Legal Sea Foods, the local restaurant chain whose menu is largely as tasteless as its ad campaigns, is biting back with a new series of TV spots.

From Thursday’s New York Times:

Call It What You Like, but Not a Chain

WHITE CASTLE claims with pride that it is the first fast-food hamburger chain, and for good reason. It opened in 1921, just 15 years after Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” exposed horrific conditions in meat-processing plants. With its pure-sounding name, white interiors and fully viewable food preparation areas, White Castle helped restore America’s appetite for beef, promising consistency regardless of which location a customer visited.

But today chain ownership is sometimes viewed as a negative by food aficionados seeking one-of-a-kind food trucks and microbreweries, and locavores celebrating restaurants that use ingredients close to home.

Now Legal Sea Foods, which has about 35 locations, most in the Boston area, is railing against the term. Its chief executive, Roger Berkowitz, argues in a series of new commercials that its seafood restaurants should never be called a chain.

Representative samples:

Sorry – just as with Legal’s menu offerings, we’re once again left unsatisfied.