The Underappreciated Eating Establishment Series: The Olive Garden

I never thought there would come a day when I would anxiously CRAVE The Olive Garden, but a few weeks ago I made my mind up to eat there and had to make it happen. I assure you, it was all about the breadsticks.

The Olive Garden breadstick is one of the perfectly crafted food items of our time, like the Gray's Papaya hot dog or the Dunkin Donuts blueberry muffin. The leavened logs are perfectly fluffy, just underbaked, slathered in olive oil and sprinkled with salt. Like their salad - also quite tasty if you get a good scoop - the Olive Garden's breadsticks will continue to come to you throughout the meal until you can't lift bread to beak. All-you-can-eat anti-Atkins comfort food.


My great Aunt Mimi, also a lover of OG breadsticks, used to wrap them in a napkin and steal them in her purse at the end of our Olive Garden outings. They WILL give you a styrofoam container for that Aunt Mimi, I swear.

I'll tell you what The Olive Garden isn't about. Authentic Italian cuisine. If you go in hoping for a step above Chef Boyardee or Ronzoni covered in Ragu, your expectations will be perfectly met.

The Olive Garden's big mistake is in the marketing of their dishes as authentic homemade. Their commercials feature big, obnoxious Italian families rounded up by plump, jovial grandmothers promoting the sharing of entrees off steaming platters. "Buon appetito!" Everyone clicks forks and snags bites from one another's plates, raising their overflowing glasses of Olive Garden house wine, (promoted in laughably painstaking detail by the OG waiters, btw) while an accordian rendition of "Mama Mia Pizzeria" plays in the background. How festive. Just like Italy. As my coworker Murph quipped one day, "All those commercials do is give you a license to be loud at The Olive Garden."

But the Olive Garden seems to take it's role as an authoritative Italian kitchen quite seriously. When D-Hardcore (my two-time UEE dining partner) and I plopped down in the eatery's synthetic leather booths a couple weeks ago, we immediately noticed little markings next to certain dishes on the menu, which indicated "Specialties Inspired by our Culinary Institute of Tuscany."

Wait.

The Olive Garden has a culinary institute in Tuscany?? And the best they could come up with was Chicken Marsala?

Other Institue options included the less-than-inventive Italian staple, Shrimp Primavera, as well as the moderately experimental Steak Gorgonzola Alfredo, which proved, as I once theorized, that The Olive Garden will cover just about anything in Alfredo sauce. Miss Stacia was not impressed.

But I didn't make the trip for the food. This chick came for the breadsticks.

After much deliberation I chose to keep my meal simple with spaghetti and meatballs while D-Hardcore went balls-to-the-wall with the Tour of Italy, a sampler plate consisting of lasagna, chicken parmesean and, what else, fettuccine alfredo. T-Money and Big Mo (Mo Money) informed me the morning after my meal that I had played it too safe with my entree selection, but I have serious doubts that the Olive Garden has a specialty I missed out on. I just wanted some red sauce to dip my breadsticks in, and that's pretty much what I got. A shitload of spaghetti with three, tennis-ball-sized meatballs that tasted like, well, meat. Covered in red sauce. Perhaps the scary thing about the food at this place is that it's not distinctive, but it's not inedible either. It kind of just is. Hardcore said his food was okay too, although even his six-foot-three frame wasn't up to the task of cleaning the monster portion plated for him on The Tour. I wasn't surprised to see the only dish of the trifecta he knocked off was the alfredo. (A sidenote about pasta alfredo: I understand a ton of people LOVE milky cheese sauce, but I just think that stuff is narsty. I can eat about two bites before I feel like I'm drinking cream for dinner.)

We decided to go in for dessert because I can never resist, sharing a raspberry swirl cheesecake that looked "delectable" in Hardcore's words, but was overrefrigerated and way too rich for my taste. That didn't stop me from eating it. We also indulged in coffee, although I'm not gonna lie, I kind of wanted to end my meal on the breadstick note.

