TGI Fridays - open, everywhere

Gorilla Punch is no longer on the menu, I can only guess...

tgifridays.com

When a chain is prevalent, it's hard to remember that once upon a time, this was maybe just a local place just trying to make it. From wikipedia:

Alan Stillman opened the first TGI Fridays restaurant in 1965, in New York. He lived in a neighborhood with... other young, single people on the East Side of Manhattan near the Queensboro Bridge, and hoped that opening a bar would help him meet women. At the time, Stillman's choices for socializing were non-public cocktail parties or "guys' beer-drinking hangout" bars that women usually did not visit; he recalled that "there was no public place for people between, say, twenty-three to thirty-seven years old, to meet." He sought to recreate the comfortable cocktail party atmosphere in public despite having no experience in the restaurant business.

...Stillman purchased a bar he often visited, The Good Tavern at the corner of 63rd Street and First Avenue, and renamed it TGI Fridays after the expression "Thank God it's Friday!" from his years at Bucknell University. The new restaurant, which opened on March 15, 1965, served standard American cuisine, bar food, and alcoholic beverages, but emphasized food quality and preparation... The first location closed in 1994 and is now a British pub called "Baker Street"; the brass rails are still there.

A second TGIF opened in Memphis (the location cited in the book, it has since closed); eight more restaurants quickly followed and Stillman and his investors found themselves with a chain. Then it just exploded to the point any small to mid-sized city has at least one TGIFridays. 

Stillman sold his share of the business in 1975, and settled down, with both a wife and a new restaurant. Smith & Wallensky is a steakhouse that turned into yet another successful franchise he sold in 2005, yet retained the rights to his NYC site. Definitely a restauranteur success story.

As a small girl in a small town, franchises like TGIFridays bypassed places like Jackson. Curious, I looked it up on the location finder: still nothing there. And I currently live 2 miles from one and don't think I've partaken in the baby back ribs or loaded potato skins in ages. 

Let us please raise a very large glass then...

Gorilla Punch

• 1 oz. vodka
• 1/2 oz. blue curacao
• 2 oz. OJ
• 2 oz. pineapple juice
• 1 cherry (edit: c'mon, throw some pineapple in there too, you know you want to)

Pour everything but the cheery in a cocktail shaker over ice. Shake well. Strain over ice into a large glass, and garnish with a cherry (or all the fruits).