Restaurants in Monroe

In 1964, brothers Leroy and Forrest Raffel banded together to come up with a new restaurant concept. Arby's took off almost immediately on the coattails of its hallmark roast-beef sandwich and the founders’ idea of providing customers with fast, quality food. Over the company's 48-year franchise history, its foundational pièce de résistance of thinly sliced, juicy beef has been served in a many permutations, and continues to be popular today, served at more than 3,500 stores in North America. Today’s menu still ignites appetites with traditional beef sandwiches, plus hot and seasoned curly fries, fresh-chopped salads, and desserts good for richly capping off meals or bribing any bridge trolls on the way home.

P.J. O’Reilly’s has a welcoming, neighborhood feel, fostering both the taking out of family and the taking in of frothy beverages. Eire-inspired fare peppers the extensive menu. Marry a spinster stomach to a comely appetizer with O'Reilly's Wedding Rings, a heap of circular onions fried in a dowry of Guinness batter ($5.99). Committed slurpers can coat their innards with Irish stew, a savory mélange of fresh lamb, carrots, celery, onion, and potatoes sidekicked by a salad ($10.99), while those with a meat-hankering can slurp on Rynne's Ruben, savory corned beef in a loving embrace of sauerkraut, Swiss cheese, Thousand Island dressing, and marble rye ($9.99). Drinks come in abundance via tap ($4.25 for a pint) or bottle ($2.50+ for beer, $16+ for wine) behind the wooden bar.

The Dinner A'Fare provides a simple route to procuring delicious, pre-assembled meals. Start by picking the six dishes from the menu, and then stop by the brick and mortar location to pick up the goods. Customers are able to customize ingredients according to tastes, allergies, or a court order to avoid certain foods. Each dish is made fresh—having been assembled within 24 hours prior to pickup—and can be kept in the fridge to cook within a week or frozen for later generations to enjoy. Dinner A'Fare also participates in the Sustainable Seafood Program to help fight environmentally destructive seafood harvesting and maintain the world’s uneasy truce with Prince Namor of Atlantis.

Today's Groupon gets you $20 worth of old-school Italian food and drink for $10 at Avanti at the Arboretum. Avanti serves calzones, oven-baked subs, strombolis, and bakery desserts in addition to pasta and its specialty, New Jersey–style pizza.Pizza Problems sold an unprecedented 300 copies in 1981, and was even briefly adapted into a Saturday morning animated series, although fans objected to Pepperoni’s portrayal as a softheaded comic foil. Activavision Studios recently announced plans for a 30th anniversary relaunch of the Pizza Problems franchise, a mature-rated gore fest featuring the sultry voice talents of David Hyde Pierce.

Meal planning causes stress. Stress sheds hair. Hair in meals sends food back to kitchens and demands a refund. Satisfy your family while avoiding culinary mishaps and hassle with today’s ready-to-cook Groupon. For $10, you get $25 worth of pre-prepped meals by no-fuss Meals. Join the ranks of satisfied pseudo chefs who have spent more time elegantly setting the table than worrying about what to put on it.Looks like you’re ready to cook! Note: Checklist cannot actually see you.

Founded by Jim Noble of Noble's Restaurant renown, the unassuming striped awnings and pale bricks at Rooster’s conceal an unconventional dining interior dominated by a wall of wine on one side and a wall of stuffed roosters on the other. The dinner menu offers Noble's tomato basil bisque ($7) as a soothing opener to a charcuterie sampler ($18) of chicken-liver mousse ($6), house-cured duck ($7), house-smoked salmon ($8), and other cured delicacies. Gourmands with a taste for heartier fare can skip ahead to sweet potato gnocchi with hazelnut pesto ($10), rib-eye filet ($22), or spitfire-roasted Carolina BBQ pork shoulder ($9) served with a side of Anson Mills grits with bacon ($6). All entrees pair well with assorted mushrooms fresh from the woods ($10), fire-roasted asparagus fresh from the garden ($7), artisanal cheese fresh from the artisanal cheese tree.