Streetlevel: Olive Garden Coming to Lower Slope
With new Boymelgreen buildings spreading like the clap, it’s hard to say that the arrival of an Olive Garden will make Fourth Avenue less classy but it certainly ain’t gonna help. You can take some solace in the fact that the future tenancy of the Italian food chain at Isaac Katan’s new development at 500…
With new Boymelgreen buildings spreading like the clap, it’s hard to say that the arrival of an Olive Garden will make Fourth Avenue less classy but it certainly ain’t gonna help. You can take some solace in the fact that the future tenancy of the Italian food chain at Isaac Katan’s new development at 500 4th Avenue is still classified as a rumor by blogger Five of Toast.
Summer Shows/Rumors [Five of Toast] GMAP
It makes me very very sad to see all these chain restaurants popping up like a communicable disease. I think its Ebola because it makes my insides bleed. Other people may like them but I don’t. The sad thing is that they can (and might) drive the types of restaurants I like out of business. Selfish? You betcha. I was in Battery Park City today and there are no independent anythings there. If a corporation is going to build you a neighborhood, it is going to be in partnership with other corporations based on market studies, i.e, generic. The gardens are lovely, but the buildings are soleless and the place has a sanitized generic feel. No artistry, no sense of place. Olive Garden feels the same way and it depresses me. I just hope one pox on 4th avenue doesn’t mean the disease will spread.
Hey, whaddya know, it’s Gowanus-pitaliano…
Folks, having young children myself (and, like 3:07pm, appreciating having someone else deal with prep+cooking+cleanup on occasion…) I actually see this as a more child-friendly place that might absorb some of the area family traffic, to avoid imposing upon others at the finer, / more authentic restaurants in the neighborhood.
Food is less than desirable, but ain’t that often (if not usually) the trade-off for kid-friendly places?
Most parents (like my wife and I) accept the tradeoff in exchange for some semblance of sanity and convenience w/ kids (even if food sux, it’s still convenient), and most non-parents that can easily just avoid the place might just find this family-absorbing place to to be a godsend.
No?
Fifth Avenue below 9th Street is already full of chain stores, so an Olive Garden on Fourth Avenue below 9th Street doesn’t strike me as a terrible blight, even though I would never eat there myself. (It’s not really food, folks! Sure, it’s edible, and it might even be tasty, but it’s mass produced, factory-engineered fake food, made from genuine ingredients from which all nutrition has been stripped. It’s simply not worth putting into your body, and please dispense with the epithets about my being a food snob: it’s easy to get fresh wholesome food in NYC at decent prices.) If more chains migrate north of 9th Street, however, I’d be more concerned.
And ps…while I’m on the subject of fine dining establishments from Brooklyn’s past, may I say how much I’m mourning the loss of Caravelle. RIP, Caravelle, RIP. 🙁
Bren, I TOTALLY remember Cookies @ Kings Plaza. Used to go there all the time when I was in junior high. I guess that makes you as ancient as I am. 😉
Hurrah for Anonymous 3:07PM… exactly!
“Food is food you want sometimes fancy, sometimes you want less fancy” …
Oh for heavens’ sake, of course I can whip up a pasta and salad dinner that is just as good or better than what they bring me at Olive Garden, but the advantage is that they cook it, I don’t have to. Not all the authentic Italiano places in Brooklyn are all that good, altho some are fabulous.
Food is food sometimes you want fancy sometimes you want less fancy, its good to have a choice. I think the food nazis are largely people who either do not know a g-d thing about food except its pretentiousness quotient or they are just repelled about the “masses” eating at all.
call it “Giardino di Oliva” and give it a rustic facade a la Convivium Osteria and watch them Zagat ratings fly!
that’s what’s needed there!
“Cookies restaurant” …. remember when? 🙂