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

No, that's a sex act

You take two intact...

i am a big fan of cooking alone, which is a totally chill relaxing yet mentally stimulating activity. i do like to have someone to share the results with if i'm making anything remotely ambitious.

if i still lived alone i'd be having brown rice salmon and kale every night.

Lex should compile all the stories into some Švejk-like compendium of mishaps.

http://www.collegecomplements.com/img/products/Norpro-Pancake-Turner.jpg

alien technology — recovered from Area 51, starting to be seen in test labs in Dubuque and East Lansing.

Omelette probe

xxpost

yeah if i'm cooking something simple but tasty i have no prob cooking/eating alone.

but if it's something fancy or ambitious i want an audience or collaborator.

i just made ramen noodles using my electric tea kettle at work. dollar lunch.

the kind with the corn kernel and green pea packet. love the corn and pea packet.

i was gonna say, my friends in the Midwest (OK, Indiana) were telling me that they think that the entire article is really just a almost-Swiftian-oh-so-subtle pisstake on Olive Garden (since they claim inside knowledge on Midwest/Heartland humor and such). it does kind of work that way once you try to look at it that way (all the talk about the parking lot and the decor and not so much talk about the food as such).

if you don't have something nice to say...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-wx11l3nr4

the awl people are right about the accidental poetry (or maybe not accidental? i shouldn't sell her short...) of this:

"There is seating for those who are waiting."

hahahhahahahahaha Hurting OTM

"You can find the latest Hagerty coverage on MarilynHagerty.com. It includes links to two new Herald items now available for sale: a new e-book collection of Eatbeat articles and a new Marilyn Hagerty T-shirt."

http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/article/id/232085/publisher_ID/40/

quick work, marilyn.

I thought the review was fine if the OG is the kind of place her paper's readership wants reviewed. And the outright snottiness of the original Internet reaction was unnecessary. But acting like it's an especially well-crafted piece of writing also seems kind of condescending imo.

the awl people are right about the accidental poetry (or maybe not accidental? i shouldn't sell her short...) of this:

"There is seating for those who are waiting."

― scott seward, Wednesday, March 14, 2012 2:27 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

eat yer heart out, t i m @ k f c. e d u

her drunken noodle review is pretty similar. no real food critique:

http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/article/id/231996/publisher_ID/40/

omg, from the taco bell review:

"CS had a taco and a small drink. A creative 13-year-old, she mixed Baja Blast, Mountain Dew and Sierra Mist, something I really don't encourage. Something, I am sure, she has seen older kids do."

kinda love this

Then, there are Japanese-inspired Teppanyaki platters of rib-eye steak, mixed seafood, tiger prawns and scallops. They range in price from $12 to $15, and I told myself this would be nice another time.

"But acting like it's an especially well-crafted piece of writing also seems kind of condescending imo."

i don't think so! i think her review can be instructional. i like the simplicity of it. there is a zen-like quality to it that comes from writing like that for decades. lots of people who can write could never write something like that. there is absolutely nothing forced about it at all.

i find it kind of crazy as a food writer myself that she writes these fairly lengthy reviews and never brings even one person along with her!! she only ever eats one thing!

tbf i have no idea what the intent of "eatbeat" is (reviewing restaurants or providing news about new restaurants), but the idea of an article where someone goes and eats a meal and does not discuss the quality of the food is v. foreign to me.

i mean, if i lived in grand forks, i would not be relying on eatbeat when figuring out where to go on friday night.

you're assuming there are places to go on friday night

well clearly there are at least two such places, the olive garden and drunken noodle!

I think it's literally just like Grand Forks is a small, not especially foodie place and she's like "here are the options of places to eat so you will know what they are." I really wouldn't read too much into it. I mean we're talking about a city of 50K in a very sparsely populated state.

I mean I think you guys are not understanding what it is like to live in a place like that and especially to not be an internet-savvy 20- or 30-something that uses zagat.com and yelp for recommendations.

but i assume people there still have opinions about whether food is good or not!

i kinda loved my recent local front page coverage. they never once got the name of my store right.

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/419887_10150570348707137_686202136_9026360_1907195104_n.jpg

dude i grew up reading restaurant reviews in the newspaper before the internet existed and i think even then ppl would question the utility of this column.

cute lookin' shop

like, iirc the way it broke down (to an extent) in papers of yore (and probably still!) is there were two kinds of restaurant pieces:

1. the quick news item - the drunken noodle, serving pan-asian food, is now open on 4th st. they will be serving lunch and dinner, blah blah blah.

2. the review - where someone goes to the restaurant as part of a group and they order a bunch of food and spent at least 60% of the review describing things they ate and how they tasted.

marilyn's work falls into some in-between zone that i have just never seen before.

haha love the lede in that article abut scott

I thought the review was fine if the OG is the kind of place her paper's readership wants reviewed. And the outright snottiness of the original Internet reaction was unnecessary. But acting like it's an especially well-crafted piece of writing also seems kind of condescending imo.

― boxall, Wednesday, March 14, 2012 1:31 PM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah her reviews are not particularly helpful as reviews. they are sort of neither here nor there. i have no idea why that is. but she's obviously a good writer and there's no evidence she was especially impressed by olive garden or taco bell.

ya her articles more show just like a wry... awareness of them, and all of their features.

i mean if i was curious about olive garden, i'd have no idea what to order. she says what she had and doesn't say much more about it than, "it was warm and vaguely satisfying in the way food often is." which reads as "it wasn't very good." but if there _is_ something good (or better) at olive garden, we'll never know.

Aw, I wish the print was bigger so I could read that article. My eyes are going.

marilyn's work falls into some in-between zone that i have just never seen before.

― call all destroyer, Wednesday, March 14, 2012 2:55 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That's because it's a 35,000 circulation paper in North Dakota.

hey 35,000 is not bad these days.

i am probably projecting here but she just seems basically midwestern, operating in that weird midwestern ironic earnestness or earnest irony, honed i guess from hundreds of years of passive-agressive niceness

http://www.theonion.com/video/boston-globe-tailors-print-edition-for-three-remai,17572/

she has said in interviews that she considers herself a reporter who describes restaurants and not a food critic.

she liked the chili at this place though:

"The chili looked good when I saw it delivered to another table. So, I ordered a bowl ($3.85). It was very good with lots of beans and lean burger. It was more than I could finish at one sitting. And I have been called “The Appetite.”

http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/article/id/230117/publisher_ID/40/

Marilyn "The Appetite" Haggerty

someone told me that when she was diagnosed w/ cancer she reviewed the hospital's cafeteria, which made me like her a lot

she has this thing with getting her server's full name into the review if she liked them.

this is like a knife in the heart from this woman:

"There are pluses and minuses. About the only minus I found was the breadstick with the spaghetti was sort of soft. It could have used a little more time in the oven."

http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/article/id/229427/publisher_ID/40/

raymond carver fan:

"Aggie had been in the restaurant business about 15 years before venturing out on her own. She tried working in an office once but said being confined to a desk made her nervous. She likes to study recipes and try new things."