They're kind of fun. The restaurants are bright and cheery. The servers perky. The menus have cartoonish graphics, with flip one-liners to describe the mixed drinks. The atmosphere is casual, great for families.
Prices are low and the portions are big.
And, the menu aims at comfort food buttons. It made me think of Besecker's Diner, where I started my working life as a dishwasher at age 16. It was the only diner in a resort area of Pennsylvania full of upscale restaurants. Sometimes the line out the door would stretch to the back of the parking lot, but the food was strictly ordinary diner food. I hadn't visited either of the new Johnny Garlic restaurants, and so on a recent night, drove to Petaluma.