"Brooklyn1" > wrote in message
...
> projektilevomitchick wrote:
>>George L wrote:
>>> Becca and I were on a short road trip and we decided to have lunch at an
>>> Olive Garden. I hadn't been to one in over 20 years.
>>> I was surprised... the food was pretty good! I had pasta and a 5 Cheese
>>> sauce with Italian sausage. The sauce was fine... and the sausage was
>>> excellent. Salad and bread "sticks" were also good.
>>> We prefer to eat in local places when we can rather than the large chain
>>> restaurants, but this turned out to be much better than I expected.
>>
>>We ate at an Olive Garden for the first time a few years ago because
>>someone
>
> gave us a gift card. Gah, it was horrible. First, they made us sit
> on some dumb bench seating next to a bunch of strangers. What the
> hell was up with that? And the "food", yikes. I'm not a picky eater
> by any means at all, but this stuff was just awful. And it had come
> straight out of a microwave. They seemed to spend a lot of time
> trying to get people to buy their shitty wine. And the Dago music
> blaring out of the ceiling was a bit over-the-top. Nope, never again.
> I'm glad you had a nice experience there.
> +++
>
> I've never been to Olive Garden. If I went to an Italian restaurant
> it would not be for pasta, I can make pasta for 4 at home for $5. At
> Italian restaurants I'm more interested in dishes like veal parm,
> mussels marinara, scungilli, and great Italian baked goods with real
> spumoni. Anyone can boil a pound of pasta and heat some
> bottled/canned sauce at home in under 30 minutes.

PA has some really good Italian places that have authentic foods that you
aren't likely to find at your typical restaurant. I had some kind of pasta
at one that was vegetarian and had peas in it. It was very good and the
pasta was made fresh.

The Italian places in NY, while most were not bad, were just so cookie
cutter that I grew to hate them. Same pasta dishes, same pizza, same rice
balls, same soups, same salads, etc. Most of the pizza was actually good!
So I was very astounded to see that all of the kid's parties served Dominos
pizza. Nobody liked that stuff. I heard adults say, "Ugh!" when they saw
the boxes then they would merely thank the party giver and say that they
weren't hungry. And one kid even yelled, "Oh no! Pizza again!?"