Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

Garfield said it best: I like my coffee to sit up and bark in the morning!
Here Blackie! Here boy!
And these new 'blond' roasts are the coffee world's lite beer equivalent ... If you really like coffee, don't bother.

Not being a lobster fan. after New England clam chowder, they're done.
NY hands down in all other categories.

I've been drinking bourbon and tonic with lime on the rocks for 35 years ...

Offal = Awful

Interesting lists. Being in Florida, I've come across many of these northeast and Midwestern "regional" places as I travel around the state. I'm guessing that the marketing folks are trying to cash in on the tourists visiting us.

In FL, we have a few (or more) of all these:
Steak n Shake
Friendly's
Bojangles
Popeyes
O'Charlies
Skyline Chili
Zaxby's
Sonic
Jimmy John's
Bonefish grill
Backyard Burgers

Many folks mentioned Whataburger and I enjoyed them for many of the same reasons as @sscutchen and @Laura Bowman. However, the one that opened here lasted less than a year. I ate there right after it opened and it was great - awesome onion rings BTW. A few months later, it was dreadful - undercooked, greasy food, dirty store, couldn't-care-less employees. Then it was closed - I'm guessing from poor management.

In the Houston area, I really liked the Pappas chains: Pappadeaux Seafood Kitchen, Pappasito’s Cantina, Pappas Seafood House, Pappas Bros. Steakhouse, Pappas Bar-B-Q, Pappas’ Greek Kitchen Yia Yia Mary’s, and Pappas Burger’s.

And a Southern regional list would not be complete without mentioning Sonny's BBQ (Sonny began cooking in Florida as a weekend hobby and now has stores all over the south).

A smart waitperson will automatically split a bill or at least ask if no one speaks up and says "My treat." No one wants to spend the last 15 minutes of a dinner straitening out finances, for the many reasons posted above.

Here's my opinion: splitting the bill for a large group is part of the service. If I have to figure out my portion, the tip is reduced. I typically add 20% to the bottom line of my bill (and round up to the nearest dollar) so I'm tipping on the tax. If I have to do all the math, my portion will get rounded down to the nearest dollar and the tip might end up being 10% or less. If a place wants to automatically add 18% tip for a large group, that's fine with me - I'm saving money - but they better split the bill or I may not be back.

Not having cable tv, I only watch FN when travelling. Most of my cooking instructiion over the last 25 years has come from Cooks Illustrated, Southern Living, Saveur, and Cuisine at Home magazines/web sites. I've always had good success with recipes from these sources to the extent that I very often will make a recipe for the first time when guests are coming for dinner. I'm not worried that I must first make a test run. Sure, there have been a few dishes that I would not make again but mostly they are keepers if the ingredient list is agreeable.

... and they don't call it offal (AWFUL) for nothing!

Oatmeal? I thought that was a "stick-to-your-ribs" food rather than a "clean-me-out" item ... maybe with enough raisins, eh?

My mother's "toffee" bars are similar except you spread peanut butter over the hot shortbread then make a chocolate frosting from powdered sugar, coffee, and cocoa powder. But what makes these "toffee"? I don't get that ...

Guy, your one and only solution is to rent a spacious seaside condo (that should be cheap and empty that time of year) that has a real kitchen and an extra bed room to stage stuff in.

I wouldn't say 'love' but certainly 'like' occassionally or when on the road:

Ruby tuesdays (good salad bar)
Skyline Chili
Texas Roadhouse (good steak and lots of flying peanut shells)
Friendly's (clam boat and two scoop Happy Ending 'Barney Sundae' of raspberry sherbert and pistachio ice cream with hot fudge)
Steak n Shake (I miss the lime freeze)
A new fav we discovered in TN is a BBQ chain called "Famous Daves"

"When I hear the word "smoothie," I still think of health food or some new diet fad." Funny, to me a smoothie sounds like a sugar-laden calorie bomb. Instead I'll take a Five Guys burger after most of the grease has turned the brown bag translucent ...