Olive Garden: South Slope Restaurant Rumor is BS
The rumored opening of an Olive Garden at Isaac Katan’s humongous (135 units, according to DOB filings) under-construction building at 500 4th Avenue is just idle chatter, according to a rep for the restaurant chain. In fact, no neighborhood in our fair borough is likely to see unlimited pasta bowls any time soon. “We’re not…
The rumored opening of an Olive Garden at Isaac Katan’s humongous (135 units, according to DOB filings) under-construction building at 500 4th Avenue is just idle chatter, according to a rep for the restaurant chain. In fact, no neighborhood in our fair borough is likely to see unlimited pasta bowls any time soon. “We’re not currently looking in Brooklyn,” says Mara Frazier, Olive Garden’s media relations manager. Good news or bad?
Streetlevel: Olive Garden Coming to Lower Slope [Brownstoner] GMAP DOB
10:05 – name 2
Olive Garden, is a lot better than some of the restaurants around here that call themselves Italian. I like it, would be good for Bklyn anyway, thier is one in Manhattan and its always crowded.
Okay then someone call Tony D’Napoli – they are losing their upper easide location to the 2nd Ave subway and this location would work for them.
I cant wait for this condo to be completed – It is looking better and better every day.
I hope the 4th avenue gentrification train keeps on rolling along! Wont be long until my dingy neighborhood is upscale and desireable…
ohmigod…this is great news! if it isn’t an Olive Garden, it must be going to become an Apple store, a Trader Joe’s or Nordstroms. Maybe all three!
Again, I hate how these rumors get publicity on blogs (here and Curbed) and then people start discussing on blog as fact and then repeating as fact. It really detracts from blogs’ credibility and makes them more of a ‘Page 6’ sort of gossip mill.
This one made no sense to me at all. If had been said near the downtown Marriot I would have believed – but I never gave credence to this one.
I also find very questionable the McDonalds on Smith one.
“In fact, no neigborhood in our fair borough is likely to see unlimted pasta bowls any time soon.”
Not true. There is an Olive Garden at a shopping center waaaayyyy out in eastern brooklyn just off the belt parkway near Starett City. I think its called the Gateway Center or something like that. Based on the crowd at the Olive Garden (and the Red Lobster next door), they are minting money. Same goes for the array of big box stores over there too.
I think if “Olive” (as my elderly aunt calls them) did open there, it’d be a license to print money. If you’ve got a kid in a stroller, the monastic discipline of a 2-hour wait for Grimaldi or DiFaro’s…or the close and elegant quarters of an Al Di La or the like…are a painfully bad match. And while the food is crap, the soup-and-breadstick lunch is decent, dirt-cheap, filling, and comes with a clean bathroom. What none of us nose-holders will admit is that chains become success monsters *for a reason.* Before they proliferate through sheer market muscle, they have to catch fire with consumers through the product they offer and the consistency and appeal of their brand. And even in Chowhound-Snooty NYC, there are plenty of folks looking for the experience/price point that the chains offer. I don’t think they pose any threat to our favorite groovy mom and pop places; I think they’ll just draw out families and oldsters who’d otherwise stay home or do take-out. A really smart entrepreneur would take their model and reinvent it with an indie twist.
Absolutely good news!