My trip to Olive Garden

For some reason the gods shined upon me, and I got to go to Olive Garden last night.

Before I go any further, I had a friend once, supposedly an authentic Italian, who would always trash Olive Garden. Can I just say that if you are one of those people....go suck a bag of dicks. Seriously. You are not allowed to read any more of this post.

I don't care that Olive Garden is not "authentic" Italian food. It's Italian-American, which to me is a valid genre of food (along with Tex-Mex.) I don't even care that Olive Garden is not the best Italian American chain restaurant. (For the record, I like Carrabba's better.) Yes, there are restaurants with better soup. Yes, there are restaurants with better bread sticks. Yes, there are restaurants with better salad and entrees, and probably appetizers and dessert.

Who cares?

I like Olive Garden for what it is, and I don't need it to be the best to enjoy it. I like going there. I have many wonderful memories of going to Olive Garden with friends and family. (I even like their slogan, "When you're here, you're family.) I went to Olive Garden with Bear and Achmed the night McGwire hit his 62nd home run. I went there the day I had to fly home from college. I went there on the last anniversary of my birth, when the whole day had been as shitty as a diaper pail. I have never had bad service at Olive Garden, and I just like it. So back off. (Not that I'm defensive.)

Anyway, I started with Raspberry Ice Tea. Olive Garden (I'm calling them OG from now on) makes some of the best raspberry tea in the universe. And now they have added a frozen peach slice (what my sister calls Bellini) to the glass making it even more delicious. (And I think you know how I feel about delicious.)

I drank at least 20 glasses of tea, which is actually bad for me, because I usually try to eat 9 or 10 bowls of soup and this time I got the never-ending pasta bowl.

However, even though you're supposed to get soup OR salad, our server Brian was really mango and he gave me both. He even went to far as to bring TONS of extra black olives on my second bowl of salad. (They never put enough black olives.)

Plus, they did something I really like: not bring the main food until we enjoyed our soup/salad/breadsticks/appetizer. I hate it when they just bring it out one by one. I know restaurants are trying to turn tables, but I'm not in that big of a rush, people!

I have more, but I'm trying to make these journal posts shorter, so I think I will do a part 2 later in the day. The first person to check back and leave a comment on part 2 gets to go with me to OG. The first person to leave a pro OG on this post will get a bread stick in the mail.