There was a time when anyone wanting a special night out would head to a place like Outback
Steakhouse, but they've definitely had their ups and downs over the years. Let's dig into their
questionable association with Australia, the truth about their Bloomin' Onion, and so much more.
Native Australian Besha Rodell reviewed Outback Steakhouse for LA Weekly in 2013,
and confirmed it's pretty much nothing like what a native Australian might expect.
There's a good reason for that. Outback Steakhouse was founded by four Americans in 1988,
and they were Americans who had never even been to Australia. They were inspired by
Crocodile Dundee... so let's put that into perspective. That's like a group of
Australians founding an "authentic" American restaurant after watching American Pie...
and no one wants that to ever happen.
When those founders were developing the idea, they specifically chose not to head off to the Land
Down Under, because they wanted to cash in on the kitchy stereotypes Americans had about Australia.
So instead, they scrounged things out of antique and junk stores that they thought
sounded sort of Australian-ish — like sheep shears and bullhorns — and opened their first
restaurant in a South Tampa strip mall. According to the Tampa Bay Times, the founders knew more
about the business plans of restaurants like Benigan's and Chili's, and that explains a lot.
"My earliest memory of Australia… the funny thing is, I can't actually remember it."
Since the founders of Outback Steakhouse didn't actually want to be influenced by the real thing,
and instead made their restaurant a sort of stereotype of Australia,
it's not surprising there's nothing about the food that's authentic, either.
Do you know what's not Australian, according to native Besha Rodell? Shrimp on the barbie,
along with Toowoomba pasta, and Bloomin' anything. Burgers, onions.... Not Australian.
It turns out that you can pretty much go down
the menu and find things that are definitely not Australian.
When one Quora user asked for native Australian opinions on Outback,
one native answered with a comment that puts it all into perspective:
"Pizza Hut is more authentically Italian than Outback is Australian."
"If you could have lunch with any celebrity,
living or dead, would you take them to Outback Steakhouse?"
How do you season your steak? Chances are good it's pretty minimal,
in order to let the taste of the meat be the main star. Seasonings, rubs,
and spices should be the supporting cast, after all. Even Jamie Oliver
recommends keeping it simple with salt, pepper, and a dash of garlic and rosemary,
but Outback Steakhouses season their steaks with a secret recipe of 17 herbs and spices.
That's an insane number of ingredients, and seriously,
when is the last time you made anything that took 17 ingredients? Cooks on the internet have,
of course, tried their hand at deconstructing the seasoning recipe,
and most have managed to make copycat recipes with only a fraction of the ingredients.
A quick search of the internet, and you'll find one that many seem to agree on. It's a
combination of salt, paprika, ground black pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, cayenne pepper,
ground coriander, and turmeric. Outback advertises their rub as being pretty incredible stuff,
but that raises not only the question of what, exactly, is in it, but more importantly,
is it all necessary? Order a steak, and you'd like to get some steak flavor, too.
Let's be honest: if you're going to Outback Steakhouse, you're probably
going for the Bloomin' Onion. It's just the right amount of salty and crunchy,
but details of how it was made used to be a major secret. There are 24 "petals" to each onion,
and getting those the same size is the key to an even fry. That's intimidating and might make
you think you shouldn't bother trying to make one at home, but you absolutely can.
You can even pick up the same gadget Outback uses, and while theirs is called the Nemco 55700 Easy
Flowering Onion Cutter, there are plenty of other versions out there that do the exact same thing.
And thanks to food hacker Todd Wilbur, you can get the taste right, too. In 2011,
he infiltrated Outback's back offices (and kitchens) as a part of the CMT show
Top Secret Recipe. Bloomin' Onion creators boasted about the 17 spices in the onion
and 37 spices in the dipping sauce, and while Wilbur cracked the code,
you'll have to buy access to his secrets if you want to make the real thing at home.
Sure, when most of us order a Bloomin' Onion it's for the whole table,
but there's no denying that even splitting it with two people... well, it's so good that
you will get to chatting, and eating, and the next thing you know, it's gone, right?
Bad news, Bloomin' Onion fans: it's way worse for you than you think.
According to Calorie King, a regular Bloomin' Onion has 1950 calories and
a whopping 155 grams of fat — which is more than twice your daily recommended
limit. And how about sodium? That clocks in at 3840 mg — also, way more than you
should have in a day. How about a little perspective? In order to work all that off,
you'd have to swim for 163 minutes, or walk for a little over nine hours.
That's terrible, but even worse is the Loaded Bloomin' Onion. That has 2,360 calories,
which The Huffington Post notes is even more than many entrees from The Cheesecake Factory.
Then, there's offerings like the 3-point Bloomin' Onion, and their entire Bloomin'
menu that took all that crunchy, oniony goodness and put it on their other items.
Is this something we need? Nah. It is something we want? Yes, and we're not ashamed to admit it.
Social media is tricky sometimes, and restaurants need to deal with a ton of
complaints, disgruntled customers, and keyboard warriors. Sometimes it's all in good fun,
and in 2017 Outback found themselves in the middle of a weird conspiracy theory that was
retweeted over and over again. Proving they have a sense of humor, they played along.
