Garfield — a beloved childhood character; Garfield Eats — an abomination. “Garfield Eats” is a Garfield-themed restaurant obsessed with perfecting their marketing strategy, and clearly nothing else. With a haunting slogan like, “Love me, feed me, don’t leave me,” I often wonder how they managed to find a phrase so efficient at turning away customers before they even walk through the doors.
The awkward, cringe-inducing titles don’t end there, though. “The Garfachino,” one of their main menu items, is watery and bright orange, and looks about as artificial as spray cheese. The flavor was so boring and bland, it almost made me wish it was spray cheese. Their meals are arguably worse, titled “KIDult” meals for the millennials who have yet to accept that they are not quirky teenagers.
These meals include the “Garnivore” pizza and the famous lasagna. The “Garnivore” pizzas are shaped like faceless Garfield heads that would give any child nightmares. The crust seems two inches thick and was so dry, I felt like I was taking a bite of a cracker with a little sauce sparingly thrown on top. The pizza sauce is also neon orange, despite one of Garfield Eats’ many marketing strategies being proudly boasting the restaurant’s “healthy” and “all natural” ingredients.
And of course, the famous lasagna that Garfield is known for; Garfield Eat’s lasagna tastes exactly how you would expect fast food lasagna to taste: disgraceful. It tastes obviously nuked in a novelty box that is clearly the only attraction to the restaurant in the first place. The flimsy cardboard box features one comic strip to keep you entertained throughout your entire meal. You may think one comic strip isn’t enough to last you the whole time, but it only takes ten seconds to realize the food is not worth eating.
It is clear that this restaurant cares more about public image than the quality of their food when you visit their Google review page in which almost every negative comment that makes a valid complaint is flagged for spam.
As for customer service, it’s bad. The average flagged review mentions how most often the “fast food” comes upward of twenty minutes after ordering despite the restaurant being marketed as a “quick mobile restaurant.” It is shocking how long it takes the employees to microwave a box of subpar lasagna, and sometimes, they can’t even do that. A large amount of the poor reviews mention that their lasagna came undercooked and even frozen in some areas.
So, unless you’re a child who desperately wants a novelty box stained with grease and marinara sauce, I would suggest you keep your association with Garfield strictly by comic strip.