There's a time and place for everything, and even the snobbiest of us food snobs can appreciate the time and place for the likes of Little Ceasars, Costco Pizza, Wafflehouse, et al.
Gone is the 90s yellow a la carte one. Gone even is the replacement that at least kept the classics on the back.
Now it's $8+ meals, with token hashbrown options at the bottom.
Used to be, you could get a perfectly serviceable meal there for under-$6. E.g. double hashbrowns ($3) + single hamburger ($1) + drink ($1.5).
Now the closest thing to the same meal is double the price. Double hashbrown $5. Single hamburger doesn't exist, and hamburgers start at $6.
Which means it's good drunk food available when the drunks want to eat.
I live 1,000 miles away from the nearest one, but I sure did love a late Saturday night at Waffle House when I lived in the south.
Where I am now, a "109 spicy special,"[0] hot off the grill, a single serving bag of nacho cheese Doritos and Pepsi does the job too.
His career as a chef was at a brasserie serving brasserie fare which is basically like working at a French diner, not necessarily anything that's going to educate your palate.
Again, not criticizing him, I'm actually envious, I wish I could be happy eating mediocre food, my life would be much simpler.
Sometimes a cheap-ass $5 meal really does satisfy people far more than a Michelin star restaurant. Humble bragging about only being able to enjoy non-normie food sounds silly and unrefined, really.
I do think as a chef learning haute cuisine is learning useful things about cooking and what makes some bread better than other bread, and what consistency a sauce should have and how to achieve it.