I don’t want to give the impression that I hate Olive Garden, or even that I dislike it.  When I’m there, drowning myself in bread sticks, breathing in the ambiance of their labyrinthine floor plan and Tuscan style plaster walls; things feel mostly normal, but just slightly…off…wrong in some way.  As if just beneath the surface of my stained linen table cloth, some lovecraftian darkness brews.  Few astute souls can even detect an inkling of its colorless existence, an existence which certainly goes unnoticed by the packed horde, patiently waiting their turn at the trough to gorge themselves all the way to the bottom of their never ending pasta bowls.  This feeling has been there for years, the feeling that Tasha Yar shouldn’t be here.  That Worf doesn’t belong at the helm any longer.  That, as great as it is to have Tasha back, it isn’t right.  I feel like she should be…. ya know…..dead.

Only last night did I finally attempt to scrape away the deceitful skin of evil and peer the true nature of the beast.  With my officially branded Carmen Sandiego trapper keeper, I began jotting down notes regarding my experiences, in the hope of finally uncovering this mystery.  Note #1 – Sitting out front, holding my electronic coaster in a death grip and staring intently at it’s stackable charging nipples, I knew that once it went off, it would become a tool of transformation.  Changing my dinner party from just some normal ole Americans, into 4 authentic Italians, just like in the commercials… or at least as Italian as those kids on the Jersey Shore.  Despite my duties as the keeper of the coaster, it was hard not to notice the dozen or so stink bugs walking and fluttering around the benches we were seated on.  It was also hard not to notice the guy choking on a cigarette as he was trying to talk to some random woman and her baby, or the guy with a Gandalf (the grey) beard reading whichever part of the Wheel of Time series he’s currently so enthralled by that, even as a 46 year old adult, he can’t be bothered to wait until getting home from his meal at Olive Garden with mother, to continue reading; or at very least the 4 girls that were clearly the inspiration for all those Ghetto Prom emails your coworkers send you.  Where was grandpa Leone regaling his family with stories of the old country?  Where was Antonio the waiter telling a funny joke, and everyone saluting with their wine?  Please, at least tell me Chef Arturo is really back there smelling the herbs, and inspecting the lasagne?!  So far, this isn’t like the commercials at all!

Once my coaster buzzed and danced about in my hand, I brushed off the stink bugs and like a proud patriarch of the Medici dynasty, I marched our party of four in to be seated.  Oddly enough, we actually were seated by a big Grandpa Leone type family, but all I really heard out of him were complaints about his plate being too hot the last time he was here.  The guy seated behind us thought he was old friends with all the employees, lots of “Hey Hey!  Look at dis guy…ahh ha ha!” to every bus boy that walked by.  But as I always (have to) do, I filtered out my fellow humans, and our party ordered some appetizers, entrees, and eventually even deserts.

Usually when you order any kind of appetizer dip, they give you a half gallon of dip, and three or four crackers to actually… you know… dip.  Then you have to request more bread, which takes forever, and your last resort is to eat the dip with a fork like some confused foreigner, just out of principle because you spent $8 on it.  To Olive Garden’s credit, their Hot Artichoke-Spinach Dip came with an excellent bread-to-dip ratio, and both the dip and the bread slices were pretty tasty.  Of the other appetizers our table ordered, I also sampled the Stuffed Mushrooms and Lasagna Fritta.   I preferred the Mushrooms, and even though the idea of fried lasagna sounded a little odd to me, I did like it enough to eat a piece and not be completely disgusted.  Welcome to America, Eff your Italian customs, here we fry everything!  Bring me some fried soda!

