Marilyn Haggerty's amazing Olive Garden review and the subsequent viral shitstorm

did you 'order well'?

we all ordered fairly funny

in red lobster, joke is on you

in that case ordering the hospital salmon really was probably the least bad outcome he could have had, sort of like stalemating red lobster

go big or go home imho

I just looked at OG's online menu - not good. If I had to go I'd probably get the minestrone and the caesar chicken salad with the dressing on the side and a bottle of the Valpolicello to share. Interestng that they have a Brunello on the wine list, albeit at $70.00.

apparently hagerty's husband died in the red river flood

i would love to go to lunch with missus hagerty. i have a feeling i would like her town!

this kills me. this thread is as good as any for it.

http://consumerist.com/assets_c/2010/03/DoubleGulp-example1-thumb-400x316-38336.jpg

It appears that the local 7-11 I've been going to for some time has employed the good old Grocery Shrink Ray on their "Double Gulp" brand of Fountain Sodas. I have been getting them there since they where originally put out in the heavy Wax paper folding cups and they have 64 ounces of liquid for a long time.

The new cups, pictured in the examples I've sent, are very pretty looking with the see-through plastic but are CLEARLY much smaller then the original cups. I do not have an exact fluid ounce on the new cups because they are not labeled like the old cups have been. The price however still remains the same for less liquid refreshment as I've also
attached from my Cellphone.

I hope the information is useful, I love it when places do this and think no one will notice. Great way to save money, same price, less drink!

Keep up the excellent work and fighting the good fight!

eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.

apparently hagerty's husband died in the red river flood

― max, Thursday, March 15, 2012 1:21 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

aw

The closest OG has at least a two-hour wait on Saturday nights.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997_Red_River_Flood

Duration: April 1997
Fatalities: 0
Damages: $3.5 billion[1]

carl agatha otm upthread. i'm one of them big ol' american girls but i mostly watch what i eat and make sensible choices. i've never been to an olive garden or cheesecake factory or pf changs or or or; the last time i went to a hometown buffet (cuz there was nothing else around) i got sick. i have never bought a "super big gulp" in my life.

however, whenever i go into a restaurant, i feel really self-conscious when i'm ordering and then when i'm eating -- if i have a moment of weakness and order a burger and fries, i'm suddenly THAT PERSON, y'know, the stereotype of the fattyfatfat who can't stop shoving grease and salt into my dorito-colored mouth and just sits around literally eating tubs of lard and costing my country money.

the reality is i go to the farmer's market every-ish week and subscribe to an organic produce delivery service. i cook at home several nights a week. i don't exercise enough, but most people don't.

ugh did this thread become a make fun of fat people and the gigantic portions they spend all day eating at the olive garden thread? i am just not going to read it and otm jody and jenny.

it didn't become that

people need to read my original post about this. i am NOT talking about beautiful and vibrant and decidedly HEALTHY looking american girls like get bent! and i do feel horrible that people feel self-conscious about what they eat in public. nobody should ever be made to feel any which way about what they eat/drink/smoke/etc.

and i have never in my life made a comment about what someone is eating or what they should or should not eat. people i don't know tell me i should quit smoking all the time and i've gotten used to it, but its something i would never say to another person.

and big gulp thing is more a post about lol first world priorities and what constitutes "fighting the good fight" for some people.

we already have a food fascist thread iirc

even if the fat people you're talking about aren't beautiful, you don't know what they eat or what their personal habits are by looking at them. i sense that that's a small part of the overall point you were making but it's a pet peeve.

and i do feel horrible that people feel self-conscious about what they eat in public.

a side note: i remember being in front of this overweight guy on line for a movie, and he was saying to his friend how the waiter at the restaurant they went to gave him an odd look for ordering a salad, like because he was fat he was SUPPOSED TO order some triple-decker bacon bomb with a double order of onion rings. and when the food came out, the busser initially put the salad down at someone else's seat, cuz there's no fucking way the fat guy ordered a salad, rite? so, damned if you do, damned if you don't. (even if it's all in the dude's head and he's being paranoid, i think you can see where the paranoia comes from.)

hey guys who wants to go to cheesecake factory

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61cj9k6rkAL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA300_SH20_OU01_.jpg

xp: no, but i'd be down for margs at el torito! whooooooo

but its something i would never say to another person.

"Thank you for your impertinennt solicitude which I fear, alas, serves more as upkeep to your smug self-esteem than any real comcern for me, a complete stranger."

really all i should have said was: i think people are being slowly poisoned to death in this country and i think its a crime and i feel bad about it. that's all i should have said. i didn't mean to offend anyone.

I just came back from Applebee's, it was a lunch meeting. I couldn't order alcohol. :(

I have generally found Chili's to not be that bad, although it's been a while.

i there a national chain of semi-"fancy" sit-down dining places that tries to go the chipotle route: emphasizing green consciousness, freshness and health while still providing huge portions of salty/greasy good-badness? that strategy seems to have been very effective at the fast food lunch level. kind of surprised there isn't a dinner equivalent, outside the salad-bar buffet places that have been around since the 80s.

