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

by Todd Wilbur

Overview

#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!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780452275874
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	06/01/1997
Series:	Top Secret Restaurant Recipes
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	431,998
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

For more than 25 years, Todd Wilbur has been reverse-engineering America's most iconic foods for his series of 11 Top Secret Recipes cookbooks. With over 5 million books in print, the self-proclaimed "food hacker" has appeared in over 100 media outlets including The New York Times, People Magazine, Newsweek, The Daily News, Entertainment Weekly, The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Today Show,Good Morning America, Fox & Friends, The Dr. Oz Show, and The Food Network.  His website www.TopSecretRecipes.com is the #1 copycat recipes website with 1 million visitors every month. He lives with his family in Las Vegas, NV.

Table of Contents

Top Secret Restaurant RecipesIntroduction

Table for Two: The Restaurant Tale

Applebee's® Neighborhood Grill & Bar
Quesadillas
Pizza Sticks®
Oriental Chicken Salad
Club House Grill
Tijuana "Philly" Steak Sandwich®

Benihana®
Hibachi Chicken and Hibachi Steak
Dipping Sauces
Japansese Fried Rice

Bennigan's®
Buffalo Chicken Sandwich
California Turkey Sandwich
Cookie Mountain Sundae®

Big Boy®
Cream of Broccoli Soup
Original Double-Decker Hamburger Classic
Club Sandwich

California Pizza Kitchen®
Original BBQ Chicken Pizza
Thai Chicken Pizza
Southwestern Burrito Pizza

The Cheesecake Factory®
Bruschetta
Avacado Eggrolls
Cajun Jambalaya Pasta
Pumpkin Cheesecake
Key Lime Cheesecake

Chi Chi's®
Nachos Grande
Sweet Corn Cake
Twice Grilled Barbecue Burrito
Mexican "Fried" Ice Cream®

Chili's® Grill and Bar
Grilled Caribbean Salad
Fajitas for Two
Peanut Buttercup Cheesecake

Cracker Barrel Old Country Store®
Hash Brown Cassarole
Eggs-in-the-Basket
Chicken & Dumplings

Denny's®
Scram Slam®
Moons Over My Hammy®
The Super Bird®

Dive!®
Carrot Chips®
Sicilian Sub Rosa®
Brick Oven Mushroom and Turkey Cheese Sub
S'mores®

Hard Rock Cafe®
Filet Steak Sandwich
Grilled Vegetable Sandwich
Famous Baby Rock Watermelon Ribs®
Orange Freeze

Hooters®
Buffalo Chicken Wings
Buffalo Shrimp
Pasta Salad

Houlihans's®
Houli Fruit Fizz®
'Shrooms®
Smashed Potatoes®

International House of Pancakes®
French Toast
Cheese Blintz
Banana Nut Pancakes
Fajita Omelette

Lone Star Steakhouse & Saloon®
Amarillo Cheese Fries®
Black Bean Soup
Texas Rice
Sweet Bourbon Salmon

Marie Callender's®
Famous Golden Cornbread
Chicken Pot Pie
Banana Cream Pie

The Olive Garden®
Italian Salad Dressing
Hot Artichoke-Spinach Dip
Toscana Soup
Alfredo Pasta

Outback Steakhouse®
Bloomin' Onion®
Gold Coast Coconut Shrimp
Walkabout Soup®
Alice Springs Chicken®

Perkins® Family Restaurants
Potato Pancakes
Granny's Country Omelette®
Country Club Omelette

Pizza Hut®
Original Stuffed Crust Pizza
TripleDecker Pizza

Planet Hollywood®
Pizza Bread
Chicken Crunch®
Pot Stickers

Red Lobster®
Broiled Lobster
Scallops and Bacon
Stuffed Shrimp and Stuffed Mushrooms

Red Robin Burger & Spirits Emporium®
No-Fire Peppers®
BBQ Chicken Salad
Mountain High Mudd Pie®

Ruby Tuesday®
Potato Cheese Soup
Smokey Mountain Chicken
Sonora Chicken Pasta
Strawberry Tallcake® for Two

Ruth's Chris Steak House®
Barbecued Shrimp
Petite Filet
Creamed Spinach
Potatoes Au Grain

Shoney's®
Country Fried Steak
Slow-Cooked Pot Roast
Hot Fudge Cake

Sizzler®
Cheese Toast
Chicken Club Sandwich
Southern Fried Shrimp

Stuart Anderson's Black Angus®
Cheesy Garlic Bread
Western T-Bone
Whiskey Pepper Steak

T.G.I. Friday's®
Potato Skins
Nine-Layer Dip
California Chargrilled Turkey Sandwich
Spicy Cajun Chicken Pasta
Friday's Smoothies®

Tony Roma's A Place for Ribs®
World Famous Ribs
Original Baby Backs
Carolina Honeys®
Red Hots®

Western Sizzlin'®
"Teriyaki" Chicken Breast

Bibliography

Trademarks

Index

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Todd Wilbur's #1 bestselling Top Secret Recipes series

"[Wilbur's] problem isn't that the recipes he's devised aren't good enough, it's that they're too good."—Entertainment Weekly
 
"There is something magically compelling about the idea of making such foods at home...The allure is undeniable, and [the books are] stuffed with tidbits and lore you're unlikely to find anywhere else. These probably come as close as you can get to the original recipes."—Boston Herald
 
"This is the cookbook to satisfy all your cravings."—Juli Huss, author of The Faux Gourmet
 
"The recipes are easy to follow and... by preparing your own versions of restaurant meals you will almost always save money."—Arizona Daily Star
 
"[Wilbur's] recipes use everyday supermarket ingredients to bring brand-name foods to the home kitchen. Perhaps not surprisingly, his recipes are not complex. If anything, they reflect how easy home cooking can be."—Star Tribune (Minneapolis—St. Paul)
 
"The assignment: Find out how to make the tasty Jack Daniels Grill Sauce used by T.G.I. Friday's restaurants. The client: Oprah Winfrey. The gumshoe: Todd Wilbur. Mission Impossible for even the most savvy food expert. But not so for Todd Wilbur, a crackerjack culinary sleuth."—Pocono Record
  
"Many of [Wilbur's] dishy imitations come, like a box of Cracker Jacks, with a surprise inside."—Mademoiselle

From the Publisher

Recognizing that Americans spent $100 billion in 1996 dining at full-service restaurant chains, food writer Wilbur (Top Secret Recipes) has developed more than 100 knockoff recipes from such leading national chains as Applebee's, Denny's, Sizzler, Pizza Hut and Planet Hollywood. Convenience foods, simple directions and detailed drawings make these largely high-calorie offerings relatively easy for the home cook to duplicate. Surprisingly, this otherwise comprehensive collection does not include any alcoholic drink recipes to accompany spicy appetizers like Nachos Grande (from Chi-Chi's) and the Bloomin' Onion (from Outback Steakhouse). Some recipes are just basic home fare (e.g., California Turkey Sandwich, Cream of Broccoli Soup and French Toast). Others offer more innovation (e.g., Thai Chicken Pizza, Sweet Bourbon Salmon and Spicy Cajun Pasta). Desserts (e.g., Key Lime Cheesecake and Mountain High Mud Pie) round out the cookbook. Occasionally, Wilbur's overview of each restaurant and his use of brand-name ingredients sound suspiciously like advertising. But he generally maintains an amusing tone as he reproduces commercial fare for families hoping to bring some of the food, if not the atmosphere, of the strip into their own homes. Doubleday Book Club selection. (June)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly