The Top 40

Olive Garden is to Italian food as a McRib is to Texas Bar-b-Que.

I personally hate Olive Garden, but, on Valentine's Day, as my wife and I drove back from eating at a Mexican restaurant, we saw a line of people waiting outside one of the Olive Gardens. To each his own. If people want McRibs and overcooked noodles, they aren't in my way when I want a baked omelet at Aunt Martha's.

Laugh if you will, but you're being snobs; what's the difference between you and some jerk-off lefty disparaging flyover country or conservatives?

I was in retail marketing at one point in my life. Along with Ikea, OG is one of the two best retail operations I've ever seen: thoughtful, well-organized and customer-centric. A lot of planning had gone into each operation. The result is a business that is similar to a cash register: the results are pleasantly consistent, the product just flies out the door, and the customer is happy. Each succeeds quite well in fulfilling its own goals. That's success, no matter how you slice it.

Not every restaurant has to be cordon bleu. In five years, most of us will probably be eating the grass on the lawn, and OG will seem a sweet memory.

Can't say I've ever had a bad meal at Olive Garden. I have at Red Lobster, but for mid-price excellence, Carrabba's is my favorite.

If you like prepackaged, precooked food that is dumped into the bain-marie for heating and service, eat at the Olive Garden. Even the salad greens come preshreded and bagged.
No different than a Ho-Jo's set-up. (worked in one for travel loot)

Crap on a plate; can't be good because it isn't allowed to be bad. It just is.

ahem,
I've been called lots of things but snob isn't one of them.
OG may be a well run business and the staff attentive and polite etc. and the food ok for most but its not good Italian food.
I'd prefer a little mamma mia pizza joint to a corporate run & designed place. I understand, the Irish have to eat too. Pass the ketchup.
BTW its GRAVY!

ahem,
I've been called lots of things but snob isn't one of them.
OG may be a well run business and the staff attentive and polite etc. and the food ok for most but its not good Italian food.
I'd prefer a little mamma mia pizza joint to a corporate run & designed place. I understand, the Irish have to eat too. Pass the ketchup.
BTW its GRAVY!

I didn't really mean for anyone to take it personally. Please accept my apology.

There's an attitude that we've absorbed from the Left that everything about American business and American values is worthy of disparagement. No one wants to look like a rube. My point is that it is perfectly possible for a "middle-brow" restaurant like OG to serve the best food in the neighborhood. Not in Manhattan or San Francisco, of course, but still. I refuse to have this knee-jerk reaction, in order not to seem like a rube, ever again.

There's nothing wrong with being middle class and having modest aspirations. There's nothing wrong with simple sincerity of feeling. The Left is a form of Gnosticism, claiming, erroneously, that they alone possess higher knowledge; they are cooler. That should have disappeared when they graduated high school. The Left can go fuck itself.

Olive Garden does Italian food like meth heads do fashion. There's a reason their reputation is for bread sticks and salad instead of the actual cuisine.

Its nuthin' personal, its just business! I'm not sure I understand what you said here but I agree, the Left can go fuck itself.
I'd wouldn't judge Southern cookin' any more than Philly Cheese steaks but I know Italian.
Outside of Brooklyn, parts of North Jersey and the Bronx there is no good pizza! Sorry.

Shooter, I love you dearly, but everyone knows that a decent pizza is not to be found outside of Chicago....

Just kidding.

Sheee-it, besides it ain't pizza, it's PIE! As in I'm getting a slice of pie.

An Italian eating in a Italian-chain restaurant? Probably not if there's a choice.

Do Chinese go to Chinese restaurants?
You probably won't see many U.S. Mexicans dining at Taco Cabana.
Would an Englishman seek out our local Fish&Chips joint?

An exception--Rednecks loves that roadside Cracker Barrel, with some Goo-Goo Clusters to go.

The problem with Italian food is that its so easy to make well at home, you better get really good stuff in a restaurant or it feels like you're being ripped off.

And its not elitist to say Olive Garden has crappy Italian food any more than it is to say Chef Boyardee does. Its just subpar. You can like it all you want, I like lots of lousy food. Just don't act like its some act of a leftist academic to say "hey, this sucks!"

There really was a Chef Boiardi, and he had an interesting story. He played a large role in introducing Italian cuisine to Americans.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ettore_Boiardi

Chez Jewel. Slow cooking at its best. On the menu for Sunday: Spiced Cider braised pork shoulder, with cider tarragon gravy, mashed potatoes, home made bread with honey, sesame garlic green beans, and if the kids have behaved, cake.

I just can't seem to win against your all powerful spammer, Gerard.

