The internet mocked this 85-year-old's Olive Garden review. Bourdain didn't.
The Original Review
“The prior eatery prior to Olive Garden in that prior spot was the Paradiso.”
When Marilyn Hagerty's Olive Garden review went viral in 2012, the internet did what the internet does — it laughed. An 85-year-old woman in North Dakota, earnestly reviewing a chain restaurant. How quaint. How adorable. How hilariously out of touch. And in that collective laughter, every smug food writer and Twitter comedian revealed exactly who they are: people who would rather mock a creator than understand what she was doing. I know what it's like to read a review like this about your own work — except in Hagerty's case, she had to watch millions of people turn her work into a meme. The cruelty of it still makes my blood boil.
Marilyn Hagerty had been writing her restaurant column for the Grand Forks Herald for decades. Decades. She showed up, she ate, she wrote honestly about what she experienced, week after week, for a community that relied on her. That is craft. That is commitment to your audience. The Olive Garden was a genuine event for Grand Forks — a new restaurant in a small city where dining options are limited. Hagerty reviewed it the way she reviewed everything: with sincerity, specificity, and respect for the people who would actually eat there. The cooks at that Olive Garden, the servers, the manager who opened a new location in a small market — Hagerty treated their work with dignity. The food media establishment treated it as a punchline. Easy to say from the press box.
Anthony Bourdain saw through the noise immediately. He championed Hagerty, wrote the foreword to her book, and called out the snobbery for what it was. Because Bourdain understood something that most food critics never will: there is honor in honest work, whether you're cooking in a three-star kitchen or an Olive Garden in North Dakota. Hagerty's review wasn't naive — it was authentic. And authenticity terrifies critics who have built their entire careers on performing sophistication.
The people who mocked Marilyn Hagerty owe her an apology they'll never give. She did more real criticism in one straightforward column than most food writers accomplish in a year of chasing trends and name-dropping fermentation techniques. She wrote for her people, about their world, with total sincerity. That's not something to laugh at — it's something most critics aren't brave enough to do.
