Who are they?!?

Man, I fucking love LJS and wish I had one within driving distance.
Nothing like ordering a fish & chicken plank combo and not knowing which of the identical diamond-shaped planks is which before biting.
- LJS's chicken is way better than most other restaurants. I will die on this hill
  
  Chicken planks, fries, hush puppies, and an obscene amount of tartar sauce to dip everything into. And the crunchy little batter bits? Absolute gold.
  God I could go for some right now.

When I was a small child I loved Long John Silver's but now that I'm an adult I tried it once and it was so fucking oily that I feel like if they weren't in the United States they would be getting invaded by them.
- I think they're in the same bucket as Red Lobster and KFC. Used to be fantastic, spent a couple of decades trimming corners until all that was left was the grease.
  
  I looked at their location finder to see how close one is to me. The closest one is a combined LJS and KFC, so yes, in the same category.
- The smell of LJS actually gives me a headache. Nothing else does this to me the same way.

I just went on the LJS site to look for the nearest location and they have a rewards program called "Seacret Society".
Hmmm

As a non-American, I'm assuming it's a shitty restaurant?
- They’re just weird because so many fast food chains come & ~~ho the~~ go in the US, it’s hard to even keep track - but Long John Silvers; a shitty fish & chips place which is never busy, never seems to have any customers at all, somehow stays in business.
  
  Could be money laundering
  
  "come & ho the the US"
  How do you fick up that badly and not notice it?
- The available food is mostly things they can pop into the fryer: Think fish and chips, except you can also choose “planks” of chicken breast, or breaded shrimp, or little balls of seasoned dough called “hush puppies”.
  My wife hates them, and they’re an occasional guilty pleasure for me.
  
  Hah
  Found you :
- It's fast food that's almost all fried sea food. And they're like the cockroach of franchises, the few that are around tend to be in weird locations that have killed off everything but Long John's.
- They are not. The food is deep fried. The fish and chicken look and taste alike. You have to really pay attention to tell the difference. I really miss the local one. I would only eat there a few times a year but it was a nice option.
- Yeah, it's very low quality. When I lived there, I'd get recommended LJS because I'm British, and they wanted to get my opinion on their fish and chips.
  \ They stopped talking about it after all the complaints. I don't think I've ever finished a meal when I've given them chances, always ended up tossing most of it in the bin.
- Americans don't eat a lot of bseafood fast food or even in general. These are also not in every city like other chains so the locations are really far apart. They have a reputation of being a little sketchy/dirty. As others have mentioned you almost never see cars in the driver through or parking lots. With all that combined it's hard to imagine how they stay in business.
- Understatement to be fair. Its beyond lowest tier seafood

I had a cat that I found in a dumpster eating a taco during a hurricane. I only found her because she was yelling at the taco while she ate it. That cat, that I have seen eat every living and non living thing imaginable, refused to eat long john silvers fish
- Hahahaha

Catholics

It's Catholics. LGS makes 1/3 their yearly sales during lent.
- Why do you think Catholics don't eat meat on Fridays? The Pope owns Long John Silvers!
  
  They do own and operate restaurants, probably near the gift shop. I bet there are more hidden in their portfolio.
  https://www.museivaticani.va/content/museivaticani/en/organizza-visita/servizi-per-i-visitatori/ristorazione.html

I'm convinced LJS is Taco Bell for people who moved away from the coast. They know it's not sea food, but they crave it's badness for its own sake.
- Here in the Midwest we even have some combined Long John Silver and Taco Bell restaurants. You can go through the drive-thru and order off of both menus. They've been slowly disappearing but for a while they were all over the place.
- I’m from northern Connecticut and live in (southern, nowhere near any fished lakes) Germany. I tried seafood here a couple times when I first got here, but it’s just intolerably fishy for me, even in a taco bell sense.
  Though I guess frying it does mask a lot of fishiness. And LJSs doesn’t try for the cachet of “never-frozen,” so it’s possible it’s actually fresher than what you get in a fancy inland restaurant…
  I didn’t agree with you at first, but you might be on to something
- But taco bell is for when you want to see what new dorito thing they made in the past decade, or the bread taco hybrid (challappa) they have. LGS seems to have food that wasn't invented for gamers by someone that hasn't met a Mexican.
  
  Basically yes, LGS is seafood for people who visit the coast once a year at best, who has never met a Marylander.

Could have fooled me. All the ones that were near me are closed. I just checked, the closest one is 1.5 hrs away
- The one near me is closed Sunday and Monday, but it's still open.

I went there 3 times 7 years apart each time. Never again. Terrible every time.

We are the Chicken Plank Collective.
We meet every other Wednesday
If you are chosen by the ring of the bell, you get a 6 piece hush puppies for free.

I love long John silvers as a guilty pleasure.
- I’d upvote but this was too perfect…
- Same, but like a once every 5 years guilty pleasure. Surely that can't be enough to keep them in business.

