Rapture!

Be still my beating heart! Could it be? Is it possible? Can the never ending soggy salad bowl and mushy combi-oven bread sticks be heading our way at last? YES! It’s true! That paragon of journalistic truth, the Emptyprise reports that an Olive Garden is on its way. Roberto Donna’s BeBo Trattoria in DC is now closed, Galileo is yet to re-open, but no matter, Italian food lives, “when you’re here, you’re family” is about to arrive in Lexington Park. Not only that, we’ll also be treated to a Red Robin and a Buffalo Wild Wings. And, with their arrival, another piece of natural beauty leaves. The land on the right side of 235 North past Shady Mile will provide the chance to guzzle beer, eat burgers, and have that bowl of soggy salad. I always enjoy that particular piece of land nestled in between shady mile and the remaining patch of real woods just before the ugly current condition nearer the corner at 4. Bye Bye trees, grasses, flowers, hello asphalt.

As for the eateries, let’s take a little culinary trip south of Rte 4 and 235 (ignoring the places in Wildewood, Lennies, etc. ). We’ll not include WaWa (and ignore Blue Wind Gourmet which stands by itself), so starting to move south looking right, we find Quizno’s, Starbucks (a little reach), then Burger King, Ruby Tuesday’s, Bob Evan’s, Chick Fil-A, Panera, Five Guys, Applebees, Checkers, Rick’s, Nicolletti’s, and by some counts, there are 12 or so eateries in San Souci, so that’s about 25 venues. So good, let’s add more places, find more “Hi, I’m…” incompetents and launch more places to suffer bad service and mediocre food.

It would be nice to get another fine dining place here, although I’m not sure we could support it. Instead we continue to flood the market with almost every mid-range churn it out chain there is. What are we missing?