Having polished off a big glass of Coke, and a selection of various appetizers, I figured a quick trip to the mens room might be in order before settling into the main course.  Carmen Sandiego trapper keeper note #2, the bathroom.  After I pushed my way back through the mass of flesh crowding the entrance, past the woman yelling at her 4 kids, and past the people eyeing me with hopes of my departure, so that my emigration would make room for their disgusting backsides to be seated; I bounded my way into the men’s loo.  Like the restaurant itself, the mens room was nicely laid out, two sinks on opposite sides of the wall to alleviate sink crowding struck me as nothing less than a revolution in men’s room design.  Four slightly too small stalls, and a couple urinals, were built onto quality faux stone tile with clay colored walls.  Visually appealing, and overall, a pretty nice place to lay an egg.  Except that they were disgusting.  Not that the Olive Garden janitorial squadron was falling down on the job, because my magnifying glass inspection revealed little grime or accumulated muck.  But still there was piss on the seats, flecks of toilet paper everywhere, and a thick heaviness that filled the air much like a poorly ventilated Taco Bell bathroom.  There had been an honest attempt made to keep it clean, but the shear volume of yokel that had steamrolled through there on a daily basis provided more refuse than the levees of proper sanitation could hold.  Fortunately, my needs at that moment only required a brief visit, which I completed, and then returned to my seat in time for the main entree.

For my main course, I ordered the Herb-Grilled Salmon, was it good? yes, was it $17.50 good?  Not really, It was large, and certainly acceptable, but not very distinctive.  It just tasted like a piece of Salmon with some herbs on it, nothing more.  Nothing that made me think “Man, why doesn’t it taste like this when I cook it ?” In this case, it was more like the kind of thing I could have bought at Food Lion and prepared at home for a 1/3 the cost.  I have a hard time imagining the guy who cooked this fish spent much time at the Culinary Institute of Tuscany.  My best guess would be that he spent more time trying to keep the bathroom clean between the lunch and dinner services than he did worrying about herb combinations.

For dessert, My wife and I split a 3 cup Dolcini, she favored the Lemon, and I the Strawberry.  At $6 for all three, it was correctly priced for the quantity and quality.  The Strawberry Dolcini had cake in the middle that had a light, ‘cake & ice cream’ dissolving quality, but without the ice cream.  Which was good for me, since I’m not a big fan of The Dairy.  All in all, I was not disappointed in the food, but I wasn’t excited to go back anytime soon either.

Just Pretty good, for the most part, is really all I expect in life.  But Olive Garden presents this image of an upscale Italian restaurant.  Which it even looks to be, which the food and wait staff almost manage to pull off, but there’s still that rock in my boot.  Something bothering me that I just can’t put my finger on.  Let me review the notes I’ve been keeping in my Carmen Sandiego Trapper Keeper….

<hmmm>

<interesting….>

<might be some causation ….nope… just correlation>

<walmart?…. no, that’s more like Target… OH! I’ve got it!>

Upon further review, I’ve discovered the problem.  Olive Garden has done a masterful job of convincing low class people that they’re eating in a high class restaurant.  In reality, an intelligent person would place Olive Garden where it belongs, aside TGI Fridays, Chili’s, Don Pablo’s, but just with an Italian theme.  The prices at Olive Garden are just slightly higher than those other Tier 2 sit down restaurants, but that extra little bit is enough for the dregs to think it’s a big deal, and then come out in droves.  Big enough of a deal that they’d compel their brood to behave, or even perhaps dress themselves in a button down shirt?  No, there’s nothing that important.

There’s something to be said for understanding your demographics.  Despite their growth and immense popularity, Chipotle doesn’t know thyself.  Chipotle fancies themselves as a gourmet burrito boutique; their industrial minimalist design style, their emphasis on organic ‘food with integrity’, their cleverly anti-corporate website design, and their choices of location all work to focus their image so it appeals to young and trendy professionals.  In Baltimore, The majority of the Chipotles are in the more upscale areas – Downtown, Towson, Bel air, Columbia, Annapolis.  Meanwhile, Security Blvd, Glen Burnie, Dundalk, Essex; they got nothing.  Obviously, their business strategy is working, because they’re spreading like herpes around here, and in Baltimore that’s no easy task for a relatively new food chain.

