I eat at Olive Garden, on average, once a decade. I remember I came the first time after my parents…read morerecently divorced and my mom got the unlimited soup, salad and breadsticks. I remember it was a great meal. A few years later in high school, with my dad's side of the divide, I got some alfredo noodles with beef tips or something. I still vividly remember that dish to this day. It was immensely satisfying, luscious and indulgent, with a heaping portion befitting the young regent I was. And yet, I never returned. I left that Olive Garden like a lover scorned, knowing not what it could have done to have deserved it.
Over the years, the wedge between Olive Garden & I was driven ever deeper on account of what I'll admit was my self-sown disaffection. "Who would pay $15 for CHAIN pasta," I tut-tutted to myself, while filling up on slopghetti from Cici's. "I heard that the private equity company that acquired them even publicly castigated their C-Suite over not mandating the pasta water be salted." I fancied myself a cut above the Olive Garden demographic. I was the kind of guy who'd spend $150 in downtown Austin on a godawful Italian farce, forcing down my feelings of spaghettinadequacy with bites of overpriced, bad noodles covered in a schlocky sauce. And where was OG during these times? Even though their NoBu branch was just a half mile away from my long-term abode, to the extent that I'd decoupled the 'Garden from my psyche, that half mile might as well have been a billion light years.
It wasn't until ~9 days ago that OG and I rekindled our fling. I was in a vulnerable place; the crossborder queue had primed me for dinnertime, and the vast expanse of post-Laredo interstate nothingness did little to sate my expectant gut. My wife wanted Italian, and hell, I even went to Golden Corral for her once, and after a minute Olive Garden wadn't sounding so bad after all.
And let me tell you what, this place was popping! I guess if you're in Laredo, OG is the place to be. We were seated quickly, as a party of 2, much to my delight. Everything after was kind of a whirlwind. Between the exciting novelty of a tablet (?!) on the table, and the ultra attentive and fine-tuned service from the waitstaff, the night fell together organically. These kids were something else, too; not jaded, like big city waitstaff. Kept the free salad coming, and seemed genuinely happy to hook it up with the freshest of iceberg. And I think that's what makes this place special. In smaller towns like Laredo, where nobody's got something to prove, you can just sit back and unwind at Olive Garden. And nobody's gonna judge you for it.
