I echo everything Richard Z. says about the food. It sucks. It sucks enough that I had a violent reaction to seeing the smarmy-dick CEO on TV the other night. I just got a reminder of how lame their food is two nights before at the Tempe location, and I still mourned the loss of my $20. How can Hooters get away with basically selling stuff that wouldn't be accepted at a school cafeteria?
Well, they have girls in tight outfits. That's how they get away with it. Not that they are attractive. In fact, locally it's only the Tempe location that seems to have a reliable supply of waitresses who don't pad their mustaches down with foundation make-up and don't in some way remind me of my mom.
So I applaud Richard on his generosity in giving 4-stars to this gaping wound on the soul of America. But I can't join him in his open-mindedness.
And here's why:
Hooters is nothing less than a titty-bar for henpecked husbands. Guys who can't go to see actual bare breasts at a gentleman's club for fear of landing in divorce court can indulge their fantasies of what life would have been like for them had the rubber not broken on that date ten years before just by going to Hooters. I can't remember the times I've been dragged to Hooters for lunch by groups of nice, married guys at work who will only refer to it as "that WINGS place" with a smutty grin. This is their little fun indulgence--their minor sin.
So I can't agree that Hooters "is what it is" and therefore deserves anything more than one star. It is a pallid imitation of something that we are still too repressed to acknowledge, and the insipid, revolting food makes it a total rip-off.