{"id":827,"date":"2009-11-30T09:49:58","date_gmt":"2009-11-30T09:49:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/?p=827"},"modified":"2009-11-30T09:49:58","modified_gmt":"2009-11-30T09:49:58","slug":"the-olive-garden-vancouver-wa-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/2009\/11\/the-olive-garden-vancouver-wa-review\/","title":{"rendered":"The Olive Garden – Vancouver, WA – Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"olivegarden.jpg\"The Olive Garden. Yes, the Olive Garden. Look, we were staying near
\nthe Westfield Mall in Vancouver, WA, and all of our dining choices were
\nchain restaurants. Frankly, neither Red Lobster, Chevy’s or Azteca
\nsounded like a more appealing choice. Plus I hadn’t been to the Olive
\nGarden in almost a decade. And you know what? It wasn’t too bad.
\nGeneric, uninspired? Sure. But the grub was tasty enough, even good,
\nand the prices reasonable as well. Would I go back? Well, let’s just
\nsay that I wouldn’t go out of my way to avoid it.
\nThe Olive Garden at the Westfield Mall looks from the outside as an
\nOlive Garden and from the inside as a mall restaurant. The textured
\nwalls and Italianish decorations did not stand up against the flat roof
\nof our small dining room, \u00ad but it wasn’t unpleasant. Service was swift
\nand attentive, though the waitress seemed somewhat taken aback when I
\npronounced the food merely \u201cfine\u201d. Really, given my low expectations
\nthat was a compliment.
\nThe menu, as you can imagine, emphasizes pastas with a few heavier
\nentrees added for good measure. There are plenty of fried appetizers,
\nbut Mike and I had had a late lunch and weren’t \/that\/ hungry. Plus
\nentrees come with your choice of soup (several choices here) or salad,
\nand neither of these are skimpy.
\nI had the spaghetti with meatballs and the salad ($14)
\nand Mike had the tilapia and the chili soup ($16.50. The meals came accompanied
\nby their greatly advertised bread sticks, which were warm but still kind
\nof tough and otherwise unremarkable. The salad was large enough for two
\nor more, but also nothing to write home about. I personally found the
\ndressing too acidic, but Mike liked it. There was plenty of crispy,
\nwhite lettuce, a few onion and tomato slices and an amazing number of
\ncroutons.
\nMike found his chili soup watery. He was somewhat surprised it had
\npasta in it (hello?! It’s the Olive Garden!) and not much meat. Maybe
\ntry one of the other choices.
\nMy spaghetti with meatballs, on the other hand, was surprisingly good.
\nOK, the spaghetti was spaghetti, and the \u201cmeat\u201d sauce had a generic
\nsweet flavor to it, but the meatballs were very nice. They tasted
\npretty much like you imagine a meatball would taste; nothing gourmet,
\nnothing revelatory, but exactly what I was looking for that night. If
\nyou are looking for classic meatballs, you could definitely do worse.
\nMike thought his tilapia was \u201cfine\u201d, though I remember he liking the
\nsauce. The portion wasn’t too big so he ate some of my meatballs (the
\nchutzpah!), which he also liked.
\nWe were too full for dessert so we skipped it. Maybe next time, but
\nthey are about $7 which I find a bit steep for dessert.
\nAnd that was it, a pleasant meal that exceeded our very low expectations.
\nThe Olive Garden
\n8101 NE Parkway Dr.
\nVancouver, WA
\n(360) 256-8174
\nhttp:\/\/www.olivegarden.com<\/a>
\nMarga’s Chain Restaurant Reviews<\/a>
\nMarga’s Restaurant Reviews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Olive Garden. Yes, the Olive Garden. Look, we were staying near the Westfield Mall in Vancouver, WA, and all of our dining choices were chain restaurants. Frankly, neither Red Lobster, Chevy’s or Azteca sounded like a more appealing choice. Plus I hadn’t been to the Olive Garden in almost a decade. And you know […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-restaurants","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}