Olive Garden Italian Restaurant

Olive Garden is a chain of Italian-style restaurants, owned by Darden Restaurants. Headquartered in Orlando, Florida, there are more than locations throughout the U.S., serving patrons with the motto "When You're Here, You're Family"http://www.olivegarden.com/default_f.asp

The first Olive Garden opened in 1982 in Orlando, Florida.http://www.olivegarden.com/company/our_story/ It was opened by General Mills, manufacturers of a variety of processed foods, such as Pillsbury, Cheerios, Lucky Charms, and Old El Paso. In 1995, after a replication of several hundred of these Italian-style restaurants, the company was spun off from General Mills into Darden Restaurants. Darden, a restaurant management company, owns and operates a number of brands, including Red Lobster. Darden is publicly traded, with a ticker symbol of DRI, and in 2010 had a market capitalization of $5 billion USD.

Olive Garden offers lunch and dinner menus. Typical types of food include: appetizers, soups, salads, paninis, pizza, pasta, chicken dishes, and seafood dishes.

Lunch menu items include: chicken scampi, shrimp primavera, seafood alfredo, gnocchi, shrimp caprese, lasagna, spaghetti, linguine, chicken parmesan, eggplant parmesan, pizza, and paninis.

Dinner menu items include: spaghetti and meatballs, eggplant parmesan, fettuccine alfredo, chicken parmesan, linguine, lasagna, mixed grill, pork, steak, cheese ravioli, tortellini, portobello ravioli, manicotti, parmesan crusted tilapia, shrimp primavera, salmon, and seafood alfredo.

Olive Garden attempts to pair dining entrées with wines. For example, for classical dishes like lasagna and spaghetti, Olive Garden recommends red wine pairings. Olive Garden recommends white wine for dishes like pizza, fish, and seafood.

Every year, Olive Garden selects a small group of chef's from their many locations, and sends them to the Olive Garden Culinary Institute of Tuscany. This cooking institute, located in Tuscany, Italy, was established in 1990 and is designed to provide chefs with the skills necessary to prepare authentic Italian dishes.http://www.olivegarden.com/culinary/cit/history.asp The session is a one week intensive program, where Olive Garden chefs learn about choosing fresh ingredients, preparing Italian dishes, and pairing these dishes with the proper wines.http://www.olivegarden.com/culinary/cit/history.asp