in all seriousness if you're using doordash and you come across a restaurant you've never heard of, you need to:
- click on the "more information" link and see the address on the map.
- search that address on google maps
- oh it's an applebees and there's no such restaurant as "the horny pasta slut"
Perfect example. Macaroni Man does not exist. It is not real. Some poor line cook in the back of a Pizza place is making off-menu mac and cheese so that someone else who understands how technology works can skim some money off the top.
A year ago, a youtuber by the name of eddie burback did sort of a deep dive into ghost kitchens, and he talked about these restaurants-inside-restaurants:
If you look closely in apps you can usually find their source pretty quick. Pardon My Cheesesteak runs out of IHOP, for example.
Not too far from where I live a ghost kitchen warehouse opened up recently and every time I go by I wonder about how the city is handling them.
This is the same guy who ate at all the Rainforest Cafes in the US on a single road trip, in case that name seems familiar.
This is a good informative video about the whole concept of Ghost Kitchens.