Olive Garden Struggles With Diners Afraid Of Capers, Pesto

The Wall Street Journal has a great article by Sara Nassauer about struggles several chain restaurants face when trying to find the balance of offering familiar versus adventurous cuisine. While gnocchi may be considered a commonplace Italian food to many, to some Olive Garden diners it is way too foreign. Nassauer explains:

Customers didn't order the doughy potato pasta in a red wine marinara sauce, or in a Parmesan cream sauce. The dishes failed these field tests until chefs at the company's Orlando, Fla., headquarters tried gnocchi in chicken soup, billed as a "traditional Italian dumpling." Sales took off.

While gourmands (and frankly, most of the HuffPost Food staff) might be somewhat aghast at the idea of combining gnocchi and chicken soup, there is something to be said about introducing unfamiliar ingredients in a familiar way. In years of testing, Olive Garden diners found pesto to be "too green" and capers "too unexpected." John Caron, president of Olive Garden, admits that on the flip side, the chain can't only offer "cheesy, chickeny things and pastay things," because such dishes may alienate customers with more advanced palates.

So what is the unlimited breadstick chain to do? With lagging sales resulting in an "identity crisis," according to the Los Angeles Times, there certainly are some adjustments needed. Still, the chain has made some positive headlines recently after teaming up with Michelle Obama to cut the sodium and calorie counts in its meals.

A quick glance at the online menu advertises a new limited time only dish, Baked Pasta Romana with Chicken. It is described as "Baked layers of ruffled lasagnette pasta and fontina-asiago cheese sauce with pan-seared chicken." Fits in well with that cheese/chicken/pasta combo the chain is trying to "avoid."

Learn why Olive Garden overcooks its pasta and what its "magic formula" is at the Wall Street Journal.

Check out the Journal's accompanying video below.

Comments

[Veronix1617]

11:33 AM on 12/27/2011

I will never understand why so many flock to the Olive Garden. Is the food even good? Certainly not authentic. I've only known women that eat there for their soup and salad lunches.

[Jason N]

12:07 PM on 12/28/2011

It's edible, which is more than I can say for most of the other chain restaurants. Every time I think of Olive Garden though, I think of a comedian (can't remember his name) who ragged on Dane Cook. Joke was something like, "If you're a guy who likes Dane Cook, you probably also think Olive Garden qualifies as taking your girl out someplace fancy." LOL!

[CharliePoole]

11:31 PM on 12/26/2011

"the chain can't only offer "cheesy, chickeny things and pastay things," because such dishes may alienate customers with more advanced palates."

Yes but, how many Europeans a year do they really see, anyway?

[plasmaorb]

02:54 PM on 12/26/2011

I think they struggle with just making food that is edible

[teresaepfeil]

11:37 PM on 12/25/2011

Focus group food. No wonder we never eat there.

[Ghostberry]

10:53 PM on 12/25/2011

Maybe olive garden is somehow aware that people who eat at olive garden are not fans of italian food.

[Bianca S]

02:00 AM on 12/24/2011

Oh for god sakes, customers thought the pesto was "too green"? Really? How sad have we become that any food that isn't varying shades of beige is too "foreign"? I would be surprised but then I realized this is the Olive Garden after all, where even the food in the commercials looks gloppy, pasty and just plain blechhhh.

[NYC07]

12:27 AM on 12/24/2011

The Olive Garden wouldn't know real Italian food if it hit them in the mouth.

[Jason N]

12:12 PM on 12/28/2011

That's probably why they blatantly say they're not authentic. Think your eating authentic Chinese when you order take out?

[Carbon Forteetoo]

11:56 PM on 12/23/2011

I can see an aversion to capers. They are weird by themselves. But a good fresh pesto is the food of gods! Though I doubt "good," or "fresh" are coming out of an olive garden.

[AngusC]

07:44 PM on 12/23/2011

Capers are amazing, it is sad that their customer base does not appreciate them.

[alumcreek]

05:47 PM on 12/23/2011

Quite honestly I only eat the soup and salad and the salad is not all that good. Neither is the soup but all the main courses I have tried have been bland and nearly tasteless.

[atlasusa]

08:38 PM on 12/23/2011

custom adapted to the average Amerian palate

[alumcreek]

08:05 AM on 12/24/2011

How sad for teh average American palate. I have had some wonderful meals in Italy that not even the overpriced Ialian restaurants were able to match. I once had a 12 course meal in Milan over 2 hours with wine and it was very inexpensive in relation to what a US place would charge if any places even offer such fascinating culinary adventure. (I did not know it was going to last that long nor be that good and all for about $50.)

[Fracturedchaos]

05:38 PM on 12/26/2011

This is exactly why I refuse to eat at Olive Garden. I like my food to have flavor and taste, you don't need more calories to make something taste better, add some fresh herbs like basil, oregano, parsley, and more garlic/onion. I mean their food tastes super bland to the point of being unpalatable.

