Ms P wrote:

>>> The Mexican food is so-so and forget Chinese, it's slop. It's 2 hours
>>> to go eat any place decent. Hell, the *best* place to eat around here
>>> is Applebee's and it's 30 miles away.
>>
>> You mean the best place to eat *out*, right? I'm guessing that your own
>> home is a better place to eat than Applebee's, and it's likely that at
>> least some of your neighbors know how to cook also. (Speaking of that
>> caliber of restaurants, our local Applebee's shut down sometime in the
>> last couple weeks. The Chili's shut down a couple months ago, and the TGI
>> Friday never even finished construction.)
>>
> I get tired of cooking all the time though and would like to have a couple
> of great places to go eat once in awhile.

If someone opened a good cafe in your area, do you think there would be a
big enough customer base to keep it open? I remember someone else posting
about how the only restaurant in town (somewhere in Iowa, IIRC) was crappy,
but was always busy because there was nowhere else to go. Thing is, if
people don't have money to spend, they can't go out to eat. And if going out
to eat isn't part of the local culture, a restaurant will fail, regardless
of the quality of the food and the service.

Bob