The original tweet was photographic "proof" that Outback Steakhouse locations in a few cities
could be connected on a map to form a pentagram. The association was clear,
and several keyboard warriors jumped to the conclusion that they must be
supporting either witchcraft or Satanism. The Huffington Post says it was retweeted
hundreds of thousands of times, and Outback Steakhouse responded with a cryptic image
that showed their Bloomin' Onion hovering over a map of Florida, and the comment,
"If the Bloomin' Onion is evil then we don't want to be nice."
Well played, Outback.
When Outback Steakhouse celebrated their 25-year anniversary in 2013,
they had around 900 locations worldwide.
But when they opened, there was a bit of time when they weren't sure it was going to work.
Nights were so slow they had to have employees park in front of the restaurant to make it
look like there were people there, and the founders poured a ton of elbow grease into
getting it ready. That first location was in an old bar founder Trudy Cooper described as
"...in very bad shape, and it smelled like alcohol."
Yuck. Word spread fast, though,
and other steakhouses were calling them to say they were taking business away.
So, let's say you're off to Australia, and get a hankerin' for some steak.
You could absolutely go to an Outback Steakhouse there... so, what will you
find on the menu of this Australian-inspired restaurant when you're actually in Australia?
A quick peek at their website shows you won't find any claims of being authentically Australian,
but the menu does look pretty tasty. You'll definitely be able to get your steak (from
New York Strip to rib-eyes, T-bones, and sirloin), and they have a ton of seafood,
too — like their Crispy Calamari, and their Volcano Calamari and Prawns.
Not a fan of seafood? You can also opt for some distinctly American choices like their Cobb salad,
cheesy fries, or their Razorback ribs, and there are a handful of burger and pasta options, too.
Finish it off with a dessert like the Chocolate Thunder or the Salted Caramel Cheesecake (New
York style), and at the end of it all, you'll think you just had a very American meal.
Outback Steakhouse also has a smattering of locations across Southeast Asia,
with very similar menus. Craving a bit of home on your trip to Indonesia,
Thailand, or Singapore? Stop in to Outback!
In 2005, Harvard Business Review ran a piece from Chris Sullivan,
one of Outback Steakhouse's original founders. He said that since they had all started out at the
very bottom of the restaurant business, they knew what it was like to work in each area,
and they wanted to make their restaurant different then most. Among their core tenets was this:
"Tough on results but kind with people."
They ran several studies of their own restaurants and found the more satisfied their employees were,
the more successful the location was. Customers liked coming back to the same
staff, so they built locations to be comfortable for those employees.
Half of the footprint of each Outback is devoted to kitchens, a ratio that's almost unheard of.
They spent extra money on extra ventilation for all that space, and Outback servers are only
supposed to work three tables at a time — compared to most restaurants and their five or six tables.
There's also not the layers and layers of management, middle management, and upper
management most chains have. Outback had (at the time) six operations execs at their headquarters,
60 Joint Venture Partners that acted as regional managers, and store staff.
It wasn't until 2015 that Nation's Restaurant News
announced Outback would be serving lunch. It seems like a no-brainer,
but Sullivan told Harvard Business Review that lunch was never a part of the plan.
He said it was all because of their employees. Restaurant managers forced
to work through lunch and dinner are often wrangled into 80-hour work weeks,
and when you're working that much it's tough to have any other kind of life. They didn't want
that for their employees, and they didn't want staff that was working two split shifts, either.
By the time servers and the rest of the staff worked through a second meal shift in a single day
they would be tired and more than ready to go home, and Outback's dinner-only plan was
to help keep employees happy and, in turn, keep customers happy with the
better service they were able to provide. Lunch, then, was put on the back burner.
The spring and summer of 2020 were filled with uncertainty,
especially for restaurant workers. In April, the CEO of Outback Steakhouse's parent company,
Bloomin' Brands, announced that he was forgoing his salary in order to help
cover the salaries of frontline workers. David Deno's no-pay summer kicked off on April 6,
and according to FS Magazine, he said he would skip taking a salary for as long as needed.
And that's no small chunk of change; his base salary is $900,000 per year.
In addition, the members of Bloomin' Brands board of directors also pitched in,
and announced they would forgo their salaries as well. According to Nation's Restaurant News,
it made a huge difference: they were able to retain many of their employees through
the pandemic, and as soon as it was announced the restaurants could reopen, they were ready to go.
The faux-Australian chain has been hard hit by a number of things,
including an industry-wide shift from casual dining to fast-casual, and this — along with
other factors — has led to losses in the millions. According to Business Insider,
Bloomin' Brands is feeling the pinch across all their brands, which includes not just Outback
but their sister companies Carrabba's, Fleming's Steakhouse, and Bonefish Grill.
Outback is in a complicated position. Steakhouses on the whole are on their way out.
Then, factor in their unhealthy flagship dish, their price tag, and the fact that they're now
a massive chain competing with much trendier independent restaurants, and they're heading
down a rocky road. Outback's fate is up in the air… bad news for Bloomin' Onion fans.
"This has been the hardest chunk of my life so far, and I was in Afghanistans."
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