Date: Aug 24 2001
Subject: Olive Garden

A friend of my wife went to the Olive Garden with her church group about two weeks ago and ordered alfredo. The meal came out cold and she had the meal sent back. It came back out cold again, she asked them to heat it up again. By the time she got it warm, everyone else was done eating, so she told the waiter to just box the meal and she would take it home. She heated the meal up and ate part of it. Over the next three days she had sores break out in her mouth and on her tongue. The DR told her that she had Herpes. After she convinced the DR that there was no way that she could have gotten them there he eventually had her run down her last five days and he found out about the food. She brought the food in and it was tested. There was semen on the food. Currently her attorney is working with authorities as well as preparing a law suit, but there is suppose to be something coming out very soon about it.

If you go to eat there you might ask to have your semen on the side.

TRUE STORY.
Why Olive Garden?

I should point out that while Olive Garden has become the main lightning rod for instances of the semen-contaminated food legend in recent years, this hasn't always been the case and shouldn't be taken as a sign that the chain is guilty of anything more insidious than being extremely popular and well known throughout the country. Among the other specimens of the tale in my email archive are variants set in pizzerias, hamburger joints, Mexican restaurants, and Chinese restaurants. Olive Garden has been singled out due to a phenomenon folklorists call the "Goliath Effect" -- a fancy way of saying that over time, disparaging rumors tend to become focused on the largest and best known businesses in their market sector, in essence because the bigger the company (or the bigger we perceive it to be), the more we are inclined to distrust it.

Let's face it, most of us live busy lives and are dining out more than ever before, which means we're putting our health in the hands of strangers more than ever before. And though we may not speak of it much, we have serious qualms about this -- qualms which find expression in urban legends about horrible things being done to our food. The stories are usually false, thank goodness, but our misgivings are all too real.

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RE: WDM Olive Garden Angie sent this email to me!!!!!!!!! It was her co-worker! A girl I work with and her friend went to Olive Garden this weekend; I believe Thursday or Friday night. Amber’s friend did not get what she ordered correctly so she sent the food back. Sunday she woke up and had red bumps all over inside her mouth. She went to the doctor and after many questions and food allergy tests she brought in what she had ate (she had left over’s at home) the doctor tested it. The food tested positive for three different types of semen, Amber’s friend had Syphilis in her mouth from the food at Olive Garden here in WDSM… Anyone up for dinner this weekend, I know a great place! AngieComments: Urban legends about restaurant food contamination abound, and a favorite sub-motif is the intentional adulteration of food items with bodily fluids. In the present case the adulterant is alleged to be "three different types of semen" -- meaning, presumably, the semen of three different men -- and the location an Olive Garden restaurant in West Des Moines, Iowa. We are told that the female victim developed sores in her mouth identified by doctors as symptoms of an STD (sexually transmitted disease), namely syphilis. The source of these allegations is a forwarded email circulating since July 2007. Health officials and the restaurant's managers say no such incident took place. According to the Iowa Department of Public Health and Darden Restaurants, Inc. (owner of the Olive Garden chain), the West Des Moines restaurant's sanitation record is spotless, and the email tale has zero basis in fact. "You could just look at it and say, 'Gee, I think some teenager sat around and tried to make up the grossest story they could make up and this is what they came up with,'" state epidemiologist Patricia Quinlisk told KCCI-TV News in Des Moines. She advises recipients of the message to simply discard it. Olive Garden rumor dates back to 1999 Interestingly enough, while this exceptionally nasty rumor may be new to Iowa, it has plagued Olive Garden restaurants across the U.S. for the better part of a decade. Far from lending credence to the claims, however, the fact that the same narrative has been repeated again and again in different locations with only slight variations in the details identifies it as a textbook example of an urban legend. The following variant was contributed by a reader in San Francisco in February 1999. Note that the victim is again female and the restaurant is Olive Garden, but the STD she supposedly contracted is herpes, not syphilis.

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Restaurant design

Olive Garden restaurant at Times Square, New York City

Newer restaurants are styled after Tuscan-style farmhouses and are meant to look and feel like the inside of a family home in Italy. These restaurants are modeled after an actual farmhouse in the town of Castellina in Chianti, on the grounds of the Rocca delle Macie winery. The farmhouse is home to the Riserva di Fizzano, the Olive Garden's Culinary Institute, Restaurant and Cooking School. It is led by executive chef Romana Neri.

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Culinary Institute of Tuscany

In 1999, Olive Garden partnered with Sergio and Daniela Zingarelli, proprietors of the restored 11th century village of Riserva di Fizzano in Tuscany, to form a cooking school in Italy called the Culinary Institute of Tuscany. The Culinary Institute is located in Italy's Chianti Classico wine-growing region near the Rocca delle Macie Winery, also owned by the Zingarelli family.

The curriculum for the Culinary Institute of Tuscany was originally developed in collaboration with the Culinary Institute of America. Olive Garden sends chefs and general managers for training at the institute.

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Ownership

Olive Garden is owned by Darden Restaurants, Inc., which was spun off from General Mills in 1995. Darden owns all Olive Garden restaurants, and does not franchise. Darden also owns the Red Lobster, Smokey Bones BBQ and Grill, Bahama Breeze, and Seasons 52 restaurant chains.

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