Semiotic Analysis: Meal at Applebees Restaurant - Essay Example

Semiotic Analysis: Meal at Applebee’s Restaurant The Applebee’s restaurant is an eating place many Americans are familiar with.Flipping through the pages of their menu, a customer is bombarded with services offered geared for selling to the feminine gender. The menu offers services that impact both mind and body including facial treatments and body massage. Apart from these favors, the type of food offered in the restaurant would favor a couple. The restaurant is designed for people out on a date.

The type of food offered is associated with romance, and furthermore, as one enters the reception area, there are free raspberries on offer. Danesi (2012) argues that such an environment fits romantic couples. The paper discusses why at the first glance, the restaurant’s meals connotations did fit the code of femininity and romance. When served on a plate, there are many denotations in the plate. Scientists argue that, most romance-style restaurants offer a good range of proteins. On the plate served, there was fiesta lime chicken.

The server holds the Mexiranch dressing and Jackcheddar cheese. The meal came with rice and a bottle of wine. The first thing a customer notices about the meal is how romantic it is. The servers have excellent symmetry, not only in their dressing code and facial features, but also how they communicate to the customers. The symmetry is complemented by how the food taste and one can believe the servers are the ones who cooked it. The food was modified using color contrast between the green, red sauce, a white plate, and a brownish chicken, and more specifically the red wine.

What is crucial to this meal is that attention is attracted to the right places (Chandler, 2012). The focus is brought directly to the romantic serene created, but why? There are reasons why the restaurant owners want the customers to be caught up in this romantic scene. The restaurant wants to sell their romance policy, and they know how to go about selling their policy. The restaurant has created romance around their meals. A person notices that the meal creates convenience to romantic partners, and the services come with upgraded amenities that include facial treatments and more (Veen, 2012).

What is different about the meal offered is plain to see. The meal is from processed meats and not freshly prepared. Additionally, one could recognize the simplicity in the preparation of the meal because there is no use of many spices and additives. The simplicity is meant for the restaurant to transcend its message. The message is to build relationships with couples who are health-sensitive and who want to avoid effects of too much spices in foods (Danesi, 2012). The meal would not favor romance couples if there were no wine and if the servers were dressed half naked.

It is not the image that the restaurant owner wants to pass out. One tiny detail which, once noticed, becomes an add to the restaurant’s service delivery, is a round table organization of its furniture. While it can be expected that the lovers would choose their sitting arrangement, round table format is part of the romance myth. Overall, the restaurant is trying to associate the meal with the love every couple is supposedly to have. Applebee restaurant is the most convenient place to be for couples.

References Chandler, D. (2012). (Signs; Denotation, Connotation, Myth; Coding; Encoding/Decoding). Danesi, M. (2012). “Food” Messages, Signs and Meaning. Toronto: Scholars Press. Veen, M. v. (2012). When Is Food a Luxury?