.
What a coinky-dink. I just finished watching the Bankrupt video of Planet Hollywood. I know there are many gimmicky things with staying power, but honestly I’m surprised this one lasted as long.
Is this just… an article about another article? I salute the proper attribution of the source, but like it just seems to describe another article the author read?
I had lunch at the Orlando one back in December 96. It was fine, as far as American burgers and all that went at the time.
How sad is it to soar so high, only to be buried in a shallow grave by Guy Fieri?Speaking of, I love this video about the rise and bubble pop of themed restaurants;
Hey, you know what’s fun? Being able to find responses to your own comments. It’s kind of important on a comment-heavy-site. But that stopped working. Reid, you’re probably a lovely person but we’re not here for your byline. “Hey, Kinja is fucked” well, call your damned tech support and get Kinja unfucked. Because I promise you, it’s costing you views. And if Spanfeller is somehow watching, it’s costing that piece of shit fuckhead money, too.
Preach, friend. Between the barely functioning commenting, and the precipitous decline in the quality of the article writing here (read the Sleater-Kinney review), the AVClub is pretty much fucked.
I’m sure it’s an interesting read, but to my mind, there’s really no mystery in need of an explanation. I remember seeing the ads as a kid and just feeling perplexed and slightly repulsed. What the hell was supposed to be the appeal of this place? I had learned to associate the world of celebrity with the most vapid, tawdry forms of cultural expression: TMZ, those lurid rags by the grocery-store cash registers, the subject of conversations between the most boring grown-ups, etc. And now, as an adult, I have basically the same reaction. Good riddance.
I visited a Planet Hollywood in Germany once. They had a Tom Servo, which was weird, considering that at time only very few Germans knew MST3K. (The only thing we got from that show bythat point was the movie and that went straight to video with very little fanfare.)
I ate at one once when I was on vacation, I think when I was in high school. All I remember is that I sat next to the Shamrock Meats robe from Rocky, somewhere overhead was the ‘Stallone frozen in a block of ice’ thing from Demolition Man, and my mom bought me one of the leather jackets and I wore it for years. Not gonna deny, I loved that jacket; still have it in a drawer somewhere.Funnily enough, I’m actually not sure which location it was (the jacket says but I don’t feel like checking right now). It was either New York City or Disney World (I’m 60% sure it’s the latter).
Been to Planet Hollywood exactly once.I was in college and was, with a small group of friends, visiting Indianapolis of all places. At the time this was, by far, the farthest I had been away from home. First time I had been on an airplane. I insisted we go, basically because it was a big-city thing that I had heard of. I knew it wasn’t fancy and nothing was great, but the food and service were good and it was a generally positive experience. I remember quite liking the burger but as the Monarch would say “steak fries… always soggy.”My country-bumpkin ass has been to a lot more places at this point, but I kind of miss the over-the-top themed restaurants like this. (I think there was even a Stallone Over the Top poster there- loved that movie). There are lots of people for whom going to a restaurant will always be kind of a special treat – the spectacle of a place adds bang for your buck, and you also can’t underestimate the value of sort of knowing what you are in for even if you have never been there.Also, plenty of ALL restaurants serve mediocre food. I have been to many smaller more with-it venues where the food was bad to some degree. I don’t care if it’s all-organic and your servers are all tatted up vegans or whatever, don’t fucking serve me a brown avocado. If you are cool enough to have pork belly in an item, have some idea what to do with it. A gnarly hunk of fat is just going to get left on my plate, and I am going to resent paying for it.I know its corny, but even the dumpster-grade Hollywood memorabilia in Planet Hollywood was still cool to see, and added a lot to the experience. I just love movies and tv, they were and will always be a window into the wider world. And I did buy a t-shirt.
At least I only bought a pin and not a shirt.
Okay, let me get this straight: You loved Over The Top?!?I have a hard time wrapping my head around that . . . I’m honestly shocked that anyone would admit to actually having seen that movie. Indeed, I’m amazed that anyone had actually seen the movie at all. As I recall, it was in theaters for less time than it took for a single viewing of the movie.
