Marilyn Hagerty , Olive Garden reviewer , R.I.P.

[rotuts]

quite some time ago , even here on eG , a review of the O.G. caused a bit of a stir.

 

I did search for that thread , and could not find it 

 

NYTimes , Today :

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/18/dining/marilyn-hagerty-dead.html

 

'''  

Marilyn Hagerty, a food columnist who startled the online world with an earnestly detail-oriented and nonjudgmental appraisal of a North Dakota Olive Garden, and who was startled in turn when the review racked up more than one million page views, bringing her national media attention and a book contract, died on Sept. 16 in Grand Forks, N.D. She was 99.

Her death, in a hospital, was from complications of a stroke, said her son, the journalist James R. Hagerty.

Ms. Hagerty had been writing The Eatbeat, her restaurant column in The Grand Forks Herald, for 26 years when, in early 2012, she filed her report about the opening of the city’s first Olive Garden outlet, part of a local branch of a national Italian restaurant chain where the warm breadsticks never ran out.

The Olive Garden’s menu was enormously popular but also routinely mocked for taking starchy, cheesy liberties with the cuisine. Ms. Hagerty did not engage with that debate. Her descriptions of the restaurant and its food were direct and matter of fact.

 

“The chicken Alfredo ($10.95) was warm and comforting on a cold day,” she wrote. “The portion was generous. My server was ready with Parmesan cheese.” 

 

''  When the article first began to ricochet across social media, the initial consensus was that the writer was a kindly Midwestern grandmother who had lost the script. This seemed to be the view of an out-of-town reader who sent her a one-word email: “Pathetic.” etc, etc,

 

for review purposes.

Edited 1 hour ago by Smithy
Corrected title spelling (log)

[blue_dolphin]

Thanks, @rotuts, I remember that!  Here’s a gift link to that NYT obit for non subscribers.

 

And here’s the eG topic on her viral Olive Garden review: 

My two favorite bits of the NYT obit:

Quote

…

Mr. Bourdain’s imprint with Ecco later published a collection of her restaurant columns, “Grand Forks: A History of American Dining in 128 Reviews” (2013).

 

“She misses nothing,” he wrote in the foreword. “I would not want to play poker with her for money.”

…

 

Quote

…

James Hagerty wrote about his mother’s late-career stardom in an article that appeared on the front page of The Wall Street Journal in 2012, when he was a reporter there.

“My mom has her own style of reviewing restaurants: She doesn’t like to say anything bad about the food,” he wrote. “If she writes more about the décor than the food, you might want to eat somewhere else.”

In a “Today” interview, Ms. Hagerty took issue with him.

“My son is full of prunes,” she said.

 

 

Edited 2 hours ago by blue_dolphin
To add link (log)

[liuzhou]

 

 

The 2012 eG topic is here.