Last weekend, Lydia and I visited the Franklin edition of [Image]Moe's Southwest Grill. These Moe'ses seem to be sprouting up like wildfire... there's one arriving soon in Brentwood in the new Publix development.

Moe's is in that odd territory between fast food and fast casual... a little slower and nicer than McDonald's or Taco Bell, but not quite as good as Pei Wei or Wolfgang Puck Express. Moe's is about the same kind of service and food you get at Qdoba or Baja Fresh, but with a little college town-type panache. The color scheme is cartoony and over-bright, and the food has undecipherable names like the "Joey Bag of Donuts" and "The Ugly Naked Guy." (is there an overall Friends reference I'm missing?) Luckily, they do spell out what each name is in terms of real food right on the menu.

Going with the college-level mentality, whenever someone walks in the door, everyone behind the counter shouts "Welcome to Moe's!" only when they do, they seem sort of half-hearted about it, probably because they say it hundreds of times a day... and it kind of comes out "waccadamooooes." It gets pretty annoying while you're trying to eat your burrito.

The food is okay, but nothing we had warrants a trip out of our way. The chips were greasy, and the burritos just average. If we have another coupon, we won't avoid it, but we won't go out of our way to eat there again.