But for every burrito bowl they’re selling to a 20 year old girl from Towson University, they could be selling 3 Beef Burritos to a fat ass in Essex on his way home to watch WWE Raw.  Chipotle doesn’t need to rely on trendy, they’ve got an amazing product that big fat slobs love, and big fat slobs will frequent your place of business and drop buckets of dollars 4 and 5 times a week, compared to that one burrito bowl that little miss has to go burn off at the gym, so she can fit into her shorts that say “juicy” or “baby doll” or something equally obnoxious across the back.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Chipotle, I just feel they’re a little short sighted with their expansion strategy.  The same principle applies to the topic at hand.  Pit Beef, which I’ve only recently learned that, much like crabs (and this time I’m not referring to local STDs, I mean the things that crawl around in the bay),  is considered somewhat of a local specialty.  So, if that’s the case, why the hell do I have such a hard time finding a decent beef sandwich around here?  Most of the places I find either end up closing or sucking.  I know there are places around, but for something that is such a popular item, I would expect it to always been within reach.  I’m not driving 45 minutes to go to The Canopy in Ellicott City, and I’m not driving into the hood at night to eat at Chaps, no matter how good their reputation is.  I’ll go as far as Dundalk to satisfy a pit beef craving, and despite an inordinate amount of auto-parts stores and places that serve breakfast 24/7, there’s no pit beef!

Until now.

Next to Rita’s (also a fatboy favorite), we’ve lost a weenie world, but we’ve gained The Bull Pen.  I’ll get to the quality of food in a minute.  I want to emphasis the level to which they, unlike Chipotle,  understand their clientele at The Bull Pen.

First off, their motto is “You can’t beat our meat”, they’ve set the bar with a nice double entandre that isn’t too complex for the locals to understand.  They could have gone with some Dennis Miller styled quotation relating the quality of the meat in relation to the meal accommodations on Uruguayan Flight 571, but it’s overly wordy, and would require a fair amount of explanation to most of the guys selling Fram parts.

2nd off, a pretty girl to take your order at the cash register is never a bad thing.  If I want to see regular looking uggo’s, I can go…well…just about anywhere else on Merritt Blvd.  I won’t say too much about the cashier, since it appeared to be a family operation, and the guy working the meat line looked like he could kick my ass.

Which brings us to #3, the guy working the meat looked and sounded like he gave a damn about the food he was serving.  He’s yelling at the cook, he’s giving orders to the other woman behind the counter (could have been the cashiers mom), he’s throwing sandwiches together, and he’s serving up the orders as he fills them.  The dude was the definition of hustle.  He did forget my onions, but it was ok because he realized as soon as he gave it to me that he’d forgotten something, and asked me what it was.  A couple seconds later, he slapped down some onions with a “here ya go buddy” and sent me on my merry way.

Number 4!  Let me ask you… who lives in a Pineapple under the sea?  (I’ll wait…)

That’s right! SPONGE BOB SQUARE PANTS, playing on a big ole flat screen on the wall.  Who doesn’t like Sponge Bob?  And who wouldn’t want to enjoy their dinner to the sound of silent children enthralled by whatever that little yellow guy is doing?  Entertained children are somewhat less annoying children.  Last thing I need is some bored kid bouncing up and down and yammering on because he doesn’t care about the evening news or a rerun of Seinfeld that first ran before he was even born.  Put on cartoons and shut those kids up!  Plus…I like cartoons.

Ok, the final, and probably the most important part.  The quality of the food.  It was good!  Thank God it was good.  I’ll make two very small complaints.  The edges of the beef were a little crispy and he initially forgot my onions.  But you know what?   The edges weren’t so crispy that I didn’t completely forget about them as I tore through the rest of the sandwich.  The fries were ‘boardwalk’ style, not the Oreida crap so many places just dump into the fryer, but great tasting fresh cut fries with just enough skin, and who doesn’t love a little fry skin?

I honestly forget how much my meal came to.  I really didn’t even look at the menu, I glanced over it and saw some specialty sandwiches, but really, I just wanted a beef sandwich.  I didn’t need a house special.  In keeping with the rest of the good judgment I saw exhibited, they took my order, put it in as whatever combination it should have been, took my money, and gave me food.  I didn’t have to specify a fajita burrito or a burrito, or a tall or small or skinny or whatever, I told them what I wanted, I got what I wanted.  No games, no bs, no technicalities.   Excellent meal, excellent service.  The Bull Pen knows their demographic, and I’ll be going back for more meat very soon.

I know there’s at least ten thousand places named Pizza Roma, so I’m specifically referring to the one in southern Baltimore County.

