Apart from the theater, the whole 4th floor is taken up by restaurants. It's hard to say how long Johnny Rockets has been here thanks to its style, but if it's from when the mall originally opened like I believe it is, that means that we're getting close to the point where the amount of time from when it first opened to now is the same as from when it opened to the time period it's emulating! 😃 (The chain as a whole, being founded in 1986, is right about at that point right now...)
This place is giving off vibes that are some combination of the 1950s and the 1990s, lol. Yeah, on the point about it being longer since these places opened than the time these places were intended to emulate, I wonder if there will be any retro 1990s burger joints. Probably not. There are still some vintage 1980s/1990s Burger Kings around and Burger King is trying their best to emulate the 1970s/1980s so at least there is that!
ReplyDeleteI suppose the popular place most similar to Johnny Rockets here in Houston is Fuddruckers. Fuddruckers was once national so you might be familiar with them. Fuddruckers almost went out of business last year, but someone swooped in and saved them last year. Anyway, the local location right outside of Willowbrook Mall is apparently moving to inside the mall sometime soon. There was a press release about it. I couldn't believe that someone would intentionally try to move in a mall from a popular freestanding location that's been open since the 1980s. Hopefully moves like that will work out for them and won't prove to be the last straw for the chain.
On another note, Kroger recently started a 'ghost kitchen' concept at a handful of Texas locations and one of the products they serve are Fuddruckers hamburgers. Mike from HHR recently tried this and he'll have a review of it on HHR sometime soon. I've seen the review, but I won't give it away. However, what I will say is that the quality of the hamburger is pretty consistent with the quality of all recent things Kroger. I'll leave it at that, you can make what you want from that statement, lol. Maybe I'm saying that it is fresher than fresh, but I might be saying something quite different. Stay tuned to HHR to find out, lol!
Ha! If anything, it seems like these days we're looking further back in time for things to emulate -- in architecture in particular, so much design these days is just a cheap copy of things no later than the 30s, with architecture from the 50s and on being quickly wiped out rather than copied for new buildings.
DeleteI've heard of Fuddruckers, but I didn't realize they were ever anything but a Texas/southern brand! I don't think they ever made it to this area, or if they did, I never saw or heard anything about them. Agreed, moving inside a mall is quite strange, especially for a restaurant (mall food courts/restaurants seem to be dying off even faster than malls in general, at least locally). And I know what your thoughts are on Kroger these days! 😃