Great now I can hear Company Man talking about the decline of Olive Garden and casual dining as a whole.
Get out of my head Get out of my head Get out of my head Get out of my head Get out of my head Get out of my head Get out of my head Get out of my head Get out of my head Get out of my head Get out of my head Get out of my head Get out of my head Get out of my head Get out of my head Get out of my head Get out of my head Get out of my head Get out of my head Get out of my head Get out of my head Get out of my head Get out of my head Get out of my head
People on the internet all seem to have the most refined and bougie pallet. I’m not going to shout from the rooftops that Olive Garden is amazing or anything. But it’s not terrible food in my experience. And I’ve eaten plenty of authentic Italian. Olive Garden is Nickelback for pasta restaurants. Perfectly serviceable, but the Internet seems to be convinced you will die if you consume it.
Olive Garden is Nickelback for pasta restaurants.
Never Again
Multiple times in my life I have had either exes or family promise me a very fancy dinner outing for some kind of special event or occasion…
And surprise! It’s Olive Garden.
Then I openly laugh about how Olive Garden is terrible, you’re joking right?
Nope.
They are completely serious, and are now either extremely angry at me or utterly crestfallen, or both.
I’m actually mildly terrified at how many sympathetic comments there are in this thread. I guess that’s why there’s still so many stores open smfh
It’s a little expensive and its been a long time since I been there but nothing to write home about
That’s hilarious
The Olive Garden doesn’t salt their pasta water. This is to reduce corrosion of the cheap pots. But salt is important. It obviously makes the pasta taste salty, but also it keeps starches from dissolving into the water so quickly. Without it, your pasta will be mushy and not al dente.
Thats complete bullshit.
I never put salt in my pasta, and all my pasta comes out al dente. It has to do with the boil time more than it has with the salt contents.
Look at this fucking idiot. They think their raw pasta is al dente.
Enjoy your mush soup.
Olive Garden sucks so much. Blandest sauces, overcooked pasta, even the bread sticks suck now compared to the 90’s.
It’s the only restaurant I straight up hate because the food is that awful.
Only restaurant my family had a borderline hostile reaction from the staff. Seated other families before us, stating “we forgot you,” and ignoring a meal order from a member stating, “you didn’t order anything.”
I knew someone who worked there with a woman who, when asked if she recommended the seasonal cheesecake, replied: “it’s so good, it makes me wet.”
She wasn’t fired, so I don’t think they really screen their staff much.
This is somewhere on a spectrum between “hilarious” and “would you like to join us for dessert?”
Porque no Los dos
Is “joining us for dessert” a euphemism?
Sounds like she wanted your complimentary breadstick
Its 2003 and I am watching the Matrix Reloaded; the Merovingian has spiked the code of a cake he’s directed to be served to a patron at his restaurant. The special cake causes the woman to have an orgasm within seconds of ingesting the first bite of it…
…
Its 2023 and I am in an Olive Garden…
It really depends a lot on management. The one I work at takes customer service deadly serious, and we bend over backwards in the name of being accommodating. Had what you described happened at my OG you would have had your entire meal comped and probably gotten a gift certificate along with a profuse apology from the person in charge.
I kind of feel bad for you. I’ve never been to a “bad” Olive Garden. Sure it’s not fresh home cooked but it’s still good imo. That said I only eat the carbonara or the eggplant parm with gnocchi soup. Don’t think I’ve ever eaten anything else there.
Sure it’s not fresh home cooked but it’s still good imo.
Don’t ever take people’s advice and expand your tastes.
Bruh I was living my best life eating Wendy’s burgers dipping it into their mystery chili.
Then I wanted to “expand my horizons” and got invited to fancy events and ate expensive cuts of meat/learned how to taste specific foods and what to look for. And now if I order from Wendy’s, Im too busy overthinking mouth fills and flavor composition and shit 😭. I can’t even enjoy it!
Life was so much easier (and cheaper) when I lived ignorantly 😭
It’s possible then you’ve never been to a “good” one. While they were never great food, back in the 90s early 00s they were all a higher quality than what you find now.
I just don’t understand how one can fuck up italian food. One of the easiest foods to make. Yet Olive Garden manages to every time.
I mean their focus isnt flavor, but keeping the food lasting as long as possible so there is no waste. So they pour lots of chemicals into those tv dinners that the min-wage employees microwave for you.
Nah, italian food done right isn’t that easy.
Calling Olive Garden Italian food is like calling Taco Bell Mexican cuisine
Hey now dont insult Taco Bell they are entirely doing their own thing and gave up on pretending to be Mexican food awhile back. Also Baja Blast and Nacho fries slap.
Growing up in the south, I had countless times where the old hicks called Dominos that “Italian restaurant”.
If you wore this on a tshirt in West Orange or Verona you wouldn’t make it a block
Now I want that shirt
not even sure if I stand alone on this hill, but Olive Garden is the worst place I’ve ever eaten at.
Oh it’s not the worst by far. And for a college student 7 dollar all you can eat soup, salad, breadsticks, and wifi made it better than the local coffee place.
