Ugh. Macaroni Grill is vile. I’ve been there three times and never really been satisfied. Either something was undercooked or something was over seasoned or, the biggest problem, a pasta and mushroom dish I ordered once had like three mushroom slices on it and a few dribbles of sauce. It was like they ran out of food.
Well, just to make things more convoluted for ya, in New Jersey, “gravy” is another word for red sauce.
Agreed. The people who defend the food as fine and fight the good fight vs the critics might just have a fridge stocked with Bud Light and Kraft singles. Edible is a low standard.
Wanna know something odd? There’s an Olive Garden right near here. Except it’s a white-tablecloth place with exceptionally fine bread and very good pasta. Go figure.
To me, Olive Garden is that ultimate example of bland mediocrity. It’s not that the food is AWFUL, it’s that it’s a huge chain where the food is “okay” by design. It’s scientifically-perfected blasse.
I have similar complaints with other chains, but I will at least grant that most of the others usually at least have SOMETHING on their menu that’s kinda interesting.
It also doesn’t help that, whereas Fridays and Applebees et al. serve middle-American food, Olive Garden pretends to be Italian Cuisine. To butcher the adage, if you’re GOING TO piss on my leg anyways, don’t bother telling me it’s raining.
In smaller cities and towns without a sizable Italian-American population, Olive Garden is typically better than the locals, or at least it would be considered close to the top. Really, I’ve visited many places where the few local Italian restaurants are really bad; in comparison, Olive Garden beats them hands down with regards to both food and atmosphere.
In cities with a good-sized Italian-American population, Olive Garden is still pretty good, but it’s different, in a way. In Buffalo, I’d put it on par with an average mom&pop red sauce joint in a strip plaza. Even in a place like Buffalo, where there’s a very large Italian-American population and Italian restaurants are as common as Mexican joints here in Austin, the wait for a table at Olive Garden is still quite long.
It tickles me to think of Bill Gates or Warren Buffet or Oprah Winfrey dining in America’s finest restaurants and being served, by request, something called ‘red sauce’.
Oh, I expect nothing from Olive Garden. The only thing I care to eat from their menu is the aforementioned Zuppa, and I have the recipe. So now I don’t have to look at Demon Girl slurping spaghetti at me from the corporate mural they decorate their places with ever again.
I really, really like the stuffed mushrooms. That’s about it, but I would go there just for those.
‘Marinara’ confused the hell out of me when I moved to the states. Where I grew up in Australia, marinara had seafood in it. The other tomato stuff was just ‘spaghetti sauce.’ Although among the hearty sons of the soil I grew up with, it was unusual to eat it without the addition of meat, making the traditional ‘spag bog’, for those too lazy to say ‘spaghetti bolognese’.
Red sauce has an admirable directness.
He also had this:
“In the year 2000, flesh-eating zombies will rule the earth. When all the flesh is gone, they will become dirt-eating zombies. When all the dirt is gone, some will reluctantly go to the Olive Garden.”
Nah, those funny looks are cause you’re ordering *gravy *for your fries.
Friend Tooth,
I live about a mile from Warren Buffet. His favorite restaurant is a small, family owned Italian Steakhouse called Gorat’s. They have good food and modest prices. They serve a side dish of pasta with Marinara with every dinner. Once in a wile, you see Warren and Bill Gates there together (they are good friends) but I have never heard of Oprah eating there.
I think familiarity is a big part of it. People go to Taco Bell instead of the Mexican hole-in-the-wall joint because they assume the shiny corporate location will be cleaner (maybe, maybe not) and because they know that whatever Taco Bell they go to, they can order their favorite item and it will be the same wherever they go. No surprise ingredients, nothing “scary”, reliable.
Same thing with Olive Garden. It’s food made pretty straightforward for customers, and dressed up enough to make you feel like you’re getting a great deal even though the prices are kind of high when you really think about what you’re eating. Plus people love all-you-can-eat deals, and that part is even cheaper than their pasta deals, so it’s a bonus for the restaurant too. It’s corporately dictated so as much as possible is pre-packaged, pre-dictated, and you can take grandma there and not have her gripe that the marinara is “spicy” (unlike my coworker when a recent meeting had Italian food brought in from a family restaurant in our local “Little Italy” area, here in Chicago). If you want some place that isn’t fast food and you want to reliably know what you’re getting, especially if ‘strange’ foods might make you wary, Olive Garden seems to be a common ‘default’ pick.
