What is the world coming to? It is a sad, sad day, when you can no longer enjoy a steak in a place themed after the land down under in a place where pineapples roam!

If you have not heard the news, Bloomin Brands (the parent company of Outback Steakhouse) shut down the last remaining restaurants in Hawaii. Making the 50^th state, a state without bloomin’ onions!

Luckily here in central Washington, we have amazing places to get not only great food, but a great steak! Yakima Steak Company, WaterFire, Famous Dave’s, Jean’s Cottage Inn, Lone Star Ranch House, Kyoto Sushi & Steak House, Powerhouse Grill, 2^nd Street Grill, and I could go on and on (not to mention the upcoming Texas Roadhouse).

But still, I don’t want Washington to suffer the same fate as Hawaii. I was curious if there was any tell tale signs, so I ventured to their Union Gap location.

Google Maps

I asked the server in the bar if they had heard about Hawaii, and if that was a concern for their location. They had not heard about Hawaii, but said that they had heard in the past of restaurants that have suddenly closed in some of the southern states.

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When asked about their central Washington location, they didn’t seemed worried, and told us how their restaurant was the top selling branch in the region.

tsm/Timmy!

It is a scary thought to show up to work to find a notice on your door that your place of employment is permanently closed, with little to no notice (the case for the Hawaiian locations).

Sheryl Matsuoka of the Hawaii Restaurant Association admitted that restaurants have been struggling with the higher costs of business, especially after the holidays. When the leases on the buildings are up, restaurants have to make the decision to continue business or pack it in.

tsm/Timmy!

For all the hard working staff, at all the Outback locations, and ALL restaurants everywhere, let’s hope that doesn’t happen.

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To find the best beer in each state and Washington D.C., Stacker analyzed January 2020 data from BeerAdvocate, a website that gathers user scores for beer in real-time. BeerAdvocate makes its determinations by compiling consumer ratings for all 50 states and Washington D.C. and applying a weighted rank to each. The weighted rank pulls the beer toward the list's average based on the number of ratings it has and aims to allow lesser-known beers to increase in rank. Only beers with at least 10 rankings to be considered; we took it a step further to only include beers with at least 100 user rankings in our gallery. Keep reading to find out what the best beer is in each of the 50 states and Washington D.C.

Gallery Credit: Angela Underwood

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