Hah, yes. But the video store always had my back. Of course I will admit to seeing it, I only regret that there are so many movies I haven’t seen.And at 10 or 11, yes, I absolutely loved Over the Top. That still counts in my book.
Fair enough!
Jesus, are you trying to sound cool by saying you haven’t seen a shitty movie?
Mission. Fucking. Accomplished.
Read this, then watch this
Never ate in a Planet Hollywood, but I did eat at the Hard Rock Cafe in Bangkok during the World Scout Jamboree in 2003, the LDS scouts in my Troop were ordering Shirley Temples like they were some sort of forbidden fruit lol
My older sister was a server at the Times Square location for some years in the late 90s/early 00s, so I have some familiarity with the menu of that era and a number of stories, none of which are especially interesting but most of which end with the punchline, “Then X never showed up.” And the few stories where X DID show up had the coda, “and was an asshole.”The appeal of Planet Hollywood was supposed to be that someone famous could show up. But between the fact that famous people have better restaurants to go to and the fact that, once a restaurant chain has expanded into hundreds of locations where a celebrity never will be, it becomes easy enough to figure out no one interesting is going to be there. And then when it expands so much that even the memoribilia is completely suspect…what’s the point?The fact that the NYC location has largely been swallowed up by a Bucca de Beppo (which is its own kind of terrible in a city with a hundred or more decent authentic Italian restaurants) tells this particular story. But I’d love a deep dive in the real story of how, for a brief moment, PH looked like the FUTURE. Unless you lived in LA or NYC a long time you might never have known it, but this place spawned a whole series of ever-more-specific theme restaurants designed to capitalize off of its “success.” Let’s talk about the Fashion Cafe. Comedy Nation. All-Star Cafe. WWE New York. All of which seemed to be decorated by whatever celebrities or companies were originally going to donate to Goodwill.
I still cannot understand something: was it that difficult to offer decent food? Making a decent or good burger with mediocre ingredients is not that hard and if not it would not be that hard to find something very cheap to add as a prop that made it unique. I don’t know. I have never had a business or a restaurant anyway.
I remember eating at the Planet Hollywood in Chicago in 1994, initially being excited to be there and then upon realizing how expensive the less than mediocre food and service was, made me want to immediately to go across the street to Hooters, eat some wings, drink a few beers and hang out w/ waitresses. Always enjoyed the Hard Rock more as the food and service were usually better, it wasn’t quite as noisy, and when I went to the one in Toronto back in 2006, I watched a Blue Jays game at the same time.
I still remember the SNL joke when they launched Planet Hollywood on Weekend Update against a backdrop of Schwarzenegger, Willis and Stallone.
“The menu will consist mainly of Beef, Ham and large slow-talking Italian vegetables”
How does Hard Rock Café stay open? Their food also sucks. Is Planet Hollywood just that rancid?
At least the Hard Rock Cafe is still around to play music videos from 30 years ago while you eat a dry hamburger
k but like, the actual article spends maybe a couple paragraphs on the food. it’s not exactly the thesis statement your headline makes it out to be.
So, my awful story is that when I went on a 9-day educational tour of Europe on a shoestring budget because I was a lower-middle-class with one educated parent (but a two parent household) the much wealthier kids and their parent that could go with them insisted we eat at Planet Hollywood in Paris….PARIS. We saw the toilet that wanted to eat a small child’s shit and/or penis in there, it’s literally the only thing I can recall with any vivid detail, mind you, this was 1997, so Look who’s Talking / Too (I forget which one the toilet is in) wasn’t THAT old but I felt oddly aware and kind of inspired seeing this dumb movie prop before we went to the Louvre and saw a fair bit of western civilization’s triumphs…cause…you know, dumb white kids and their awful parents had to ‘Merica and go full Ugly Americans.I did get to visit the oldest French Catholic church as we were heading towards Switzerland and I got to eat the best Spaghetti Bolognese in my life in a tiny bistro in the town we were in with fellow tourists in our group while the rest of people I knew bailed to go back to the bus. They were all Mormons and Costa Ricans (two different groups).
It’s funny how Stallone and Willis were the last celeb owners standing considering how the relationship of the two blew up:Also, I had no idea that Planet Hollywood still exists.