Years ago, I was in a lovely little Italian restaurant for lunch with my husband. The menu is good-sized but not overwhelming, and all the dishes have their main ingredients listed, so if you don’t know what something is, you can get a very good idea of what it would be like just by reading the little explanation for each. A couple were seated by the staff in the booth next to us, given menus, and were encouraged to ask if they needed anything or had questions. Meanwhile, I went to the washroom. When I returned, they were gone. My husband explained that they had looked over the menu and started complaining about it - among other things, IIRC, “this isn’t in English,” “I don’t know what this food is” and the topper: “This isn’t like Olive Garden.” :smack:
Well no, the dish names weren’t in English, they were mostly in Italian. You’ll encounter that in many restaurants, even Olive Garden. From the link posted previously you’ll see lots of scary Italian words like “Pasta e Fagioli” and “Zuppa Toscana.” But the descriptions on that menu were in English! Finally, I would be willing to bet a lot of money that they’d have paid less for their meal at the restaurant we ate (quite well) at, and had more freshly-prepared food as well.
Finally, I prefer to not be in a spot where I feel like I should bring home leftovers from a restaurant. Serving huge plates of food is applauded by some as being nice for the restaurant to do, but it’s not always a good thing. Leaving aside issues of obesity (studies repeatedly show that we eat more when presented with more food), there’s practicality. Not everyone can get those leftovers into a refrigerator within a short period of time, or has a place to put them before reaching a fridge. If you’re going out for dinner and a show and don’t have a car along, you probably don’t want to schlep a box of smelly leftovers to the theater. If you’re going out dancing, you’re out of luck - you get to have less food for the same money because they heap your plate up with cheap pasta and charge you more for the privilege. If you’re staying in a hotel and on vacation, same thing unless you have a fridge and microwave in your room, and have an alternative to the foam container to reheat in.
And of course, many foods do not take well to reheating. Any decent, fresh ingredient (in my limited experience, perhaps there’s a better way to handle it) “Alfredo” sauce will separate when reheated in the microwave, turning into a mass of congealing cheese and a puddle of butter. More delicate pastas, carefully-prepared vegetables, and other things will similarly suffer from reheating, and most diners would have rejected those things outright if presented at a restaurant table, so why pay a premium price for them if they’re destined to be leftovers?
I agree, there’s something wrong about customers walking out of a “fine dining experience” with ugly white styrofoam boxes under their arms. Why not just order takeout if you’re eating most of the meal at home anyways? You basically went out to eat so that they could fill you up with lettuce and bread, and you have to microwave the main course at home. And, you tipped the waiter for what amounts to takeout service.
Actually, that’s sort of making me hungry now…mmmmm, puddle of butter.
Well, melted butter is awesome, I’ll give you that - but the cheese does not come through the experience well.
I LIKE taking home leftovers! Lacking anything more exciting to do, we eat, drink, box up the leftovers, and go straight home to crash and digest. After Dining Out Day is over, I am NOT about to start cooking later on, that’s what the leftovers in the refrigerator are for if anyone’s hungry, and they usually taste better than anything I’d be expected to whip up at midnight. Reheated ravioli or peanut butter sandwich? Reheated spaghetti with, yes, red. sauce. or a Hot Pocket? Warmed up chicken parm or cheese n’ crackers? Guess which one wins? (Washed down with gallons of water, of course, it being too salty.)
Ah hah! So he gets Marinara while you guys get ‘red sauce’. The class division widens!
So you don’t take leftovers home ever? Forget Olive Garden, if you eat a tasty meal at any establishment and there’s enough left over to comprise another meal or snack how is that not a big slice of awesome?
Just because I have it and want to show off, here’s a photo of a dinner I had at Da Nico in Little Italy in New York recently: No pasta in sight. 