Lunch at Olive Garden

The new Olive Garden restaurant opened a week ago, but today was the first day they served lunch.

So, naturally, we were there. I arrived first about 11:40 a.m. and there was a wait of about 25-30 minutes. The Olive Garden parking lot was full, so I parked next door in the sparsely populated Chili’s lot.(I expect this to become an issue of contention between Chili’s and Olive Garden in the near future.)

The Olive Garden has a beer and wine club permit, so the first thing I did was join the “private” Olive Garden Club.

We ordered the endless soup, salad and breadsticks and were thoroughly impressed with how quickly our food arrived. The waiter was attentive but not annoyingly so and everything was up to the standards we’ve come to expect from Olive Garden. They apparently have a pretty good training program.

There is locally owned Italian restaurant about a mile away where the same order would have cost about $2 more and would not have been as tasty.

As far as I’m concerned, Chili’s might as well close now. (The Jonesboro Chili’s is the only one I’ve seen that did not have a beer and wine permit. IMHO, their menu is singularly lame without beer. I’ve dined there a couple of times and won’t go back.)

And yes, I know that Olive Garden is just a chain and hardly gourmet dining, but when you live in a region where most of the food is brown – barbecue or fried – this is a rare and long-awaited oasis of variety and flavor.