Believe it or not, the first TGI Friday’s, angled as a singles bar, opened in 1965 on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.  Twenty-five years later, the ubiquitious striped awning can be spotted at strip malls, autobahn exists, airports and piazzas from Aruba to Zimbabwe, including but not limited to Bonaire, Nicaragua, Iceland, and Saudi Arabia.  Ever since the sixties, but most especially recently, the bowdlerized junkshop interiors smelling of melting cheese and Friolators have served as battlefield for legions of customers confronting the gargantuan menu.  Should one simply order salad?  Every salad but one has fried components: croutons, tortilla chips, battered chicken.  How about wandering towards the more ethnic offerings on the menu?  Cajun chicken, Mexican nachos, Chinese pot stickers—all these cultures congregate in the deep-fat fryer, too. 

But Friday’s, according to a New York Times article pubished last week, is trying to contemporize its image.   “We’re trying to lift it from this old perception of fried foods, old brown bars, junk on the walls,” says company president Richard Snead.  Soon, they’ll be offering “Right Size” portions that will average out to be about two-thirds the size of the usual servings. 

“I’ll be honest with you, it’s scary,” says Snead, in response to the problem of how you sell the idea of less food, and make money at it.  Past experiments, like those Ruby Tuesday instituted in 2004, failed miserably.  Seems like people like buying enormous plates of food, even when they don’t finish them. 

Snead hopes to offset the financial losses of this new initiative by serving more customers, or the off chance that, having ordered a Right Size portion (still gigantic, by the way, just less so), they’ll still be hungry enough to order dessert.  Whatever his motivations, we think this gesture by TGI Friday’s is admirable.  It’ll offset their myriad unsustainable choices by at least a little bit.  Let’s just hope customers order it.

Nathalie Jordi's appetites keep her bouncing between between County Cork, New York, London and the French Alps.  When not slinging curd or interviewing farmers, she writes for Travel&Leisure, Conde Nast Traveler, Gastronomica, and her blog at www.autobiogeography.com.  Her dreams of a life spent baking, drinking margaritas, and sitting in the sun are gathering steam during her current stint as a waitress in New York City.