We spent $150 at Olive Garden

$37 50 per person on average (with two adults drinking wine) for big plates of what looks like pre-digested slop in a "fun" family restaurant? That's insane.

And the now minimum cost of $25+ Five Guys cost of a hamburger, small French fries, and small drink. I read of Americans planning moves to Europe but then backing up because of lower wages and higher taxes, but they needn't eat heaping plates of cat sick. For that cost, they can have have excellent food of high quality ingredients, freshly prepared for much less - with good wine - in a good restaurant in the center of many European cities. Not some garbage truck suburban strip mall dump.

The same writer has an article about how her family of four spent $460 at The Capital Grille steak house "and would do it again" and how she and her husband spent "$1200 on 2 days in Disneyland," sans kids, and thought it a great value.

I spent $171.00 at Red Lobster for 3 of us. It's was totally not worth it. The food was awful, so was the service. Just ridiculous. I'll never go there again.

Just cook for yourselves. It's cheaper and better for you. If you're going to eat out, prepare to pay and tip.

When my nieces were young I would take them on "dates" where we could go to dinner wherever they wanted.

This would be either in Boston or on Cape Cod. The choices were endless.

They loved the O.G.. They still do. I have never understood why. I won't repeat the usual rant about food quality but I'm sure everybody is aware.

I'm not a food snob but for that price there has to be a better, local choice.

And no, I am not R4.

The problem isn’t the price, it’s the quality of the product. Everything I get there tastes like salty frozen food heated up. You can only find it reasonable if you never had fresh Italian home cooking or been to superior restaurants for perspective.

And dinner for four at The Capital Grille for $460 makes sense, unless the children were very small.

$460 means they didn’t drink much or have a good bottle of wine.

I’ve swallowed far worse things than Olive Garden food.

They don't get out much do they, if they're willing to go again?

Maybe someone will cook them real Italian food someday, because Olive Garden sure as shit isn't.

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

To be honest, I've had lasagna in some quite high end Italian eateries, and at no time did it look much better than what is pictured in the OP. There is simply no way to make lasagna look pretty. It's just flat noodles with sloppy looking meat sauce slathered between layers, topped by melted cheese. It looks far better before it's cooked and everything melts down into a big glob.

Now I've never had lasagna at Olive Garden, but it's pretty hard to mess up lasagna as long as you use a decent tasting tomato sauce. So I doubt I would find their lasagna as off putting as some here claim they do. but then, we all know we have a ton of faux food snobs around DL.

A dinner portion of Olive Garden lasagna has 2300 mg of sodium. That’s probably a big differentiator vs a high end Italian eatery.

I'm not a "faux food snob". I'm Italian.

After reading the article, my key takeaway is their son with the baby tastes needs grow the fuck up. Don't let children order cheeseburgers everywhere. A grown man or woman with baby tastes screams low class and uneducated. Children must be taught each month to try new healthy things to eat. Parents these days seem to fuck up at every turn.

The only thing I ever order there is the salad and breads ticks. It's not a place I choose to eat.

^^But'cha do Blanche, YA DO!!

Olive Garden at least has decent soups. Salty for sure but palatable. I find Buca di Beppo, the family-style Italian chain restaurant to be even more ridiculously over-priced with disgusting takes on traditional dishes. My dear friend INSISTS on going there for any special occasion and I dread it each time. They usually have really hot servers in there, though.

$1.50

[QUOTE] Olive Garden at least has decent soups. Salty for sure but palatable. I find Buca di Beppo, the family-style Italian chain restaurant to be even more ridiculously over-priced with disgusting takes on traditional dishes. My dear friend INSISTS on going there for any special occasion and I dread it each time. They usually have really hot servers in there, though.

That’s funny. I actually like Buca, though I haven’t been there in years. However the one I went to, which is probably hundreds if not thousands of miles away from yours, also had some fine young servers whom I wanted to take into the men’s room with me.

OP is telling you now so he doesn’t have to tell you WHEN you try to bring his ass to a real Italian restaurant.

I completely agree with R14.

I have a cousin whose son (now an adult) would only eat frozen Celeste pizza. That’s all he would eat for years—even on Thanksgiving.

I would not have allowed that, and now, as an adult, he has the taste, as you say, R14, of a baby or young child.

I have friend who is very highly educated, but will go to Tuscany and eat only pizza, pasta, or salad. On a group trip, we would be dining on rabbit, cinghiale, lamb, and fish—and he would order a small pizza and a salad.

I have friends who love good food with lots of variety and they often have children who are open to trying new things. It reminds me of watching Gordon Ramsay with his children when they were younger—they loved eating everything that Gordon prepared, including a turkey and a lamb they raised on their property and then slaughtered to be consumed.

Being so limited with what one eats is immature and results in one missing out on lots of delicious food.

Eat drink and be merry

How the hell do you spend $150 at Olive Garden.

It's like those stories of people spending $50 at McDonalds by themselves - HOW?

R14, how did you arrive at the monthly schedule for lessons?

[quote]It's just flat noodles with sloppy looking meat sauce slathered between layers, topped by melted cheese. It looks far better before it's cooked and everything melts down into a big glob.

Properly cooked lasagne can be cut into pieces, there should never be “globs” of filling coming out. That means it isn’t made properly.

R19, Buca has gone downhill actually in a matter of a few years. It was always a fun "concept" restaurant with decent food. The prices have gone up drastically (like any restaurant lately) and the food quality has gone down.

[quote]And dinner for four at The Capital Grille for $460 makes sense, unless the children were very small.

[quote]$460 means they didn’t drink much or have a good bottle of wine.

The husband had a $100 steak and lobster special and $16 bourbon cocktail, the wife a $60 steak au poivre with $43 glass of wine + $35 wine tasting; the children a $58 filet mignon and a $24 hamburger ($336 plus other another $124 in misc./undetailed items.)

I don't doubt your assessment of the price being something of a bargain, but it does surprise me. Maybe it's not having lived in the US for a few years, or my disinterest in steaks and distaste for steak houses, but it seemed a large sum to me for two adults and two children (one early teens? the other younger), at least for a rather ordinary corporate steakhouse, The two times I have eaten at one of The Capital Grille locations it had all the charm of a Sheraton banquet awards event on the outskirts of some secondary city. A top quality steak in a good restaurant in Florence is only $32-57 for 1kg (2.2 lbs). I know which I would rather have.

For $460 converted to Euros, I could take 3 adults to a 3-Michellin-star restaurant with superb food the likes of which no one had ever had before, with award-winning architecture and where the excellent staff that select wine and drinks for taste not pricetag.

I guess it's a great place if you're either young with a fast metabolism or you want to be morbidly obese, ride a mobility scooter and die relatively young of a coronary or from having a leg chopped off.

Carbs, cheese, salt and meat in those quantities...places like The Olive Garden should have to charge a fat/cancer tax. I'm aware that people who look after themselves can still get cancer, but for most people, eating shit has consequences.