We're big time now!

An email write-in campaign to get an Olive Garden? It saddens me. And not even because I want to write about the food in this town. Just because of what Olive Garden stands for in terms of expanding culinary experiences. I'm not trying to be holier-than-thou, god knows I shop at Target and eat at California Pizza Kitchen, but why launch a whole drive to get one? Is it that spectacular? And why does that mean that a city has "arrived"? To get an Olive Garden?! That kind of means the opposite -- you're on a downward spiral to Big Boxville.

So there's a story in today's Record about it, and this quote is my favorite:

Stockton's appetite for an Olive Garden could be a product of the city's
restaurant landscape - "Stockton is such a gastronomic wasteland," said Ken
Albala, a food historian at University of the Pacific - or a product of its
Middle American attitude about food: "They're not terribly concerned with
quality. They want, just, a lot of food."

So sadly true. Olive Garden serves "Italian," but it's a cheesy bastardization of what true Italian is - simple, with focus on flavors such as herbs and vegetables.

I know enough to know I don't know that much about international food, and who am I to say Stocktonians should be deprived of their love for this stuff? That's why we have free will, I guess - so some people can indulge, and others have every right to run for Whole Foods.