It’s one amazing onion. 16 ounces big. 4 1/2 inches wide. We meticulously grow them to create our Bloomin’ Onion® – a spicy icon in a culinary world where originality and innovation are touted, but seldom last. When our first Outback opened on March 15, 1988, we sold two. Today, we’ll make one hundred a night at a single restaurant. Our Bloomin’ Onion is a not-so-subtle declaration of how we prepare everything Outback. Our salmon, salads, soups, even our onions, are always big, bold and full of flavor. Everything on our menu (yes, even the croutons) is always made by hand, from scratch, every morning, and served that night. If we can’t make something right, using the freshest ingredients, we simply won’t attempt to make it. So tonight, let go of the worries of the day, and Go Outback. Order our Bloomin’ Onion. It’ll be just as perfect as the first one we made nineteen years ago.

It’s prep time. The red peppers, mushrooms, zucchini and red onions are washed and cut for the ‘veggie grillers.’ A fresh wheel of Danish blue cheese is opened to start today’s vinaigrette. Shrimp are cleaned. Garlic is chopped. Lettuce is washed. Whipped cream is, well, whipped. Dozens of Idaho potatoes are sliced into Aussie Chips. And twenty loaves of bread are cut, brushed with homemade garlic butter and baked into croutons. Whew! We could go on, but you get the point. Every morning we start out fresh. Every one of our soups, our selection of eleven salad dressings and sauces—from au jus to chocolate—is made from scratch this morning and served tonight. So let go of the worries of the day, and Go Outback tonight. There’s a freshly baked Chocolate Thunder From Down Under® waiting just for you. Yum. It’s just sooooo gooey and good.

One hour before any Outback opens for dinner, a bucket of spoons is placed at every station in the kitchen—from soups to desserts. The kitchen manager and chef will grab a spoon and ‘walk the line.’ Each will go through about twenty spoons, tasting every salad dressing, every soup, every sauce to make sure what’s served today tastes perfect. (No double-dipping. No worries. They use a fresh spoon every time.) Everything on our menu is handmade from scratch, every day. As we push each recipe to the highest threshold of flavor, it’s important that its flavor profile remain consistent (that’s chef talk for ‘quality control’). In short, we taste everything before you do. So tonight, let go of the worries of the day, and Go Outback. And while we know you appreciate our big, bold Outback steak knives, don’t forget about the spoons.

We treat our potatoes like royalty. They’re served to you wearing a well-designed, extremely tasty, handmade ‘jacket’ of kosher salt. But ours is a pauper-to-prince ‘potato’ story. They arrive at our door covered in Idaho’s rich volcanic dirt. Despite their scruffy appearance, you can’t find potatoes with a better pedigree than those produced by Idaho’s warm days and cool mountain nights. They’re plump, full of flavor, perfect in size and shape. Their sugar content and starch levels are perfect for baking. They’re scrubbed, rinsed, air-dried and put into a warm cozy bed to dry overnight. The next day our prep chef hand wraps each one in a ‘jacket’ of kosher salt to make sure all excess water is extracted. This guarantees the fluffiest baked potato. We bake our potatoes every ten minutes to make sure your potato arrives steaming, fluffy and hot. So tonight, let go of the worries of the day and Go Outback. For you, no jacket required. Even if you’ve been called a couch potato.

The aborigines living in the Australian Outback have no word for yesterday. No word for tomorrow. They live for today. Coincidentally, our croutons have no yesterday, or tomorrow. They’re made fresh every morning. Our Crouton Chef (yes, there is a crouton chef at every Outback) cuts about twenty loaves of bread into thousands of little squares. When these ‘croutons-to-be’ are perfectly crisp, they’re placed in the oven. Dozens of garlic cloves are chopped. When the croutons are a light brown, they’re hand-brushed with our homemade garlic butter and toasted again until they’re golden brown. We’ve been making our croutons fresh every day for nineteen years. We also make all our salad dressings, soups and sauces from scratch, every day. So tonight, let go of the worries of the day, and Go Outback. Live in the moment. Life will still be there tomorrow. Along with a fresh batch of croutons.