The best Italian restaurant in Las Vegas is.... Olive Garden!

[Bucky]

I shit you not.

Even in Vegas, chain restaurants hold charm
Yeah, there’s top-rated Tao, but we’ll take Olive Garden and In-N-Out, thank you
By Mike Trask

The biggest — and best-known — “best of” list comes courtesy of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, which polled nearly 8,000 people this year to get the Readers’ Picks on all things Vegas.

One finding perhaps tells you all you need to know about the survey. The best Italian restaurant in Las Vegas, at least according to the masses, is — drum roll please — Olive Garden.

Search “chain restaurants” on Google and it asks whether you meant to search “Olive Garden.”

The love affair some people have with the “when you’re here you’re family” chain elicits rolled eyes from food critics who spend careers searching for such things as the perfect cold Senegalese soup and grilled foie gras. Yet chains are comforting places, much like the sweat pants and baseball hat you can wear inside them — even in a city like Las Vegas, increasingly hailed by glossy magazines as a dining destination, a top-three food city in the country right up there with New York and San Francisco.

[DS1]

1. Only unadventurous cowards would choose an Olive Garden in Las Vegas

Come on people, there's options.

[Bucky]

5. Maybe Las Vegas just happens to be full of risk-averse people.

[DS1]

6. Now that's an interesting theory

Kind of like having AA meetings in Moe's Tavern

[prole_for_peace]

2. I don't know about Olive Garden folks but

but the "when you're here you're family" crap makes me laugh. I don't know about you but my family doesn't charge me for my meals

[Tommy_Carcetti]

3. My first trip to Las Vegas, I did walk the strip but went to exactly two places:

McDonalds and Walgreens. Two places that I have multiple locations in my own town.

I didn't set foot in one casino, one hotel, or one tourist attraction.

I think it was because I had a strong aversion everything Las Vegas and it was my way of rebelling against it while still saying I had been there.

[Reverend_Smitty]

4. clearly gourmet food can't hold a candle to endless salad and breadsticks

I mean who doesn't want the opportunity to be able to eat their own body weight in bread? :P

[MrCoffee]

7. "much like the sweat pants and baseball hat you can wear inside them"

Is there anything else you need to know about this guy?

[Iris]

8. charm and chain restaurant in the same sentence

:puke:

[Tommy_Carcetti]

9. Joke all you want, but anyone who thinks that Las Vegas represents high class and culture...

...is a major fool.

Come on, the entire place is filled with hotel casinos which are themed after cities that are infinitely more authentic and real than Las Vegas. New York, Paris, Rome, Venice, you name it. It's sad that people go there and act like the fake Eiffel Tower is anything as exciting as seeing the real Eiffel Tower. Or that seeing a "volcano" erupt at the Mirage is anything as exciting as seeing a real volcano as opposed to some cheap lighting and sound effects.

The entire place is nothing but a sad tourist trap that pines to mimic places that are much more worthy of being visited.

So is eating at Olive Garden any less authentically Italian than staying at the Venetian, Bellagio or Ceasar's Palace?

[leave iraq]

10. mmmmmmm bread sticks

[democracyindanger]

11. Any town that has "9/11" souvenir carts

generally shouldn't be trusted in matters of taste.