PH was the last place I ate before my appendix exploded (a niece’s birthday). I wasn’t feeling great, so I ordered a salad, and this vast trough of over-dressed iceberg and inedible, faintly frozen chicken arrived.A few days later, I underwent emergency surgery, and my dreams were full of screaming children forcing rotten food down my throat.
When they opened the massive Columbus Ohio location (part of a mall which Schwartzenegger also invested in), Arnie arrived at the opening driving a tank and smoking a stogie. It’s long gone now, of course. But Columbus still has a bronze statue of Arnold flexing, displayed outside the city’s convention center.
The Arnold Classic bodybuilding contest and expo is held every year in Columbus. I’m pretty sure that is the reason for the statue.
I went to the Planet Hollywood restaurant a the Mall of America in Minnesota a few weeks after it opened. I was a kid at the time, but I remember thinking how cool it was to see all the movie props. Then I had the food…. Even as a 6 year old I knew it was awful. We never went back.
Also, can anybody confirm my suspicions that a lot of the props are just replicas? The one near Disney in Orlando had Dorothy’s Wizard of Oz dress just sitting in the main dining room, and I just couldn’t believe (and still don’t) that was the actual fate of that outfit, to be glanced at once or twice by bored theme park visitors mushing their way through tasteless pasta rolls.
As a kid, I assumed (though would have not been able to articulate) that these restaurants were places you went once for the experience or when you were traveling and wanted something familiar but still seemed like a vacation experience. As an adult, I can understand the food is overpriced and mediocre; as a kid it came across as gimmicky.Other commenters have brought up Rain Forest Cafe. I feel like as a kid in the 90s, the idea of “restaurants as an experience” was more of a thing. Hard Rock, Planet Hollywood, Rain Forest Cafe, but even places like Fridays, Bugaboo Creek, Outback etc. really threw stuff up on the walls (literally) to give some kind of immersive experience. I wish I knew the logic behind that – did they think homecooking was going to win out? Were fast food places like McDonalds that bad, that they thought it was going to tank the industry? Were they keeping up with the Joneses? Or were they just on a ton of coke?
Thanks for the article about the article. I always used to get Planet Hollywood and The Hard Rock Cafe confused in my mind. I guess the clue is in the title, one being associated with actors and the other with music.
“flame-shirt’d”
Flame-shirted. Jesus fucking Christ.
if they can emulate the same menu from his failed Times Square restaurant you can go ahead and take all my money right now
When I was working in Manhattan in late 1998, I was taken to Planet Hollywood by coworkers for my birthday. All I remember is seeing a plate of Cap’n Crunch-covered chicken tenders and thinking, “I rather doubt Bruce Willis eats these.”
I read the Esquire piece which is approx 1 billion words long and keeps circling back to how the celebrities “used to come in all the time” but now don’t and also the Cap’n Crunch Chicken is famous but overall the food is meh… and then the subject changes away from the food.There’s a brief set of quotes from the actual restauranteur who was involved but they didn’t get into the food that much, but then again there was a reference to the food being meh (the chicken has Cap’n Crunch on it, you know)… and the subject changed away from the food again.It seemed to me that the whole premise of the piece (and this article) is “it doesn’t matter how many of Hollywood’s most gigantic celebrities you have, if the food ain’t good people won’t eat there” but the food is never really described in any detail, there’s no reverse-cursus-honorum of how the Cap’n Crunch chicken used to be really crispy but now it’s not or the burgers are mush now, or a systematic takedown of the whole menu Gordon Ramsey style etc etc…Also Esquire says things like “people came to see celebrities and eat $10 burgers” without pointing out that $10 in 1991 is the equivalent of $19 today – are we supposed to just understand intuitively that inflation makes a $10 90s burger super-expensive? Is that even expensive for a restaurant main? In fact there’s a whiff of “no mere burger could ever possibly be worth a whole $10!”
