An Elegy to TGI Friday’s

I was getting gas at Costco about a month ago when I noticed the TGI Fridays adjacent to the bank of pumps had shuttered. “Bummer,” I thought, but didn’t really consider it further since the Fridays in our city had closed some years back.

But then I saw that the Fridays in another city near us was also closed, and this seemed suspicious. A quick internet sleuth revealed that the chain wasn’t completely kaput (… yet… ), but doing some serious downsizing by closing 36 restaurants across the U.S.

And seven of those closures were here in New Jersey! No wonder!

Even though we haven’t eaten at a Fridays in years (I’m the problem, it’s me), I always bear a nostalgic fondness toward the TGI Fridays of my youth. Which I suppose was T.G.I. Friday’s then, with the periods and apostrophe in the name and logo.

As a kid in the ‘80s, I used to beg to go to Fridays any time we’d be driving to Pittsburgh¹ for a day trip. It felt fancier than the other restaurants of its ilk, more special than Ground Round or Ponderosa or even Hoss’s Steak and Sea House, the restaurant in my hometown that had one of the most impressive buffet salad bars I’d seen in my young life.

And I love love love a buffet salad bar, in case you didn’t know.

Though it seemed fancy to me, Fridays was still fun. I was trotted around to a lot of fancy restaurants as a kid, and this was a special occasion meal that wasn’t stuffy. It was probably what a 10-year-old’s fever dream of fancy would be: the Tiffany lamps and carnival-esque red and white stripes on awnings and tablecloths throughout the cavernous (to me) space, the the fact that we could eat out on a patio and have cheesecake for dessert.

And then there were the nachos.

These nachos were minimalist masterpieces. A far cry from the loaded mile-high platters we now expect from any casual dining establishment, these nachos were paragons of simplicity.

Perfect tortilla chip triangles, each one blanketed with sharp yellow Cheddar cheese and topped with a single pickled jalapeno, they needed nothing more in my estimation than a quick dip in sour cream to complete them.

In college, I’d occasionally drive 45 minutes from tiny Lewisburg, PA to the Fridays in Williamsport just to get those nachos or the Jack Daniel’s chicken as a rare solo splurge.

As Dan (husband) and I were waxing rhapsodic about how we both considered the nachos to be the ne plus ultra of appetizers when we were kids (this is one of the many reasons we were truly meant to be together²), he revealed a secret.

He told me — which I can’t believe he never mentioned before — that one of his high school friends knew how Fridays made the cheese so perfect on each individual chip. Ready for this??

The cheese on the nachos was not shredded but sliced. And the cheese slices were hand-cut to cover each chip on the platter.

See?!? This is why Fridays was fancy. Freaking hand-cut cheese slices on the nachos.

The frozen Fridays appetizers at the supermarket will never match that level of made-to-order perfection, but it’s fairly easy to do at home with a package of pre-sliced sharp Cheddar and a pair of kitchen shears.

And we did do it in honor of our Fridays nostalgia.

1. And omg, my childhood Fridays in Monroeville was just gutted by a fire a few weeks ago! This is a bad omen! ↩︎
2. We’ll always have the inside joke “I’m at a Fridays… in the airport!!” It’s not really funny to explain, but inside jokes rarely are. ↩︎