re: Chain Lovers Alert, Red Lob, Olive Grdn Failing

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And R2R, if you went to Italy when you were 22, your opinion about Italian food in Italy is exactly the same as Lily's, except hers wasn't decades ago.

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That wasn't the point of disagreement. She stated that I should go to Italy and eat the food there before I tell her that there are Italian restaurants right here in Nola that have more authentic Italian dishes and pasta than Olive Garden (the claim she made that I was refuting).

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I'm with LL on this. You sound really condescending, and for an old guy I'd think you'd have more respect for LL and LL with the language.

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Didn't realize I said anything all that sinister.

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Just my opinion. To be clear, I appreciate your views on all food subjects.

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And I your's. I appreciate all opinions .. just don't happen to agree with some of them.

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Just curious. How old are you? I thought you were around my age (young 30s)

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Powerman, I turn 29 this month.

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You don't come off as being very old on here

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Interesting. I've heard the exact opposite on here recently.

Although it seems like I'm taking the "chain" side of things here, I really do agree with you guys that good local stuff is generally better than the chains. I think most of you have your hearts and principles in the right places.

However, with respect to Olive Garden it's rather interesting how things progressed. There are certainly Italian restaurants that I enjoy more than Olive Garden and I understand why you all do as well. The most interesting part though is that no one can really pinpoint WHY they think that X dish is better at their local place than it is at the OG.

A lot of ignorant assumptions about Olive Garden and other restaurants were essentially defeated (even with the help of MDT who is certainly no fan of chains)

Let's recap:

"Olive Garden Sucks because they don't make their own sauce" - Wrong. They make their own sauce. Even if not completely from scratch.

"Well it's not like they're making pasta with flour and eggs" - True, but neither or most of your local favorites, including some really good places that we can all agree are great (and better than OG for that matter)

"Well they might make their own sauce but they use frozen pre-cut vegetables!" - Yep, that myth was crushed too as they don't use pre-cut frozen vegetables.

"Well they might make their own vegetables but it's not like they're actually making fresh stocks" - Right, but as MDT pointed out, very few local places do this as well because it just isn't practical for most people.

So there are a couple of claims of why Olive Garden sucks that involve complete misunderstandings of what they do and don't do and the other ones that were correct were a wash with what the local guys do anyway.

Then even after all of that is pointed out, the only things we get are vague responses from people like Afro that say stuff like "well they use spice blends that are made to be suitable to the general public yada yada blah blah"

Of course, considering that he was wrong about them not making their own sauce and wrong about them using frozen veggies, how could we possibly trust him as being credible? It's obvious he is just making things up out of thin air.

So in summary, I agree with all of you that there are much better Italian places than Olive Garden in metro areas where good food can be found. Curiously though, no one has actually come up with a legit reason as to why they think that X dish at Olive Garden isn't as good as X dish at some other place. People know they like one over the other but they don't know why. This is evidenced by them coming up with false reasons when asked to explain why.

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often, actually.

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pff

of course you don't think you're condescending

Oh, I have an old friend from HS (haven't really hung out with her in a couple years) who thinks Red Lobster is the best restaurant ever. Every time I used to hang out with her, she'd want to go to Chili's.

Nice girl, but just one of those people. Went crazy over 50 Shades of Grey, sees bands like Hinder and Theory of a Deadman and thinks they're amazing, only drinks (or knows about) Coors Light..

I guess whatever works for ya.

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I figured you to be older since you were bashing on someone for being in their early 20s as if later 20s somehow makes you that much older.

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i always thought he was in his late 40s

Dude you really do suck at fact finding and understanding the compilation of facts, or you you just troll like a sumabitch. I'll go with the later. You find the statements that solidify your argument and ignore all the truths that refute your stance. It's a repetitive stance of ignorance.

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Dude you really do suck at fact finding and understanding the compilation of facts, or you you just troll like a sumabitch. I'll go with the later. You find the statements that solidify your argument and ignore all the truths that refute your stance. It's a repetitive stance of ignorance.

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The "truths" that refute my stance are things that you are making up out of thin air.

And as we've seen you have a pretty poor track record on that so far.

And again, I don't disagree that there are better sauces at other places. It's just rather curious that you can't explain why one sauce at your favorite place is better than the OG sauces. You've batting 0 right now.