Scenes From an Italian Restaurant: Our Adventure in Not-So-Fine Dining, Part IV

For the fourth and possibly penultimate leg of our food journey, we went to Spring Hill last night to have dinner at a table near the street at an old familiar place: the Olive Garden.



OK, in the interest of journalistic integrity, I'll admit that the table was not actually near the street; it was near the kitchen. And the decor is so different and the table-side payment method so high-tech that it wasn't all that familiar either.



I'll also admit that at least two of the members of our four-person party (Holly and Ashlee) had eaten at that very same Olive Garden within the past year or so, so we were technically breaking one of our original rules for choosing restaurants. Holly last ate there with some colleagues; Ashlee last ate there with some Civil War reenactors. True story.

Our third member of the dining party, Karen, had an interesting Olive Garden connection, of the non-Civil War variety. When she and her husband were in college, he used to be an Olive Garden server, so she'd eat there all the time, enjoying special perks like getting extra breadsticks to take home or getting lunch portions during dinner time. But then when he quit working there, they never went back--and it's a good thing, too, because another "perk" apparently involved "borrowing" the famed 3-pronged forks that they still use at home today (!!).

My story is far less interesting (and far less illegal). I used to eat at the Olive Garden in Knoxville in my high school days until my dad got grossed out by the lack of cleanliness one day when he saw busboys using dirty rags to wipe down booths while leaving all kinds of food particles on the carpet. We never went back.

Though I did go back to Olive Garden myself a few times when I was in college, like Karen, I hadn't been there since then, so we were eager to see if the food would taste the same as it did back in the day.

We began, as one does at the Olive Garden, with the salad and breadsticks.  They used to be unlimited; I think they probably still are, but we were not asked if we wanted more salad. Both tasted exactly the same as they always did, though the salad was a bit under-dressed, kind of like the large tank-top-wearing guy sitting at the next table, as Ashlee pointed out. (Fashion side-bar: I saw lots of tank tops on men, baseball caps, and beachwear last night. Frankly, people were better dressed at Shoney's).


Apparently, no recent dining experience would be complete without my making some sort of faux pas. As I started eating my salad last night, Holly pointed out that it was classy of Olive Garden to bring us chilled plates for the salad and warm plates for the bread. Um, what? I hadn't realized there was a difference and thought the bottom plate was decorative; I guess I'm not classy enough for Olive Garden! But hey, at least I wasn't wearing a baseball cap.



One thing of note is that--appalling wardrobe choices of the clientele notwithstanding--another way we knew Olive Garden was classier than a Piccadilly Cafeteria, for instance, is that at Olive Garden we could have ordered wine. And in fact, the menu offered pairing suggestions for anyone looking to be extra fancy.



We opted for water, but it was still nice to know that we did have other choices. We then sat and waited for our entrees to arrive. We'd decided that we would each try to order something different for the sake of the blog. I ordered chicken parmigiana with broccoli because that's what I always used to eat there.

 

Karen ordered the chicken and shrimp carbonara.




Holly got the Northern Tour of Italy, which included Chicken Lombardy, some sort of sausage tortelloni, and a mushroom pasta.



Ashlee got shrimp scampi.

 

Unfortunately, Ashlee didn't realize that she was ordering from the "light" menu, so her shrimp scampi was not swimming in butter and garlic as she had anticipated, but instead was rather insipid. She was disappointed. Karen was also a little disappointed in her entree until at the very end, she discovered the bacon that had been buried underneath a piece of chicken in the middle of the plate. Holly rather liked her Northern Tour of Italy. My chicken tasted the same as I remembered: good, but not the best chicken parm I've ever had. My broccoli, however, was...rancid.



Fortunately our server was very nice about it once I complained. She asked if I wanted another vegetable, but I'm a once-bitten, twice-shy kind of person, so I got a side of spaghetti. It was watery but edible.

Though I was dissatisfied with the spaghetti and disgusted by the rotten vegetable side, I managed to ignore the fact that it was still sitting on my plate, and did eat half my chicken, saving the other half for leftovers. I had to make room for dessert, after all.

So for dessert, Karen, Ashlee, and I each ordered the Black Tie Mousse Cake which now comes with an additional layer of some sort of white custard. Holly ordered some dolcini, mini-mousse desserts.



The desserts were quite good--the black tie cake tasted basically the same--, but once again, nothing has been able to compete yet with the hot fudge cake at Shoney's. Like, nothing has even been in the same league as that dessert. Perhaps nothing ever will be.

No claw game this week. We did have the option to play trivia at our table using the high-tech table-side gadget, but we weren't willing to pay $1.99 for that privilege. Speaking of money, at $29.00, Olive Garden was definitely the priciest restaurant so far on the adventure; no offense to any Olive Garden aficionados out there, but it's a bit steep for marginally good cuisine.

That having been said, I will add that I'm glad I went back to the Olive Garden because it was nice to reminisce. Based on the quality of our dinner, however, I doubt I'll return unless I'm writing another food blog 15 years from now or unless I'm traveling and it's the only restaurant in town or unless I randomly fall in with a group of Civil War reenactors who are willing to forgo historical accuracy for some fettuccine alfredo. I'm sure stranger things have happened.

Next stop: Red Lobster.