although it seems we have always had plenty. As more restaurants like the Spicy Pickle move in, outfits that are less slick, less marketed and have shallower pockets are driven out.
I would say that all the sandwich joints on this site qualify as “fast casual” and are far less predictably dull than chains like Spicy Pickle and Panera. These big box restaurants are just that – big, soulless boxes. They may pose as real restaurants (as in “restorative”) but their main agenda is to part you from your money. No thank you. I’ll take my chances elsewhere, where I might get something I wasn’t expecting, good or bad. At the very least I might encounter a bit of adventure.
The Lunch Encounter 