• by Barbara Lippert , Columnist, April 7, 2025

At a time when we all could use some comfort food, Chili’s is serving up deep-dish comfort with a side of comedy and nostalgia. And it’s just right.

Starting this week, the chain is resurrecting its blazing early 21^st century offering, the “Awesome Blossom,” a fried onion whose tender petals were last enjoyed in 2008.

Now resurrected, the Blossom is available only at Chili’s newest outpost, the Scranton Branch dedicated to celebrating “The Office,” the NBC show about life at the fictional, underperforming Dunder Mifflin Paper Co., also based in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

The show’s faux documentary style, with characters winking at the camera, gave it as many delicious layers as that onion. A knowing comedy about the daily tedium of office life, it also showed how people come to embrace that anyway, like family.

Ironically, at a time when “the office” has become an abstract, more home-based, solo proposition, (the pajamas! the loneliness!)  the old-school “The Office,” with its ever-suffering, universal characters trudging in every morning, turning the lights out every night, remains a much-loved, much-binged series that has never lost its cultural relevance.

Its sometimes-biting humor -- focused on a range of human quirks and egos -- seems to transcend time and age.

The link between Chili’s and the show? Though the chain never actually operated a restaurant anywhere near Scranton, it was written into several memorable episodes.

In one ep, the poignantly awkward boss Michael Scott (Steve Carell) took his troops to the signature baby-back ribs joint to hand out his “Dundie Awards.”

Given that we’re all hungry for commendation despite our mostly modest talents, receptionist Pam was awarded the trophy for the “whitest sneakers.”  She was so excited, and ended up so drunk, that she got banned for life from Chili’s.

Whereas the “Diabetes” award went to Stanley, though he did have many more gifts to honor. Poor Kevin was given the “Don’t go in there after me” (bathroom stall-related issue) Dundie, really hitting bottom.

In another episode, Michael takes a client he’s trying to impress to Chili’s and orders the aforementioned Awesome Blossom — really an Outback’s Bloomin’ Onion, if you ask me, dressed in a cheese dipping sauce. The Scranton Branch has recreated that booth to serve as a photo booth where guests can get snapped, while engaging as fulsomely as Michael Scott in the art of the faux deal.

Chili’s has also brought back the tiled tables, and the work of the actual chalkboard artist who created the chain’s original wall posters in the mid-2000s.

The opening is advertised by a series of social media and online videos that include appearances by “Office” stars Melora Hardin, Andy Buckley, Amy Pietz and Brian Baumgartner.

I choked up seeing Baumgartner , aka Kevin, off duty and in the flesh in these low-budget, low-key videos.  It’s like seeing your teacher in a department store when you’re a kid—how could this happen?  

As red-faced Kevin, Baumgartner starred in the famous episode, “Casual Friday,” in which he gamely brought his giant pot of homemade chili to the office, only to drop it all over himself, the floor, and the reception desk. Afterwards, he lay there covered in slop, like a dead man.

But in several spots for the Scranton branch he’s very much alive, hasn’t aged at all, and is a natural delight.

The same goes for Melora Hardin, aka Jan, who was the vice president of Northeast sales at Dunder Mifflin. She played Michael Scott’s boss and sometime girlfriend, humorlessly determined to get her improper interoffice fixes. In her spot, Hardin sits in a booth, swaying sexily while a young actor serenades her with Chili’s famous “Babyback Ribs” jingle. So romantic.

It seems spontaneous, if a little awkward, and funny, like “The Office.”

I like the fact that the campaign is undercooked, with no flashy ad vibe. Rather, the (social) medium is the message, and the cast members seem comfortable doing their thing.

At a time when family restaurant chains are generally struggling, Chili’s is not. According to an earnings call, for the second quarter of its 2025 fiscal year, Chili’s parent company, Brinker International, posted a 26.45% year-over-year increase. The dramatic growth in revenue was largely attributed to “menu innovation “and marketing.

It's marketing like this -- that deftly taps into pop culture and achieves its own brand of comedy with similar deadpan self-awareness – that does the job.

I bet many voracious “Office” fans will make the pilgrimage to Scranton. 

It’s all part of finding comfort during our stressed-out days.  And as the press release puts it, Chili’s understands that “dining out should feel like a celebration even if there is nothing to celebrate.”