The New Outback

I go eat at Outback usually once a week.

It all started with the Cheese Fries at age 9. My Dad use to go to Outback to eat lunch in Tampa, I would visit him at work and we would go eat at Outback and after a few visits I discovered Cheese Fries. The rest is history.

Now since I have gotten married, as you can imagine I am no longer allowed to get Cheese Fries as my entree (which is a shame). However, I have still managed to convince my wife that we should eat at Outback on a regular basis. Primarily because the food is so freakin good.

This past weekend after our journey to Carrabba's Italian Market we went a little further south to Ft. Myers. Outback has recently begun a complete redesign/remodel of all of their units and the Ft. Myers location that just opened is the first to have the completely new look.

I wasn't allowed to go overboard and take a whole lot of pictures for reason of embarrassment by my wife. However, please know the wood, purple ceilings and awkward boomerangs are now long gone.

This particular location is in a plaza so I don't think the exterior of all the new restaurants will look like this, however you get the idea.

Inside there are no windows and the bar is off to the left of the host stand and to the right is the dining room. It is full of unique lightning and resembles an attempt at the "Australian outback".

Basically this is the way Outback should have looked for the past 20 years instead of the purple woodiness with crocodiles and boomerangs. I came across this video which gives a better idea of what the interior looks like. It's about 2 minutes long, but after 35 seconds you will really see how it's changed. Click here to watch. I found an even better video on YouTube that shows the new restaurant and also explains how Outback makes a Bloomin Onion. Click here.

Bottom line. Now you can eat the amazing food at Outback and not feel like you went back in time to the late 1980s. Don't get overexcited though, I don't think every Outback will look this good for awhile. In the meantime you can still get all of the amazing food "to go" and then not have to worry about the atmosphere.

Of course, I had to do my own video take on our experience. The video on top is of us lost trying to find Outback and the video on the bottom is after we ate in the restaurant (I was forbidden to film while we were eating).

Not entertained enough? There is one longer much more random video posted on YouTube of my wife and I lost. You can view it here.

To read more about how to eat all of the best food at Outback at the price you want, click here to download a copy of the new eBook Classy Eater.