I think you greatly overestimate how much of America has options better than Olive Garden and Applebee’s. I travel full time, and in most states and cities...not so much. Plus, Olive Garden itself is substantially better outside the NY metro area and other major cities. Not great, but very noticeably better. Part of me wonders if there’s some pool of good restaurant cooking talent that would never work there in NY, but might in Tucson or Rapid City. It has also undergone The Upgrade since the one time I went in the 1990s, to the point that in a large number of places the reliable chain is a better bet than the possibly-fantastic-but-more-often-overrated local joints.
And for Italian specifically the greater NY area (all the way to Philly, really) is an extremely clear outlier. For example, I know of only a handful of places in the entire greater Boston metro area that have pasta better than I can get at a slightly-above-average pizzeria on Long Island. And basically nowhere that has pizza that good or better. And almost all of the rest of the country is worse.
Otherwise, pretty much completely agreed on all counts.
I think you greatly overestimate how much of America has options better than Olive Garden and Applebee’s. I travel full time, and in most states and cities...not so much. Plus, Olive Garden itself is substantially better outside the NY metro area and other major cities. Not great, but very noticeably better. Part of me wonders if there’s some pool of good restaurant cooking talent that would never work there in NY, but might in Tucson or Rapid City. It has also undergone The Upgrade since the one time I went in the 1990s, to the point that in a large number of places the reliable chain is a better bet than the possibly-fantastic-but-more-often-overrated local joints.
And for Italian specifically the greater NY area (all the way to Philly, really) is an extremely clear outlier. For example, I know of only a handful of places in the entire greater Boston metro area that have pasta better than I can get at a slightly-above-average pizzeria on Long Island. And basically nowhere that has pizza that good or better. And almost all of the rest of the country is worse.
Otherwise, pretty much completely agreed on all counts.