It wasn’t supposed to turn out this way. Twenty years pass. Your girls grow into adults, leave their hometown and take pictures of places you long to be. In the wake are two, middle-aged parents plus a rowdy, red poodle from the Amish hinterlands who’s bonded like Super Glue to your husband.
Rolling his sedan into the garage, to the delight of our dog, my husband had a question. “Would you like to go to Olive Garden?”
“Sure,” I replied instantly. As soon as the word left my mouth, I grabbed my phone and shared my plans on WhatsApp. The lecture that followed from our youngest offspring nearly derailed the date night.
“Olive Garden doesn’t have a single thing that is good for you. You guys have so many cookbooks. You can make something in like ten minutes. And then the line that stung, “You guys should really put your health first.”
But the optimist in me remembered that Olive Garden cooks better than I do. So, we walked past the queue of waitlisted people eager for the authentic Italian dining experience and headed for the bar. No Peroni on tap. Strike one. Then came the endless salad with one olive that I didn’t get to eat and the breadsticks tucked inside a tangled mess of paper napkins. I could’ve made dinner for a family of four for the same price as the spaghetti and meat sauce I ordered, but Olive Garden wouldn’t expect me to do the dishes afterward, so I thought that was a fair exchange.
Once I was no longer hangry, I could better appreciate the restaurant’s nod to Tuscan agriturismo. There’s the crackled ceramic counter with the hand-drawn artwork, the anise-flavored liqueur with an image of the Colosseum on its label, the mall traffic on all sides and the four stars on Trip Advisor. I’ll spare you my food pictures, but here are some pictures our daughters took, given they were IN Italy, and their parents were just pretending they were there.
Your experience is so true, so funny and the chain is so pseudo-Italian (Mannaggia!)
I have like five, ten year old Olive Garden gift cards. I just can’t. Maybe I can use them at the bar.