Olive Garden

For the longest time, I always said that there was no good Italian restaurant in the Quad Cities.  The "alto cuicinare" of Italian restaurants in town was the Olive Garden.  And now that we finally have some true Italian restaurants in town - I'm sorry - but I will never go into an Olive Garden restaurant again.

Olive Garden's are owned by the Darden Restaurant group, the same people who own Red Lobster (another place I won't go into - that's another story for another time), Smokey Bones barbecue restaurants (I ate in one in St. Louis one time, I doubt if I go back), and Bahama Breeze restaurants (never been in one, don't plan on going). 

My reason for boycotting Olive Garden is simple - there's a number of better Italian restaurants available in nearly every city where there's an Olive Garden.  It's nothing more than corporate fast food served to the masses.  It's not all that bad, but it's not the best in Italian food, either.  I can make better Italian food at home, and I still can't make it as good as some of the other Italian restaurants in town.   

Still, the one here in Davenport gets HUGE crowds for lunch through the week.  And on Friday and Saturday nights, I understand the wait may be up to 2 hours.  When I hear that, I think, "There are now four or five better Italian restaurants in this town than Olive Garden.  Why can't people figure that out?"

The bread sticks continue to be a big draw at Olive Garden.  They used to do unlimited family style salads and they'd also have unlimited pasta some nights.  But they'd get you so damn full on the bread sticks - which, I admit, are very good - and on the salad that you literally had no room to eat any of the main pasta entree. 

I don't know if they still do that or not because I haven't been at one in about 8 years.

The commercials depicting the Italian-American family bringing their Italian relatives to Olive Garden for a "true" Italian dinner insults the intelligence of not only Italians, but Italian food enthusiasts.  There's a great op ed piece from the Wall Street Journal by Victorino Matus regarding the Olive Garden commercials.

The executive director of the National Italian American Foundation, John Salamone, was quoted in the op ed piece as saying what Italians may resent most about the Olive Garden commercials is that they are being used by Olive Garden to imply the restauant's food is authentic Italian cuisine. 

A professor of mathematics at the University of Northern Iowa - Doug Shaw - wrote an essay about four years ago that echoes a lot of the same problems I have with Olive Garden, in general.  He used to have a challenge where he offered anyone a free glass of wine at an Olive Garden if they didn't have a better meal and a better time at a local Italian restaurant than what they could get at an Olive Garden. 

I'd almost like to do something similar to that.  We have a number of good Italian restaurants here in the Quad's now - Lunardi's, Centro, Antonella's, Tratorria Tiramisu, even Biaggi's (a Midwestern chain of Italian restaurants) is much better than Olive Garden.  The food is better, the atmosphere is as nice as the Olive Garden, and I can guarantee that you could take an Italian food connoisseur to any of those restaurants, you wouldn't embarrass yourself.   

It doesn't matter where you are - there's much better Italian restaurants in a 10 mile radius from any Olive Garden.  And I can't understand why people continue to go there in droves.

Comments

[Tony Jobe]

For reasons I can't explain it seems like every local newspaper "Best of" poll always ranks Olive Garden "Best Italian Food". I hope it stays that way because if the line there is 2 hours that means the line at the good Italian restaurants is shorter than it would be if people figured it out.

The last time I ate at an Olive Garden was at least 10 years ago. I recall the dining room was miserably cold. It was a hot summer day but they had the AC cranked up to "Arctic". I don't get cold very often, but I could feel my blood physically slowing down from the cold in their dining room.

I don't remember what I ate - probably some sort of chicken dish - but I remember that it was extraordinarily overcooked, to the point that you would think they'd have been embarrassed to serve it that way. And I had to wait 45 minutes for my meal. I took one bite and said to my wife, "I don't know why they didn't stop cooking this and bring it to me 20 minutes ago when it was merely done."

I haven't been back since. Don't really feel the need to, and all the free breadsticks in the world won't change that. There are way too many good Italian restaurants out there to waste time and money at Olive Garden.