Abstract
In this paper, I address the practice of domestic culinary tourism by focusing on a seemingly banal suburban chain restaurant featuring ethnic cuisine. I examine the ways in which the restaurant positions itself as offering ‘real’ Italian food and a ‘real’ Italian experience, and analyze a broad array of cultural texts that chastise the Olive Garden for this assertion and condemn the chain and its patrons. Ultimately, I demonstrate that many of those things that position the restaurant as an object of derision are part of the appeal of the chain, resulting in a complex set of meanings that resides in the Olive Garden as a site of cultural interest.
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