I hate knowing that LJS still exists, but doesn't have a restaurant around me anymore.
The secret cabal is just the elderly. That's all I ever saw there when I was able to go there lol
- The elderly keep many disappointing restaurants afloat.
  There’s a place by my house that has aggressively mediocre food. Every dish on the menu is merely edible, nothing to rave about. The sphaghetti tasted like Chef Boyardee, the steaks are under seasoned, the fish is overcooked, burgers are decent but always dry, gyro platter and sandwich are served with watery tzatziki that ruins the otherwise pre prepared meat, and the entire breakfast menu is always served just slightly warm. This place has like 150 menu items and does none of them well.
  The only reason I go there is because I take my grandfather out for dinner twice a month. I ask him where he wants to go, and half the time he wants to go there. I have taken him to good restaurants but he doesn’t like the selection. He wants to be able to pick from 200 choices in one spot, even if none of these are particularly good.
  
  I think it's mostly just that they're cheap to operate. They don't require fancy ingredients. Their menu is limited. They need a few people to run the fryers, take orders, and clean the tables, and that's about it. They haven't changed the decor in decades. The buildings were paid off ages ago. And the property taxes are dirt cheap because the only thing sitting on the land is a Long John Silvers. If they don't cost much to operate, and enough people come in to keep the lights on, why not let them run their natural course? Sure, a LJS seems dead compared to the newest flashy restaurant in town, but that new restaurant has a ruinously expensive lease and a loan for hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment it needs to pay off. And the menu is 3x as complicated with much more expensive ingredients. The newer restaurant is hopping because if it's not hopping, it quickly closes down. It's only these dinosaurs that can keep operating even with low customer throughput.

The one in the photo looks delightfully old school. I bet they still have the bell you can ring by the exit door!
- The bell is still there, but last year the manager filled it with cement.
  
  If this was analogous to the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, what would be the equivalent historical point?
  Elagabalus? Maybe that time the title of emperor went to the biggest bidder and the guy lasted for a day? We need a Rough Roman Meme for this.

Beer battered chicken is phenomenal, and nobody else does it. I hate fish, but I love LJS!

I blame the mascot

The one nearest to me is combined with an A&W, another ancient fast food business that somehow hangs on. I've only had LJS once and it was absolutely disgusting.
- A&W has really good burgers and hands down the best root beer. Used to live by one, and it was always packed at dinner time on the weekends.
  
  A&W are everywhere up here in Canada. And the have an impossible meat option, so we end up there reasonably often.
  
  A&W is the best of the top few major brand root beers, but there are some in most grocery stores that are much better. Virgil's and Henry Weinhart's probably the best of the easily found ones.

I still claim that it is a wide scale money laundering operation.

That’s where you buy poplars!
- Fishy Joe's

look, sometimes I just need a box of 100 pups.

I'm not ashamed to be part of the Long John Underground.

There is one near where I work, but they are quite literally never open. They aren't out of business and their facilities are kept up, but it somehow just persists in that state.
- Sounds like los pollos hermanos

Count me in. Dad loved 'em when I was growing up and I occasionally go get some.

LOL this actually seems like a plausible scenario - it could be a regular meeting place for reptilian aliens, and who would notice?
- Used to work at a restaurant similar to Long John silver and quite literally yes, 90% of people that attended were very elderly. Fish restaurants seem to exclusively cater to old people. I personally don't like any fish
  
  Captain D's?

Hushpuppy underground!

I have no idea if they still do this, but you could order a whole box of "crunchies," the little fried bits of batter that flake off.
- we called them crumblies and its the only reason id consider going to ljs

...i haven't eaten long john silvers in at least fourty years, but i always liked their crispies...

Old people

We als have Captain D's which is just like LJS
- One of our captain ds is now a 'make your own' burger joint that ALSO, strangely enough, never seems to be busy but stays in business. There must be some sort of curse lingering in the very asbestos of the ceilings.
  The only other one is the last of its kind in at least a 50 mile radius.
- Cap D's offers baked, and blackened versions of their food. LJS is just about all totally fried. Cap D's is much better, but that isn't hard.
- Funny, I live in California where there's are some LJS's, but I've never been to one. There are no Captain D's here, but I've eaten in one a few times because I used to travel to Alabama for work. It was honestly fine. It was basically just what I expected from the phrase "fast food fish and chips."

What is a Long John Silver?
- A fast food restaurant that mostly does fried fish. It's named after the pirate in the famous novel Treasure Island.
  
  That sound nice. It doesn't seems weird to me it has a consumer base.

Genuinely wonder if it is a money laundering front at this point.

My parents used to take me there as a kid for the all you can eat peel and eat shrimp. Holy fuck the amount of shrimp I could eat, baskets everywhere… I still love shrimp and prawns, more than crab even (I apologize to all my Maryland family).

Last time I went years ago someone was shooting up in the bathroom.
Was a very long john silvers experience. Remember the food always beeing of a greasy quality similar to jack in the box.
Like it has no right to be as delicious as it is.
- Can't believe you met Long John Silver himself! 🤩

My great aunt gets their fish catered for her family Christmas party every year
- What does the fish eat?

I don't think I've ever even seen one. Are we sure they're real?

My partner randomly had a craving for it, and for the life of me I cannot understand why. We had to drive way the heck out of our way to go get some, and it was the most hilarious experience to observe from the car. Two new friends, four fish fillets, and apparently some very odd looks as the offered drugs were rebuffed, my partner comes back in and off we go, leaving the strange place tucked in the corner of two apartment complexes behind.

Fuck yeah! Time to join the Illuminati for a lunch date or whatever.

That stuff will make you shit worse than taco bell