Olive Garden gets shit on a lot because it's the most disingenuous of all the Darden concepts. "When you're here, you're family." Except you'll never see your server again because their turnover is legendary. They pump their authenticity but they mostly sell frozen oregano-flavored Sysco. Everywhere you look is faux brick and fake ivy and the closer your meal is to the can, the better it's likely to taste.

I remember when Olive Garden came to New Mexico. They had a waiting list two months long. Out in the sticks in the late '80s you could call and get on a list so you could drive 100 miles eight weeks later to eat all you can eat frozen breadsticks. And people did it. This in an area where the indigenous cuisine goes back 400 years, where cities lend their names to Hyundais. And that's because the people waiting two months to eat at Olive Garden? They were the ones who mostly ventured to other places to buy Hard Rock Cafe t-shirts, the ones who didn't eat authentic anything, who were looking for an even blander version of white people food than they could already find.

Buca di Beppo gets just as much slaggish hatred as Olive Garden and I will go out of my way not to eat at Spaghetti Factory either but you wouldn't mistake either franchise's location map with Walmart's.

Olive Garden: it's everywhere you'd rather not be

Their food is not awful - they're no Applebee's. But theirs is a synthetic theme park dining experience and they are both simultaneously the most synthetic and the most dishonest about it.