Last year, I reviewed a new local establishment, Chewy’s, with less than positive things to say.  Building on their sub-par food, atmosphere and service, they decided to expand the franchise (which I’d advised against in my initial review), to include a Stone Oven Pizza storefront a few blocks away.  Although I never made my way into the building, M5MR field agents reported the lack of a stone oven on premises, but instead, just a regular-ass-oven.

I still wanted to like Chewy’s just for the fact of it being a local business.  Since their sub shop location was such a dismal failure, I put all my hopes into the Pizza shop.  Of the 4 times we ordered from Chewy’s pizza, 3 of them were excellent.  The 1 time things were lously, I’ll excuse because the business had just opened, and they seemed overwhelmed on one of their first Friday nights.

What does any of this have to do with Pizza Roma?  Had Chewy focused his attention on his sub and pizza shops, instead of expanding yet again into a catering business, maybe the pizza location would have been open at times relevant to my desire to eat pizza.  Despite producing a good product, the pizza location was also too focused on franchising and local fame.  Rather than having simple menu, they produced a page full of theme pizzas, an eating challenge, and a confusing system of rules for combining orders from the two locations.  I admired their moxy for only having one pizza size, but then Chewy’s pizza seemed to start being closed more than it was open.  When running a business, it’s a good idea to let people know whether or not you’re actually ‘in business’.  A few weeks ago, when attempting to order over the phone from their sub shop location, I was told that “the pizza place is gone”, even though they were still running ads in that same local newspaper.  Such a fustercluck of poor service and business acumen has annoyed me to the point of total disinterest.

My apathy aside, I recently required the services of a quality pizzateer.  The other sub shop in town makes a good pizza and a great sub, but they’re a bit too greasy for The Wife’s taste, so I turned to the new Pizza Roma.  It’s not like I’d never been to Pizza Roma before, it was just never my go-to for anything, even when I lived right around the corner from them.  The food and service were always good, I don’t know…. maybe it was the small parking lot that turned me off.

Their new location was recently built just for them, and from the outisde (except for the neon signs) you’d think it’s a fine Italian restaurant.  The first time in, because of how great the outside looked, I was a little disappointed to just find a typical subshop.  But it’s not just a typical subshop, each time I’ve been in there the people behind the counter are friendly.  They don’t yell “whaddya want?”, they say “Hi, what can I get you?”.  A pretty face behind the counter doesn’t hurt either, and that’s definitely one feature the other two local places can’t boast.  I’ve never seen either this new location or their old location appear dingy and cruddy, again, in this quality, they stand alone.

Overall, Roma’s pizza reminded me of Papa Johns pizza like it was 10 years ago, but better.  For all Papa John’s talks about freshness, their food has taken on the unmistakable taste of nationwide flavor conformity through mass production.  Not every bite of food I take has to taste like every other bite I’ve ever had at your establishment.  Slight changes in taste are great, they keep my taste buds interested in whats going on.  I understand the desire to produce a constant and probably trademarked taste, but that’s not how fresh natural food works.   I’m caring less and less about nationwide chains, and wanting more and more locally prepared food.  Changes in bitterness or sweetness, firmness or softness, and overall flavor included.  My meal should have a little element of surprise in it.

The pizza wasn’t greasy in the least, I didn’t have to take a roll of paper towels to it before digging in.  The cheese didn’t slide off in a big bag of liposuctioned fat, or feel like a mass of lard in my stomach.  The whole pizza could best be described as “light”.  The slices were easy to cut and chew on, and nary a bit of fat-boy regret afterward.  I can’t over emphasize how great this pizza was.  The Wife said she thought the sauce was a little sweet, she has always put sugar on her pizzas to cut the “bitter’ taste of the pizza sauce.  I’ve never liked her sweet pizzas, and didn’t detect any sweetness in Roma’s sauce, but its conceivable that they mix in just enough sugar to cut out some of the bitterness.

I’ve only had one pizza from Pizza Romas recently, but judging from my previous trips there over the years, and what I’ve heard from other locals, it looks like this is going to be my new place for Pizza.  Now I need to check out their steak subs, if they pass the test, I’m calling this place home.