It’s not great food, but it’s far from the worst. I’ve had some truly awful food from restaurants that made me wonder hownthey existed. Olive garden is consistently meh. It’s not some place I would ever go willingly. But I know enough people are fine with meh. For some it is better than they get at home. And that’s why it’s still around.
Never been to Golden Corral? Lucky.
Golden Corral is one of my guilty pleasures. It’s something that overcooked fried chicken, bland steak, and yeasty pizza. Maybe a nostalgia thing from going there a lot as a kid.
Ryan’s was consistently better than GC in my area, unfortunately they went out of business.
Golden Corral: It ain’t good food but there’s a lot of it.
fair, been to one of those as well. definitely worse than Olive Garden.
Its a me … salmonella
Ew why would you put salmon on your pizza
The Norwegians are a plague apon society.
Wait, it’s all Olive Garden?
Always has been.
This must be a north eastern joke I’m too southern to understand 😅 I know Olive Garden isn’t real Italian but it’s not bad food by any means. It’s just over priced.
You tellin’ me they don’t eat pasta and meat sauce in Italia?
Don’t let none of these chuckleheads tell you the OG isn’t Italian. It’s as Italian as apple pie.
Next they’ll say Fazolis isn’t even a real word, and you shouldn’t cook pasta like french fries.
cook pasta like french fries
I’m sorry, what now?
Imagine a fry basket full of pasta, and instead of oil it’s hot water.
I thought that’s genuinely how they did it at high end restaurants to make sure you have a perfectly portioned bit of pasta cooked to the right doneness. I swear I’ve seen this method on Hell’s Kitchen.
Granted, I may be thinking about something else vs what you’re talking about but still.
Just like my Nonna used to make it.
That’s exactly how restaurants do it. I don’t know what that person is on about.
Excuse me!? Not bad!? It is fucking awful.
Don’t be too hard on them. If they’re living in the south, they have much bigger problems to deal with!
Recently moved from the south to North East. Didn’t know what good Italian food was.
It is actually very bad though.
“italian restaurant”
“Italian Inspired Food”
Is there anything with visiting New Jersey for? (Asking in good faith. I just haven’t ever heard anything good)
Yes, quite a lot actually!
I know this is hard to believe for people who only hear stereotypes about our state, but New Jersey has a lot of natural beauty. Northwest NJ and the Delaware Water Gap area have a lot of beautiful forested areas, and the Delaware River is so crisp and clear up there. Great for kayaking and tubing! All along the Delaware in Central NJ there are cute river towns like Frenchtown, Stockton, Lambertville, and Washington’s Crossing. These are really cute little downtowns with bars & restaurants, shops, and live entertainment. Plus with Lambertville there’s New Hope right across the bridge. We have farmstands with fresh Jersey corn, tomatoes, and peaches all over the place (remember, we’re the Garden State!), plus loads of local wineries. The Pine Barrens are beautiful for hiking and biking. Then we’ve got the shore. I will grant that NJ beaches don’t hold a candle to some other places further south along the eastern seaboard (though I will say that the beaches with tags are a pretty good experience), but you don’t really go down the shore just for the beaches. You go for the boardwalks, plus the casinos in Atlantic City. We also have Great Adventure, which I think every Jersey kid grows up going to.
And we have pork roll, the best breakfast meat ever.
So yeah, come check us out. You might be surprised!
I genuinely appreciate you taking the time to write this out. I definitely had stereotypes about NJ being less than pleasant based on all the memes, but I realize I should probably reconsider that. A wine -> casino -> boardwalk tour sounds like it could be fun (I have no idea of the geography so no clue if this is possible).
Yup! Every time I see a post deriding NJ, I feel the need to post a love letter to NJ as a rebuttal haha
Casino & boardwalk are easy to do together. Those are both on the shoreline. There are loads of wineries so depending on what you felt like doing, it would be easy to squeeze that in too. The nice thing about New Jersey is that it isn’t huge, so if you’re up for a bit of driving you can see a lot.
I had grandparents who lived in Philadelphia and every summer we would go down the shore to Wildwood when we were kids. Just spending days laying on the beach making sand castles, digging up clams and harassing the horseshoe crabs. Then going to the boardwalk and getting salt water taffy and playing games. Good times.
Princeton and surrounding area is also worth a pit stop.
Ahh I’d had something about Princeton but I must’ve lost it in editing! Yeah Princeton is beautiful :)
I’m from South Jersey, not sure who is keeping the Olive Gardens open but it’s not me. I don’t know what you’re looking for, but it’s a nice state for the most part, but I’ll admit I’m biased. I think most of the shit is because New York and Philadelphia have us sandwiched in between them and they’re very vocal cities with a lot of pride in themselves so we’re the easy punching bag. Just don’t force us to pump our own gas and there won’t be any problems!
The tourists.
Edison Labs is cool to visit I guess.
Gotta admit, the folks at the East Brunswick Olive Garden were always incredibly nice and accommodating. Sometimes you feel like eating a nostalgic shit soup and it’s nice to do so with decent service.