I needed less “you know celebrities used to come here (for Cap’n Crunch chicken) and now they don’t” and more explanation of just how far below the bar of “good food” the Planet Hollywood food falls. That’s interesting. Johnny Depp ate in a private room 25 years ago? Who gives a shit. Hell, it would only be a story if Arnie and Sly still did hang out at their 90s franchise restaurant 30 years after it opened.ETA: The bit where the cofounders claimed they both ran in and shouted “Planet Hollywood!” as their mutual choice for the name is weirdly endearing in its charmless bullshittery, but also very obviously told according to the terms of a legal settlement between them. “We came up with the name together independently at literally exactly the same time [turn to camera] like a scene from a movie! [huge stage wink]”.
While America was throwing money at this dumb place, we let Hotel Discovery crash and burn. We truly are a nation of idiots.
My favorite part of this is at the end, one of the founders says that if social media were around, it would’ve made Planet Hollywood even more popular when it opened. Nah man, people would immediately start making memes about how bad the food is. It would’ve failed sooner.
Went to the one in Chicago when it opened. There was sort of a “theme restaurant” area going in that part of town back then – in addition to Hard Rock, there was a very elaborate “Rock ‘n Roll” McDonalds with lots of 50’s and 60’s pop culture memorabilia. Both were very popular lunch spots on school field trips. I think Rainforest Cafe opened up around there too.
These sorts of places seem corny now, but it’s easy to forget that if you were a kid growing up away from the coasts (even close to a bigger city like Chicago), things like this were about as close as you could get to a Disneyland-like “theme” experience. And yeah, I don’t recall the food at Planet Hollywood being anything to write home about. Clearly, foodies were not their target audience. Although I vaguely recall having chicken strips or wings, and them being okay.
I can’t even read the damn article! You have to be a member! Screw that.
Given the success of Guy Fieri’s Times Square fiasco, Planet Hollywood should be turned into a fleet of food trucks that drive around trying to find customers. Don’t have to worry about people coming back. Just go out and find new ones.
“The excitement the chain generated at the time was so high that the whole enterprise seemed unstoppable” — I was there (well not at Planet Hollywood but as a real adult with professional and academic reasons to pay attention) and while there where certainly puff pieces those clearly felt manufactured. Everyone I knew (IRL) or read (business and economics) thought it was a flawed business. I remember there was regular discussion of whether it was a functionally a ponzy scheme. My memory is that I went once (maybe twice) out of morbid curiosity thinking I had to go before it inevitably went under.
It seriously never occurred to them that people at a restaurant might care if the food sucks or not. Jfc.
No doubt the food was a second thought, but I’d say the real problem was that they spread too far too fast. When I was a kid (late 80’s, early 90’s), Hard Rock Cafes were a capital-D Destination. They were only in major destination cities and when you saw someone in a HRC t-shirt with the city emblazoned on it, it was like the coolest tourist t-shirt you could have. If you’d been to more than one it was an impressive feat (my first two were NY and SF and that was because our family at one point lived in both those places). My memory was that the food was fine, but that wasn’t why you went to one in the first place. It was all about walking around while you waited for your food (well, at least as a kid it was), checking out all the cool memorabilia. They were darkly lit and mysterious, felt edgy like they weren’t meant for kids, and every one of the handful of HRC’s in those days had some legitimately museum-level historic items.Planet Hollywood was clearly fashioned after Hard Rock Cafe, but with movie twist. Should have been easy money. And had they kept a similar model to early HRC and stayed relatively scarce, they might have been fine. But around the time PH appeared, even HRC has lost sight of the benefits of novelty and were spreading all over the place. I lived in Sacramento, and we got one. With all respect to Sacramento (I honestly loved living there) it was not (and still is not) a Destination city. By that point, it was a brightly lit family place and the memorabilia was all pretty random and there were no Hall of Fame museum pieces – just record plaques and signed guitars probably never played by the artists who signed them. I never bothered getting a t-shirt.Planet Hollywood was like that out of the box. I went to one. I don’t even remember where, honestly. It was fine. I don’t remember the food at all. But with them popping up everywhere it just didn’t have the same cache as HRC in my youth.So yeah, I’m sure crappy food was part of it. But I think over-saturation taking the novelty out of the experience was a bigger factor. Their own founder and CEO said as much when they declared bankruptcy.