Top Secret Restaurant Recipes: Creating Kitchen Clones from America's Favorite Restaurant Chains

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0452275873 ISBN 13: 9780452275874

Publisher: Plume, 1997

#1 bestselling Top Secret Recipes series with more than 4 million books sold! 

Every year, Americans spend billions of dollars gobbling up meals at full-service restaurant chains, inspiring Todd Wilbur to change his focus from cracking the recipes for convenience store foods to cloning the popular dishes served at these sit-down stand-bys. Wilbur's knock-offs, absolutely indiscernible from the originals, are selected from national and regional chains, many drawn from a list of the top ten full-service restaurant chains, including Houlihan's, Red Lobster, and Pizza Hut. Also included in this savory cookbook is a special section devoted to dishes from hot theme restaurants such as Hard Rock Cafe, Planet Hollywood, and Dive! Recipes include: Applebee's Quesadillas; Denny's Moons Over My Hammy; Bennigan's Cookie Mountain Sundae; The Olive Garden Toscana Soup; The Cheesecake Factory Bruschetta; T.G.I.Friday's Nine-Layer Dip; Pizza Hut Original Stuffed Crust Pizza; Chi-Chi's Nachos Grande, and many more!

Review:

Long before scientists in Scotland cloned Dolly the sheep, Todd Wilbur was hard at work replicating recipes from some of America's favorite restaurant chains. Armed with Ziploc bags for transporting leftovers and plenty of questions for his servers, Wilbur has combined the skills of a private eye and a research scientist to devise the tasty clones included in Top Secret Restaurant Recipes. Wilbur honed his technique on convenience food, creating exact duplicates of everything from a Big Mac to a Twinkie; in this book, however, he sets his sights on slightly more sophisticated fare. Within these pages you'll find sure-fire recipes for such chain favorites as Hard Rock Cafe's Famous Baby Rock Watermelon Ribs, Cheese Blintzes from the International House of Pancakes, and The Olive Garden's Hot Artichoke-Spinach Dip. Denny's, Shoney's, The Cheesecake Factory, and Pizza Hut are just a few of the many chain restaurants from which popular menu items have been "cloned." So the next time you have a hankering for Tony Roma's World Famous Ribs or a slice of Red Robin's Mountain High Mud Pie, don't bother to go out--instead, eat in with Top Secret Restaurant Recipes.

From the Back Cover:

It's no longer necessary to stand in line for a table at T.G.I. Friday's or Red Lobster. You can make the menu items you love right at home - with ingredients from your local supermarket. In this unique cookbook Todd Wilbur re-creates more than 100 signature dishes from America's most popular chain restaurants - including such hot theme eateries as the Hard Rock Cafe, Planet Hollywood, and Dive!. Wilbur's easy-to-make knockoffs, the products of years of research, are indiscernible from the originals - and the most ingenious way we know of to cut down on the cost of eating out. But watch out, once you start cooking, people may start calling for reservations at your dinner table! Here are some of the best-kept restaurant secrets that let you eat in with the great taste of eating out: Outback Steakhouse Bloomin' Onion, Chili's Fajitas for Two, Tony Roma's World Famous Ribs, T.G.I. Friday's Potato Skins, Pizza Hut Original Stuffed Crust Pizza, and Sizzler Southern Fried Shrimp. Plus you'll find out the fascinating history of each restaurant and loads of food lore...including how ice cream sundaes got their name. The perfect cookbook for everyone who loves to eat out.