The Chain Restaurant With The Most Embarrassing Birthday Celebration

There are many ways to spend a birthday, from a simple homemade dinner with your closest friends, to lavish surprise parties. As long as the celebration is tailored to the birthday-haver's tastes, it's hard to go wrong. It's hard, but not impossible. This is where the restaurant birthday celebration comes in. If you've never experienced this ritual in person, count yourself lucky. 

It usually goes like this: At the end of dinner, just as conversation is wrapping up and checks are about to be requested, a group of waiters snake their way across the restaurant to your table, singing a unique take on a birthday song and carrying a cake with a half melted wax candle affixed to the top. They're singing not just for you, but at you, turning your special day into a spectacle. This is a ritual that some birthday-havers do enjoy and, hey, at least your get cake afterwards (though some chains, like Cheesecake Factory, have rather strict free birthday cake policies.) However, there are some restaurants that like to add a little flair to birthday celebrations. Chief among them is the Indiana-based Texas Roadhouse. 

You won't just get a song and a slice of cake at Texas Roadhouse, you'll also get the saddle. This saddle doesn't come on the back of a horse (that would be impractical), but on a wooden stand. Birthday-havers must mount the stand and sit as the restaurant sings for them. At the end, a complimentary dessert is presented, though you may not have an appetite for it when all is said and done. 

One doesn't have to dig deep into their memory well to recall the days when almost every visit to a casual chain was met with sparklers, clapping, and a birthday song being sung by staff to a captive birthday-haver. However, with the decline of casual dining chains, it seems the restaurant birthday celebration has gone the way of the dodo. But there is one chain that seems to be reviving both casual dining and the boisterous birthday celebration: Texas Roadhouse. Though in recent years Texas Roadhouse has forgone some of its more quirky practices, such as cracking peanut shells on the floor, the chain is still dedicated to serving its guests not just dinner, but a whole experience. 

Texas Roadhouse extends this energy to its birthday celebrations as well. You won't just get a complimentary dessert at Texas Roadhouse, though that is also included, but you also get a boisterous performance from the restaurant staff and a very special birthday seat. We really can't imagine who might enjoy this ritual but, hey, Texas Roadhouse seems to be doing just fine. And if you've ever dared look up the birthday saddle, you can see that some people do enjoy, or at least pretend to enjoy this prop-heavy tradition. Now, if you're visiting Texas Roadhouse a few months short of your birthday, but you still want a show, you might just be in luck. Each hour, the restaurant's staff performs a line dance for diners. Even so, this might be a bit much for shyer diners, who might be advised to order their country fried chicken to-go.