re: Is Olive Garden a white trash restaurant?

The food isn't terrible. It's a perfect restaurant for when someone that lives in North Dakota or has kids wants to eat "exotic food"

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that lives in North Dakota or has kids wants to eat "exotic food"

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Hell yeah! Probably the best food there. Food in that part of the world fricking sucks.

Not ALL chains are trash. Just the one's that portray a bunch of super awesome white people having the time of their lives. When in reality, it's a bunch of tweens, low to lower small town middle class, and urban culture. Restaurants with commercials are trying to compensate for their shitty product, and make you think they don't have shitty clientele.

I ate there for the first time Tuesday night and was not impressed at all with the food. Probably will be my last time eating there.

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Marilyn Hagerty (born May 30, 1926) is a newspaper columnist writing for the Grand Forks Herald. She has been with the paper since 1957, when her late husband Jack Hagerty (1918-1997) became editor of the paper. Hagerty gained fame in March 2012 when her review[1] of a new Olive Garden restaurant in Grand Forks, North Dakota, was noticed by online news aggregators and became an overnight sensation among both critics and admirers. Anthony Bourdain announced plans to collaborate with Hagerty

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From Anthony Bourdain:

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What is it about the 86-year old Ms. Hagerty that inspired such attention and affection?

Why should you read this book?

Of the 7,000 pages of articles and reviews I read while assembling this collection, there is little of what one would call pyrotechnical prose. Ms. Hagerty's choices of food are shockingly consistent: A "Clubhouse sandwich," coleslaw, wild rice soup, salads assembled from a salad bar, baked potatoes. She is not what you'd call an adventurous diner, exploring the dark recesses of menus. Far from it. Of one lunch, she writes:

"There were signs saying the luncheon special was soup and a Denver sandwich for $2.25. In places where food service is limited, I tend to take the special. I wasn't born yesterday."

She is never mean,even when circumstances would clearly excuse a sharp elbow, a cruel remark. In fact, watching Marilyn struggle to find something nice to say about a place she clearly loathes is part of the fun. She is, unfailingly, a good neighbor and good citizen firsthand entertainer second

But what she HAS given us, over all these years, is a fascinating picture of dining in America, a gradual, cumulative overview of how we got from there... to here.

Grand Forks is NOT New York City. We forget that—until we read her earlier reviews and remember, some of us, when you'd find sloppy Joe, steak Diane, turkey noodle soup, three bean salad, red Jell-o in OUR neighborhoods. When the tuft of curly parsley and lemon wedge, or a leaf of lettuce and an orange segment, or three spears of asparagus fashioned into a wagon wheel, were state of the art garnishes. When you could order a half sandwich, a cup of soup. A pre-hipster world where lefse, potato dumplings and walleye were far more likely to appear on a menu than pork belly.

Reading these reviews, we can see, we can watch over the course of time, who makes it and who doesn't. Which bold, undercapitalized pioneers survived—and who, no matter how ahead of their time, just couldn't hang on until the neighborhood caught up. You will get to know the names of owners and chefs like Warren LeClerc, whose homey lunch restaurant, The Pantry, turned down the lights to become the sophisticated French restaurant Le Pantre by night. And Chef Nardane of Touch of Magic Ballroom who, in his 6,200-square foot ballroom, served cheesecakes inspired by Debbie Reynolds and Elizabeth Taylor, and envisioned an exclusive private membership club with frequent celebrity entertainment. And Steve Novak of Beaver's Family Restaurant, who when Marilyn visited his establishment, spoke of reviving his beaver act, complete with costume, for birthday parties.

And you will understand why the opening of an Olive Garden might be earnestly anticipated as an exciting and much welcome event.

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I love their salad and breadsticks. The rest I can usually cook better than them.

100%

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I have no idea but that is hilarious!

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You were one of the only posters I recognized from back then... but yeah, it was hilarious.