March 13, 2012

"After Review of Grand Forks Olive Garden, Marilyn Hagerty, 85, Is Talk of Social Media."

"She felt fine about it."
But she didn't care to scroll through the thousands of Twitter and Facebook comments on her writing style. "I'm working on my Sunday column and I'm going to play bridge this afternoon," she explained, "so I don't have time to read all this crap." She didn't apologize for writing about a restaurant where many people like to eat. Her poise under fire endeared her to people who do read all that. Strangers started sending me emails about how much they loved my mom....

My mom has her own style of reviewing restaurants: She doesn't like to say anything bad about the food. Her regular readers read between the lines. If she writes more about the décor than the food, you might want to eat somewhere else....

"As I ate," Mom wrote, "I noticed the vases and planters with permanent flower displays on the ledges. There are several dining areas with arched doorways. And there is a fireplace that adds warmth to the décor."
We talked about this 5 days ago, but it's worth keeping up with Marilyn Hagerty.

13 comments:

Peter said...

I'm glad she wrote what she did. Every time we've been to Olive Garden it's been good. Even if food snobs say otherwise.

Patrick said...

I'm just a touch over half her age, and I'm not sure I can keep up.

I will note that I quoted the "I don't have time for this crap because I'm playing bridge and working" in the last thread on that. Golden.

Known Unknown said...

Hello Grand Forks, we are Unreliable Dachshund and we are here to rock you!

Mike said...

You know that Grand Forks North Dakota is not the culinary capital of the world. So a chain restaurant comes to town and a local samples it. How many other Italian restaurants does she have to compare it with? And while she's in North Dakota, she's also "Minnesota Nice". If she can't find something good about the food, she writes about the decor--which she did in this case.

I fly model airplanes in contests for fun. One place where we fly is Taft, California, about 60 miles west of Bakersfield. I went there several times a year for contests. Population is about 4,000 and it's decidedly "down scale". A fellow contest flyer told me that there was a "new Italian restaurant in town". I was kind of excited going up to Taft on my next trip. Whoo whee--an Italian restaurant--what a relief!

Imagine my chagrin when I discovered that the "new Italian restaurant" was a Pizza Hut. In small towns you take what you can get. While you can easily see 5 stars--or maybe 5,000 at night, none of them will be Michelin stars hung on a restaurant. All you Twitter twits, give it a rest and leave Ms. Hagerty alone.

Synova said...

Thing is, it's so easy to make good pasta at home.

So the eat-out pasta can be pretty good and still not be at all interesting.

chuck b. said...

I was watching the news on the treadmill today when this story came on (on the tv news! what the fuck) and I felt exactly that feeling from Sartre, La Nausee. All these pointless, meaningless memes constantly creeping in to our lives, accruing existential mass and threatening to fill us up with ill-tempered trivia. The Olive Garden review lady frin the Dakotas broke my camel's back. It will be with me forever, for that reason alone.

I might need a mental health break. But I think a better answer, for me, is just some self-medication.

Chip Ahoy said...

The worst review I saw said the cook flipped food using the same spatula he used to kill a bug. Maybe it was a health inspection report. That was a nearby place I used to go for breakfast.

edutcher said...

OG is just one more sign of the world moving to ND.

Not unlike the French hookers moving to Sacramento after gold was discovered.

Fprawl said...

I have a friend who writhed weekly about writing ONE column a week for the Lakeland (Fl) Ledger.
If Ms. Hagerty can manage to write 5 columns a week without kids, wife, or plumbing problems in her house, more power to her.

Rialby said...

Reminds me of that FANTASTIC fisking that Lileks did on the Guardian'strip to the Olive Garden about 10 years ago. Here

ricpic said...

Thatsa some bland meatball!

SGT Ted said...

She is the talk of the social media because it is hip to bash Olive Garden.

Most 85 year olds can't handle heavily spiced food, so I don't really trust the source for accuracy.

SGT Ted said...

Ans yea, like Grand Forks is a mecca of Authentic Italian food and here comes OG to ruin it.