Cue Bridge Over Troubled Waters, Jewel: "I'm on your side, when things....."

Ahem: You're right. There's nothing wrong with being middle class and having modest aspirations. I am hopelessly bourgeois myself: I love Norman Rockwell, chamber music, and bottom-shelf jug wine. And I am without aspirations as well: I achieved all my childhood dreams years ago, I wear button-up, old-timey pajamas to bed, and I otherwise have a comfortable, satisfying, boring middle-aged white-guy life.

It's just that I think that any outfit calling itself an Italian restaurant ought to serve Italian food -- the kind with flavor, nutritive value, and visual appeal -- instead of passing off as authentic a menu of mass-produced, poorly-seasoned, boil-in-the-bag starch-glop covered in watery ketchup and grade-Z Parmesan-Style Cheese Food Product.

I guess it's true that people know what they like, but it chaps my hide to know that Ma and Pa and Uncle Larry are being made fools of by a giant megacorporation that presents unlimited free breadsticks and bagged iceberg lettuce as real Eye-Talliyan cookin'. I mean, have you ever been to Italy? To associate the culinary tradition of that hopeless, hapless, lovely land with the dreck dished out by the O.G. is like calling that painting of dogs playing poker "high art". Sure, the dogs-playing-poker picture has its place -- but art it ain't. And to sell it to some ignorant fool as art is to cheat the buyer out of his money.

And there is nothing "liberal" about being able to spot a rube. But when a liberal sees one, he laughs at the ripped-off loser. The conservative wants the rube to smarten up and stop letting himself get ripped off.

In this world of revolutionary égalité, good taste is a crime, and the man of discrimination is suspect. Very well: I plead guilty as charged. I refuse to ignore the difference between shit and Shinola. If that makes me a snob, that's OK by me.

Ahem,
I respect you as well but Chicago Pizza? Al Capone notwithstanding its a big slice of pork roll baked in a deep pan on some dough.
Real pizza can be had in any pizzeria on Christoforo Colombo Ave (18th Ave) in Bensonhurst. Not a touristy area so you'll have to find it yourself if you plan to visit.

Benny Tudino's Pizzeria, Washington Street, Hoboken, NJ. I had to put my two cents in...especially since I haven't had great pizza upon arrival in Texas 27 months ago.

Points well taken in the discussion, but I find it so charming that this dear lady goes about her work so seriously and conscientiously. Clearly no snob, but very observant. Nothing escapes her watchful eye.

I don't doubt that New York and New Jersey have great pizza, but the Philadelphia area can definitely hold its own. There has been a large Italian presence here for generations, and today you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a pizza/cheesesteak/hoagie place.

I'm OK with Hoboken, a little upscale & yuppie maybe so ignore the 'organic' crap.
Chef Boyardee is what little kids like, its fun food and quick and easy for mom.

Philly is ok, right up there with Boston. But if I'm in Philly, I'm ordering a cheese steak. I can get pizza when I come back home.

Oh, Gawd, now it's the Pizza Wars!

This is nuthin' new. Brooklyn, Philly and Boston. Of course, Brooklyn is the best but who's braggin'?
Wha? Dare's a problem wit dat?

I'd be lying if I said I didn't open a can of Chef Boyardee now and then, if I'm feeling lazy.

And yes, it is part of my SHTF stockpile. Gotta rotate the stock. Yeah, that's it.

Two Cousins Cheese Steaks. THAT'S Italian!

Italian, eh? Actually, the head chef of both Pizzeria Uno's and Due's--Chicago's two top pizza restaurants from the 40s through the 80s--was a black woman. I can find no reference to her online (although there used to be one).

I tell you people, this lady really knew how to work the pots: she was a culinary genius. Her deep-dish pizza was so good it made you moan in ecstasy. I think she used lard or shortening in the crust. In a just world, she would be proclaimed a national treasure and her name would be as familiar as that of George Washington. (You remember him, the guy with the wooden teeth; he couldn't eat pizza.)

Since she retired, "Chicago-style" pizza can't hold a candle to her creations. Don't believe any claims to the contrary. God bless her, wherever she is.

And don't be jammin' on ol' Chef Boyardee. Every Saturday, my dear momma would open up that pizza in a box. She'd mix and knead the dough, brown the meat, spread the dough on a pan, sauce, meat, and veggies, and in the oven it'd go. And then us kids would come a'runnin. One of the weekly highlights. I grew up on that stuff. It even came with a little can of parmesan. A Chef Boyardee pizza lovingly prepared by mom to feed a herd of hungry kids, is about a good pizza as can be bought anywhere.

We thrived on that box of pizza, too! Happy memories of Crappy Pizza.