Tourist Studies 11(2) 99–113 © The Author(s) 2011 Reprints and permission: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1468797611424938 tou.sagepub.com ts ‘When You’re Here, You’re Family’: Culinary Tourism and the Olive Garden Restaurant Michael Mario Albrecht University of New Hampshire, USA Abstract In this paper, I address the practice of domestic culinary tourism by focusing on a seemingly banal suburban chain restaurant featuring ethnic cuisine. I examine the ways in which the restaurant positions itself as offering ‘real’ Italian food and a ‘real’ Italian experience, and analyze a broad array of cultural texts that chastise the Olive Garden for this assertion and condemn the chain and its patrons. Ultimately, I demonstrate that many of those things that position the restaurant as an object of derision are part of the appeal of the chain, resulting in a complex set of meanings that resides in the Olive Garden as a site of cultural interest. Keywords authenticity; culinary tourism; McDonaldization; post-tourism Introduction In an episode of the cult television hit Weeds (2005), the character of Doug, played by Kevin Nealon, demonstrates dismay when a local Indian restaurant goes out of business and an Olive Garden restaurant is to be built in its place. Doug uncouthly observes: ‘What the fuck is wrong with these morons who go to wait an hour in line at some crappy Olive Garden and let a treasure like this go out of business … . I wouldn’t take a dump in the Olive Garden.’ In his review of the episode, Gonzales (2005) offers a correlation between Doug’s distain for the Olive Garden and a specific kind of elitist snobbery that Gonzales suggests is characteristic of the audience for the television show. Gonzales asks: ‘Who else but a snobbish blue-stater would smile when Kevin Nealon on Weeds says, “I wouldn’t take a dump in the Olive Garden”?’ The ‘snobbish blue-staters’ to which Gonzales refers represent a specific cultural group of people in American culture, one with specific Corresponding author: Michael Mario Albrecht, Communication Department, University of New Hampshire, 105 Horton Social Science Center, 20 Academic Way, Durham, NH 03824, USA. Email: michael.albrecht@unh.edu 424938TOU XX X 10.1177/1468797611424938AlbrechtTourist Studies Article