GAINESVILLE, Fla. — It is 1:30 p.m. on a Tuesday afternoon, and the Outback Steakhouse two miles away the University of Florida is not supposed to be this damn busy.
Florida fans celebrating the Outback Bowl ate Gainesville’s entire supply of Bloomin’ Onions
My alma mater won the Outback Steakhouse-sponsored bowl game, so I ate a deep fried onion for free while there was still time.
Nearly 24 hours prior, the Florida Gators were beginning a 30-3 rout of Iowa in the Outback Bowl. There are two popular appetizers associated with this game. One school (Florida this year) gets to be Team Bloomin’ Onion, while the other is Team Coconut Shrimp. The winning appetizer is free at Outback Steakhouse locations across the country the next day.
Florida’s players participated:
Even the SEC’s commissioner got in on the act.
There was a wait at the door when the restaurant opened at 11:30 a.m. The manager, Erin, said the staff was unprepared, and she was bussing tables instead of her usual early shift duties. The hostess told me that lunchtime on a normal Tuesday is the slowest time of the week. There is a 45-minute wait to be seated at the time I went, and Erin said that the wait was akin to that of a Friday or a Saturday night.
By the time we were seated, our waitress told me that she had only served one table that didn’t order one. She said the free Bloomin’ Onion deal following the Outback-sponsored NASCAR driver finishing in the top 10 of a particular race is far less popular. Walking to our table, I couldn’t find a table without a Bloomin’ in some stage of being ripped apart.
Through the early afternoon, the Gainesville Outback had given out 150 of them. Later that evening, I confirmed that the store had ran out.
Wait, just what is this Bloomin’ Onion?
For the uninitiated, it is a large fried onion with accompanying sauce. The “onion-ologist” in the kitchen used to do it by hand. Cutting the top and removing the core to get the onion to look like it’s mid-bloom (get it?). Now, there’s a machine called The Gloria that does it, but here is a video about the old way. You can find as many DIY Bloomin’ videos as any human would ever need on the internet.
Registering at a whopping 1,954 calories with 122.6 grams of carbs and 154.7 grams of fat, it packs a punch to the ol’ arteries. The 3,841.1 grams of sodium will throw you for a loop as well, but an onion is a vegetable, so this is was actually a balanced meal, haters. My co-worker Morgan Moriarty said she used to just eat the skin, so she is much more hardcore than you are.
Here is the fried finished product in all of its caloric, food-porn splendor.
1/7
In an interview with Foodbeast, a California Outback owner says 25 percent of all appetizers sold are the Bloomin’, and that the company averages over 10 million sold per year. After 2015’s Outback Bowl, restaurants nationwide gave away 75,000 of them. At this year’s game, they gave out Bloomin’ foam fingers.
Outback’s parent company is called Bloomin’ Brands and based in Tampa, where the bowl game is also played. It is also publicly traded on the Nasdaq under the symbol BLMN. The big Bloomin’ is $8.99, but you can get a few of the petals as a steak topping or a separate appetizer. There’s also a Bloomin’ Burger, which is exactly what it sounds like. For a limited time, you could get it with bacon, cheese, and french fries as well, because this is America.
Yes, the store ran out of Bloomin’ Onions.
The managers were too busy when I called later to ask how many they had in stock, and when I called a different store, the manager declined to release the number because it was “proprietary data.”
But I did speak with a fellow Gainesville Outback diner named David who went a little later in the day than I did. He said Florida’s victory was a blessing in disguise.
“I mentioned to our server Ryan Nanni’s tweet about the excess coconut shrimp, to which his response was that the consensus amongst the staff was that Outback would have been screwed if Iowa had won, because shrimp is much more costly,” he said, adding some speculation. “He wasn’t sure if they had stocked up excess supply of shrimp in case of Iowa victory and definitely felt that ownership was rooting for a Gator victory.
“By the time we were leaving around 6:15, he told us they were about to run out. He said they were told to offer the shrimp for free instead of the onion, and if they ran out of shrimp, they would then offer mac and cheese. Which makes you wonder, if they had to have a third option ready, they must not have had very much shrimp.”
The shrimp cost $9.99, a dollar more than the onion.
Assigning the onion and the shrimp to the respective combatants in the game is a relatively new practice.
I went to the 2011 Outback Bowl, and at that time, there was a redeemable coupon on your ticket stub that you had to take into the restaurant. In 2013, they started assigning the SEC to the Bloomin’ Onion and the Big Ten team to the Coconut Shrimp. Team shrimp has only won once in five tries.
Theoretically, it would be more expensive to send a ton of shrimp to middle America, but the brand isn’t making a statement about which conference it thinks is better. It also isn’t trying to lessen the chances of having to overload restaurants in the heartland with seafood. That conspiracy theory holds no weight, per the bowl.
“Way over thinking this, haha. Just picked one and we keep it consistent from year to year for marketing assets,” an Outback Bowl spokesperson told SB Nation.
The rivalry between the anthropomorphic appetizers has at this point become truly contentious.
On the way out, I noticed a TV in the corner of the restaurant on the other side of the bar. The 2017 Outback Bowl re-run plays on mute.
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