Our meal came out to about 60 bucks between the two of us, hardly the IHOP bargain (about 15 dollars for just as much, if not more, food) but decent for a dinner out in New York City. After we paid the check I asked the waiter if there was any way to dine at the Olive Garden, ordering only breadsticks and salad. Apparently this IS possible. In fact, when I returned home stuffed full o' Prego and bread and chocolate crust, I flipped on the television, which immediately flashed a commercial for the Olive Garden's new lunch special: Soup, salad and breadsticks for $5.99. Now that's an AUTHENTIC bargain I can get down with.



**Apologies to Juju and Jay-Z, both of whom were promised an outing to the Olive Garden prior to my trip with D-Hardcore. For the sake of blog writing and curb craving, I gave into the temptation to visit early, but I will return again, if only for the breadsticks.

Everyone Loves Unidentified Meat

Occasionally people bring goodies into the office to share with their coworkers. Most of these offerings are of the baked variety- brownies, cookies, an occasional birthday cake. The generous Mo Money brought in a massive tub of oversized oatmeal raisin cookies just the other day, and it didn't take long for the community stash to disappear in this office of junk-food-lovers. But nothing has disappeared quite as fast as today's random blast-from-the-past goody, the Slim Jim.

I have no idea who purchased the elongated red and yellow box, a cardboard container I almost exclusively associate with 7-11, but about ten minutes ago someone ran through the dub room sticking their hand inside the convenience store carton to distribute the salty sticks. Almost no one who was offered the snack refused. And these weren't the wussy mini-Jims, they were the real deal, foot-longers, the ones where about a quarter of the way through you can already feel your blood vessels turn to processed meat.

Now I LOVE those things. They smell like breakfast meat mixed with two-day-old sock, and somehow that is irresistable to me. I love Slim Jims in much the same way I love hot dogs. The satisfying snap of the casing, the so-salty-I-can-feel-my-blood-pressure-rise tang of the meat. What's REALLY in a hot dog? Not sure I really want to know. I didn't really want to know what is in a Slim Jim either, but my loverly coworker CD pointed out that the meat is not "unidentifiable" if you simply read the vacuum packaging.

Ingredients include: meat (very specific), mechanically separated chicken (praise technology!), water (in everything), SALT (duh), corn syrup, dextrose, FLAVORINGS (again, the specificity here), paprika, SPICE (and everything nice), hydrogenized corn gluten, soy and wheat gluten proteins (need your daily dose), SODIUM nitrate (more salt), lactic acid starter culture (to help you cultivate your very own supply of lactic acid).

I chose to skip out on the snack (even before reading the ingredients) as I'm still in breakfast mode around noon these days. But I did derive much pleasure from people's attempts to make snapping sounds as they tore huge chunks from their personal logs of stringy, smoked flesh, exclaiming, "I haven't eaten one of these since

a) I was a kid!"
b) the last time I was stoned!"

It's a communal snack of an overindulgent, sickening unhealthiness that will be hard to top. After all, it's pretty hard to share SPAM.

For my lovely sister on her 21st birthday: A blog entry all your own. Says Miss Raquel: "It's all I've ever wanted!"

The College Man gets a lot of attention on this website, mostly because his late-afternoon incoherence and drunken antics fall in the sphere of obvious hilarity and allow me to reference things like bitches and blunts with rewarding frequency. But Miss Raquel Jones, middle child, homecoming queen, bookworm, and raging bull cannot go uncelebrated for much longer.

Besides, it’s hot mama’s 21st birthday.


The College Man forces Miss Raquel to get down to business.

Raquel, like Gravy, has a penchant for teen-dream eighties flicks (particularly those starring the insufferable Molly Ringwald) and when we were younger she adopted a saying she absorbed from the previously heralded Some Kind Of Wonderful, a mantra which seems more and more fitting in each passing year: “You mess with the bull, you get the horns.”