[alumcreek]

06:05 PM on 12/26/2011

When they closed their place nearest my warehouse I stopped going anywhere near their other locations. I eat out at a very good Thai place where there is a Thai grocery and nearly 75% of their customers are Thai. I also eat at various Chinese places where I can watch teh food being cooked and can make requests to change their recipes. I rarely get home early enough to cook. I am self employed and work everyday from 6am till about 8pm. I deal in old books documents. I read during meals but make sure to pay attention to what I am eating. Simple is good and price determines nothing more than teh greed of the owners.

[JPJABBER]

05:27 PM on 12/23/2011

I avoid this place like the plague. The food is mediocre....and something they use makes me sick. After 3 times...I tired to be open minded.........I quit.

[kitsunaknl]

05:25 PM on 12/23/2011

I have avoided Olive Garden restaurants ever since their faux-Italian accent commercials aired: "When yuh heah, yuh family."

[honeybear64]

02:04 PM on 12/23/2011

One characteristic I've noticed among "foodie" types is that, while often dismissive, if not downright subversive, of their own food culture, they are respectful to the point of conservatism when considering anyone else's. Case in point: a recent article in the Food section showed slides of various offerings by McDonald's in international markets, where the food is tweaked to appeal to local tastes and customs, to the point where a lot of it was practically unrecognizable as American food, and all the foodies were going on about how delicious much of it looked and how smart McDonald's is to make the changes to their food that will encourage people in foreign countries to buy it. But when places like Olive Garden take Italian food and adapt it to American taste preferences, the foodies complain that they're "dumbing down" the food. EVERY culture adapts foreign foods to their own tastes. There's a reason that two of the most popular pizza toppings in Japan are tuna and squid, that the vegetarian menu at Pizza Hut in India is longer than the non-vegetarian one, and that beef is nowhere to be seen at a McDonald's in India. A "Chicken tikka masala burger" is no more authentic American food than the bland over-cheesed mushy pasta at Olive Garden is authentic Italian food - so why is it OK for others to adapt our food, but not OK for us to adapt theirs? It almost seems like some kind of American inferiority complex.

[honeybear64]

04:32 PM on 12/23/2011

(Pt. III)

Now, when it comes to QUALITY, as opposed to authenticity, that's a different matter altogether. If Olive Garden does a crap job of preparing its American version of Italian food, they should rightly be criticized. But in my travels, I've noticed that good food is to be had in America as well as in other countries, and bad food is to be had in America as well as in other countries. The entire developed world has been affected by the "processed food revolution" in the decades following the second World War, and America has no monopoly on low-quality "food-like substances".

Comparing Olive Garden to a family-owned restaurant in Italy that uses only fresh local ingredients is as unfair as comparing a fast-food American-style joint in Venice to a fine-dining American restaurant in San Francisco.

Okay - so maybe a lot of Americans don't know what capers and pesto are. That's unfortunate. But I'll bet there are plenty of Italians who don't know what Cajun jambalaya and Cincinatti five-way chili are, either. Neither culture can simply be dismissed as a bunch of small-minded ignoramuses for not being familiar with foods they were never exposed to, and cannot reasonably be expected to have been exposed to, in the first place.

We fetishize foreign cultures for their long-standing insular traditions, and then criticize ourselves for not being citizens of the world.

[alumcreek]

05:51 PM on 12/23/2011

When I travelled repeatedly overseas, I did on occasion stop at a Wendy's or Burger King. I liked that I could get a beer in Italy's version of Wendy's but the sandwich was not all that great.

Burger King in Sweden was almost OK.

Best to eat the local foods everywhere except England, foreign restaurants are a far better bet in the UK.

[kmeuse]

02:51 AM on 12/26/2011

Don't forget Holland where the National dish is the Kroket (read: breaded, deep fried, meat paste tube). How inspired.

[SBinF]

10:35 AM on 12/23/2011

John Caron, president of Olive Garden, admits that on the flip side, the chain can't only offer "cheesy, chickeny things and pastay things," because such dishes may alienate customers with more advanced palates.
--------------

Show me one Olive Garden customer with an advanced palate. They're more elusive than the WMD's in Iraq.

[Anaxamenes]

06:39 AM on 12/23/2011

You don't go to the Olive Garden for Italian food, you go there when you want something salty that just tastes warm and buttery. That's not necessarily a bad thing, it's like comfort food.

I'm just glad they realized that cutting the corners with the food lost customers because over the last few years I've noticed the freshness of their salad and quality of food has been going back up to where it was when they first opened in my area. So many large chain restaurants cut corners on the food and cleanliness when that is exactly the opposite of what they should to do keep customers.

[fisher2737]

03:49 PM on 12/23/2011

I've only been to the Garden a couple times. While the food was decent, it was more "Italian-like food".

[JPJABBER]

05:28 PM on 12/23/2011

More like "Italian wanna-be for 'mericans."