Once-Beloved Restaurants That No Longer Exist

Food is more than food. It’s memories. Eating the foods you used to love as a kid can bring you back to that time and place when you first had them. (Eating the foods you used to hate as a kid can help you realize how dumb you used to be, which is also valuable. Brussel sprouts are delicious!)

Sadly, not every food you used to love as a kid is available today. Some of the biggest restaurant chains of the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s no longer exist. The best you can do is try to recreate their recipes in your own home. But that only works if you can cook. If you can’t cook (me, I’m talking about me here, I can’t cook), you’re totally out of luck.

That’s when you find yourself looking at your phone, watching their old commercials on YouTube or going through the histories of the various restaurants you used to love that don’t exist anymore. When did Chi-Chi’s close? What happened to Showbiz Pizza Place? How is Kenny Rogers Roasters not around anymore? Did no one watch that Seinfeld episode?

That’s what this list is about. It features over a dozen famous restaurants from the past. Odds are you ate at most of them — and you’ve almost certainly heard of all of them. But if you want to visit them now, this is likely going to be as close as you get.