Now don’t get me wrong, Raquel is a warm, gentle soul and if you deal with her straight she will put her life on the line for you. She’s moral and trustworthy and what’s more, she’s always been effortlessly social. This is a talent for which I had little teenage aptitude. While I spent my time in high school strategically avoiding uncomfortable social situations, Raquel plowed through those uncertain years seemingly oblivious to the bullshit that festered around her. I obsessed over snide comments delivered by ignorant doorknobs and Raquel simply turned up her headphones (Hootie and the Blowfish was her preferred form of “white noise”) and buried herself in a bedroom full of books. It’s not that little sis didn’t realize high school drama was unfurling around her, it’s just she recognized it for what it was – completely inconsequential. “I don’t have time for this bullshit, bitches. I’ve got work to do.”

And where did this noncommittal strategy take the lovely and bookish Miss Raquel? Straight to the Homecoming Queen podium, no fucking joke. When my mother and I heard Raquel was in the running for the crown we looked at each other and both said, “She’s gonna win.” And you know what, for perhaps the first time in recorded history, a Homecoming Queen was chosen for the right reasons. Raquel’s peers, whether they had anything in common with her on the surface or not, had RESPECT for her. She brought a warm and witty presence to her scholastics and extra-curriculars and even though she’s always been a shoot-from-the-hip kind of girl, she’s really a silly fucker underneath it all and not afraid to show it. The College Man once described her as “the definition of down-to-earth.” And upon this diamond personality for twenty-one years Miss Raquel has thrived.

But the real reason Raquel is and will always be such a social success, is because she seriously does not take shit from ANYONE. It’s not a quality that is overt and grating, but rather it pulsates like a protective shield cast by one of Mario’s magic mushrooms. Without being snooty or snobbish or aggressive, the girl’s presence just DEMANDS respect. She is one of the few intelligent, beautiful women I’ve known who’s managed to wind her way through life, exhibiting her many gifts and reaping rewards without much backlash. She's got a gift. It’s like the girl is coated in Vaseline – she just slides on through.

The thing is, you don’t want to mess with Raquel. She’s a royal bitch if you cross her the wrong way. Last summer she was driving home from a weekend out-of-state with her boyfriend Alex and Alex's little sister Casey. Casey had mentioned to a few scumbucket girls at the day camp she worked at with my sis that her family would be gone for the weekend and that she might hold a small get together the last night before her parents returned (Raquel, Alex and Casey returned home a night earlier). Well, these ballsy bitches rolled up to Casey’s house and proceeded to throw a keg party in the front and backyard, trashing the place before Casey and Co. had even crossed back into New York State. The police were called and restoration ensued, but important to note is that the next day my sister approached the main girl rumored to have orchestrated the unsanctioned bash. Their conversation went something like this:

Stupid Bitch Who Throws Parties at People’s Houses When They’re Not Home: Oh Raquel! I’m so glad you came over to talk to me! I was afraid Casey would never speak to me again.

Raquel: You WISH I didn’t come over here, trust me. I’m your worst nightmare.

This is where SBWTPAPHWTNH started to cry. Raquel finished the tongue lashing regarding the respecting of friendships and people’s property – all the obvious stuff. Coming from Raquel, i'm sure it was terrifying. Cause most of the time my sis just wants to chill and make bead necklaces and chat about Grey’s Anatomy. You have to do something pretty fucked up to get her juiced. You mess with the bull…

When you’re related to the girl, your chances of avoiding the wrath decrease. As we’re both the stubborn spawn of Mama Jones, neither Raquel nor myself is likely to back down in an argument. (It’s notable that I have always been at least three inches taller than my sister and I’ve never for one second doubted that she could beat the living shit out of me.) But now that we’re older and have discovered the advantages of cooperation and collaboration (“family dinners” on the credit card?) we’ve managed to curb the bickering and hair pulling and “nails” attacks - where you dig your grimy claws into the flesh of your opponent until they scream for mercy - to a minimum.

Now we just get drunk together**.

Tonight we're gonna do it legally.




**N.B. The last time Raquel and I got drunk it was on margaritas at some obnoxious UES frat bar. The next day, nursing hangovers, we woke up to meet Mama and Papa Jones at the MET. It was there in the first hallway of Egyptian pottery that Rachel said to me, "I fell asleep sitting up, with my shoes on last night." Through our hysterical laughter I could hear my mother call out to Papa Jones, whose face was pressed up to a glass case in curious delight: "They're just BOWLS Steven."