It's EYE~tail~YUN, Y'all
Written: Jun 26 '01
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Lots of food. OG's are everywhere. Great service.
Cons: Average, bland, cookie cutter food. No atmosphere.
The Bottom Line: Not worth the money, spend it at a local restaurant instead. It is the Mcdonald's of the sit down restaurants.
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| DiamondLynn's Full Review: Olive Garden |
The Olive Garden Restaurant is promoted as having Italian Cuisine. This is only partially accurate...it does not have Italian Cuisine, what it does have is "Eye~tailyun Style Grub".
A few days ago we were dragged to an Olive Garden for a graduation party. We were the first to arrive.
The outside of the restaurant was semi~quaint. A grape garden structure overhead, covered in vines welcomed us. A tidy garden lined the walkway.
Inside the "Italian" ambiance was similar to your local Perkins. For those of you that do not have Perkins in your area insert your standard family fare food joint here ____(Denny's maybe?).
Our waiter was pleasant and efficient! We had a party of 12 and you will notice i said "waiter", singular. He looked about as "Italian" as Conan O'Brian.
We started with a bottle of wine to toast the graduate with. I am not a wine aficionado but I can tell you that it was damn tasty and there was plenty of it since I was one of two people at the table that actually drinks alcohol.
The infamous "family style" salad came next. Three super sized bowls of Caesar salad. There was plenty of lettuce, carrots and peppercini in the salad..I saw no olives. It was moist..not too, too limp and edible. Again..there was plenty of it.
Warm, (blandish) bread sticks were served in ample portions.
The meals came quickly (thankfully since we were sitting between the graduates father and soon-to-be stepfather).
I had ordered a dish called "Chicken-Shrimp Limone". Grilled chicken and shrimp sauteed in a lemon sauce and served over fettucine for about $12.95.
The meal was served tepid (but hey! we had 12 people and one server so...not a big deal really).
The shrimp were itty bitty salad size shrimp. The chicken was thin strips of what seemed to be that pre-cooked chicken that they sell in the deli section of your grocery store and the fettucine was sticky. The tastiest part of the dish were teeny tiny bits of sun dried tomato tossed through out.
My husband ordered the Chicken Alfredo and had pretty much the same to say about his meal.
All in all it was a pleasant experience, one might say an average experience even.
If you live in middle America then this may be an Italian restaurant for you. If you think that Chef Boyardee is one of the great chefs of Europe and that Welch's grape juice is a decent substitute for wine then this may be just what you are looking for..you may also want to check into Casa de' Taco Bell if you are craving Mexican Cuisine.
Personally I think you would be better off going to a local Italian place where you can see Grandma slaving over a pot of her own sauce and Grandpa pouring the wine.
EXTRA INFO:
If the Olive Garden is someplace that you enjoy please stop reading here.
*Psst! Are they gone? All the people that say "I'd like the EYE~TAIL~YUN dressin' please."? Good.
I didn't want to say before..but after our meal we still had a full untouched bowl of salad left. I heard someone say that they hoped they "re-used" the salad rather than wasting so much of it.
It was THEN that I remembered why in the last decade or more that I have been to the Olive Garden exactly twice. The last time we were there (and this had to be 10 years ago) one of the people at the next table found a hair in their salad. We knew someone who was dating someone who worked there and they said that they "recycled" the salads that were still left in the large bowls.
NOWWWWWWWWWW...I am openly telling you that I did not SEE this practice in action and that I have no knowledge of it being a policy or activity still in effect it is and was hearsay! For some of you it may not bother you, the thought of it makes me cringe. The fact that I ate said salad makes me nearly sea-sick.
I would LOVE to hear from an Olive Garden employee to find out if this is true or not.
I would also like to add that this "conversation" that happened a million years ago had no impact on my review and that this was a comment I was going to make when I wrote about the salad and chose not to because there may be Olive-Garden-Salad-Eating-People reading this and I did not want to spoil their meals.
Is that enough disclaimers? Okay! Buon' Appetite!
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
DiamondLynn
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Member: Diane
Location: pennsylvania
Reviews written: 55
Trusted by: 51 members
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