Olive Barf-Den (get your sick bag out!)

We were hungry and driving around in the car and I needed to eat. We stopped at the Olive Garden - ok here comes the full beat down on this dump. First – there is not an Italian that would be found 100 ft of this place.

They sat us down in the full-on FAKE setting and asked us for our drink order. I love a good Sangria (if you ever get to SF – Cha, Cha, Cha in Upper Haight has some choice Sangria) – so I took the plunge and ordered the Sangria. She asked what flavor – my eyebrows pulled the Mr. Spock move with “are you f’n kidding me with that question?” – I said Sangria – RED WINE! OK – as the waitress waddled out of sight.

My wife looked around – oh my god – I could see it in her eyes – our hunger had driven us mad to even stop in such a place.


The Sangria arrived and I took a good stiff gulp of it and quite literally spit it out back into the glass. What the hell? It tasted like Kool-Aid. The waitress looked at me, "This is NOT Sangria, its Kool-aid", I exclaimed! No she said – it is Red Wine and Fruit Juice (you mean cheap red chilled Gallo with Kook-aid). I said – you actually put Fruit Juice in it – what kind. She said it was from a powder mix. I gave her back the glass – and said a hearty no thanks. My wife started laughing and so did my 4 year old son – thinking it was ok to spit out my drink – he quickly followed suit with his fruit juice. What can I say?

We ordered and the word "al dente" is NOT part of the Olive Garden vernacular – it’s box pasta (they don’t make their own) and then they pour (and I mean POUR) some kind of powdered crapola sauce all over it. There you go – full on puke. I had better meals in the NAVY and I am NOT kidding – this fully sucked. I expected this from Denny’s. I started looking around – then I realized – this was the “We going out for a special celebration night!” crowd that usually haunts Denny’s.

She came by – our plates barely picked over and drink glasses full. She said – is everything ok? I said, the water’s good! She didn’t get it – I asked for the bill (minus the Sancrapa) and we split – and actually looked for another restaurant.

UGLY and FAKE. The only thing Italian in that restaurant – was some crappy elevator Italian muzak.