I went to an Applebee's with my mom once. They had a lot of interesting memorabilia on the walls. #haggertystyle

We had a Ponderosa Steakhouse in town (now, it's a Pizza Garden) that a buddy of mine worked at. He told me that nearly all their food - like, the mashed potatoes, the gravy, the mac&cheese sauce, the ice cream, everything was all just this powder they mixed with water and heated up. Which of course led to the conversation, "why not mix them all and drink it?" Well we did and then we both threw up. Really makes you think doesn't it?

i do believe that anything mixed with water and heated could possible pass for ice cream

frogbs on a roll

oh yeah. not the ice cream. i mean the ice cream was a powder. but they didn't heat it

frogbs on a lobster cheese roll

was the ice cream in the concoction you drank though, cuz if not I'd rather just imagine it was so don't tell me

it was. he took a bit from every single powder they had, including the ice cream and the other dessert stuff. I think he said there was like 12 different "foods" in there. The result was orangeish-brown, so we dyed it blue so it would look like Gatorade.

ah of course

aka the "tour of italy"

went to an Applebee's with my mom once. They had a lot of interesting memorabilia on the walls. #haggertystyle

I worked at Ruby Tuesday and I was impressed to learn that they hire a scout to buy local memorabilia to go on the walls at a new restaurant. One diner recognized herself in a old b&w photograph of a high school basketball team which was hanging on the wall near the kitchen.

I don't think they do the shit on the walls thing anymore, do they?

it was. he took a bit from every single powder they had, including the ice cream and the other dessert stuff. I think he said there was like 12 different "foods" in there. The result was orangeish-brown, so we dyed it blue so it would look like Gatorade.

http://images.wikia.com/looneytunes/images/b/bb/Hazel0149.jpg

a scout to buy local memorabilia to go on the walls at a new restaurant

this is just begging to be a jason reitman movie

I thought Friday's used to do this too...?

P.S. This, too, shall pass. I soon will take my hammer named Margo and go down to the river. There I will meditate on the 15 years that have passed since the flood of 1997.

^^this is amazing and comes completely out of nowhere after that homely, chatty letter. formidable.

I have a soft spot in my heart for Ruby Tuesday's because their first restaurant was in my hometown. Either it used to be better or I was a kid or both, but I really do think it used to be better. Pretty sure they still do the olde timey stuff on the walls.

I thought Friday's used to do this too...?

― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, March 15, 2012 2:46 PM

Cracker Barrel, too, right? More rural/farm oriented stuff.

shameful admission: when I was younger, I thought that the name "Cracker Barrel" was a subversive inversion of the phrase "barrel full of monkeys"

ha!

i didn't know carl agatha was jenny. hi!

i'm pretty heartened to know other people approach food like i do, the cooking evangelists and their guilt trips can be overwhelming a lot of the time.

I defy anyone to be unable to make this amazing meal - http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/feb/24/sausage-recipes-hugh-fearnley-whittingstall

right...this isn't about being stubborn but this is just outlining my reaction to that recipe, the bits i'd stumble over, and why there's no way i'm going to attempt it.

- i don't know how to peel parsnips. i mean, i know "how" to in a theoretical way but i don't know how to actually do it right, without making a hash of it and peeling off half the parsnip
- what is a "medium" onion? i don't know what a large or a small onion is. at this point i'm standing in front of the onions in the supermarket and i am paralysed by indecision
- what kind of sausages? there are many many many types of sausage in the supermarket. you need to tell me the EXACT PRODUCT TO BUY otherwise i just don't know. i hate ingredient shopping so so so fucking much
- "coarsely chopped flat leaf parsley" - is this a thing you can buy? pre-coarsely chopped? what is "flat leaf" parsley, is it different to normal parsley? how do you chop it coarsely as opposed to non-coarsely? basically how do i translate the stuff on the supermarket shelf into this ingredient? PANIC

- "quartering" a parsnip? see peeling it for how well quartering it is likely to go. i value my fingers
- i genuinely have no idea what "trimming" a "coarse, woody core" even means or how to do it
- i've tried to chop onions before. it didn't end well. HOW do you get the bits even remotely the same size/shape?
- i don't know what a roasting tin is or if i have one

- what happens when i roast these things for the specified length of time but it DOESN'T COME OUT RIGHT? so many recipes i try to follow but the food just doesn't cook like it says it will - like it's obviously not done yet or it's totally burnt. at which point i PANIC again (and often just halt the recipe completely because i'm too stressed)

second recipe falls at the "set aside to rest for two hours" bit. i don't have two hours, i want to eat NOW. i have never once in my life known what, or even whether, i want to eat two hours in advance.

third recipe...slicing potatoes ughhhhh. wtf is "sweating" an onion? how do i tell when an egg is "two thirds" set? what am i looking out for?

doesn't playing dumb get boring after a while