Dear Olive Garden, Never Change

The agony and the ecstasy of America’s favorite chain restaurant

美国最受欢迎的连锁餐厅的痛苦与狂喜

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请参阅我们的道德声明。

In the fall of 1889, when he was 41 years old, the painter Paul Gauguin was brutally, furiously alone.

1889 年秋天，41 岁的画家保罗·高更 (Paul Gauguin) 极度孤独。

Famous now for his saturated, almost hallucinatory paintings of life in Tahiti, at the time he was living in Brittany, still two years away from his first visit to French Polynesia.

如今，他以描绘塔希提岛生活的饱和的、近乎幻觉的画作而闻名，当时他住在布列塔尼，距离他第一次访问法属波利尼西亚还有两年时间。

He was penniless and adrift, trying to paint his way through the devastations of his dying marriage, his rejection by the cliques of the Parisian art establishment, and the precarity of his friendship with Vincent van Gogh, who shortly before Christmas had assaulted him with a razor and, after Gauguin’s departure that evening, used the same blade to cut off his own ear.

他身无分文，漂泊不定，试图通过绘画来度过他垂死的婚姻带来的破坏，他被巴黎艺术界小集团的排斥，以及他与文森特·梵高的友谊的不稳定。梵高在圣诞节前不久用剃刀袭击了他，当晚高更离开后，他用同一把刀片割下了自己的耳朵。

Gauguin and Van Gogh had a tumultuous acquaintance, one that served both men better in writing than in person.

高更和梵高有过一次喧闹的相识，两人的相识在写作中比在面对面的交流中更有意义。

In their extensive correspondence, Gauguin — originally a stockbroker — refined his beliefs about the purpose of art.

在他们广泛的通信中，高更——最初是一名股票经纪人——完善了他对艺术目的的信念。

Impressionism had thundered into the salons, upending classical formality and with it the rubrics by which a painting could be considered a success.

印象派席卷了沙龙，颠覆了古典的形式，也颠覆了绘画成功的标准。

Beauty was no longer the standard, nor was faithful representation of a subject; the artist himself was now part of the consideration, judged by the nuance of his thoughts and his facility with their artistic evocation.

美不再是标准，主题的忠实再现也不再是标准。艺术家本人现在也成为考虑的一部分，从他思想的细微差别和他对艺术的唤起的能力来判断。

Gauguin was dazzled by this idea of art as a vehicle for emotion, a way to depict not things or people, but their essences .

高更对艺术作为情感载体的想法感到眼花缭乱，艺术不是描绘事物或人，而是描绘它们的本质的方式。

Despite the promises of the name, it can be a challenge to find actual olives at Olive Garden.

尽管名字如此，但在橄榄园找到真正的橄榄可能是一个挑战。

A religious man, he found profundity in the practice of art: the brushes and paints, the forms and colors on the canvas, and the distillation and expression of his own mind.

作为一个虔诚的人，他在艺术实践中发现了深刻的意义：画笔和颜料，画布上的形式和颜色，以及他自己思想的升华和表达。

It was from that last point that his solitude sprang.

正是从最后一点开始，他开始感到孤独。

Gauguin’s contemporaries, including Van Gogh, found it inoffensive — even useful!

高更的同时代人，包括梵高，发现它无伤大雅——甚至有用！

— to paint from life, referring to models and objects and scenery.

——借鉴生活，参考模型、物体和风景。

To Gauguin, direct observation was anathema, a tool for overwriting the memories and emotions that make a painting worthwhile.

对于高更来说，直接观察是令人厌恶的，它是一种覆盖记忆和情感的工具，而这些记忆和情感使一幅画变得有价值。

He was furious at his cohort for their weakness, disdainful of their inability to see the truth in his vision.

他对他的同伴的软弱感到愤怒，对他们无法在他的视野中看到真相感到蔑视。

He painted it: a garden of sinuous trees, with primitive, black-clad figures in the background hazily merging with the twilight landscape.

他画的是一个花园，树木蜿蜒，背景中原始的黑衣人物与暮色的风景朦胧地融为一体。

Filling the foreground is a figure with blazing orange hair and beard, his face — Gauguin’s face — rendered in intricate detail, full of life and warmth, looking to the ground with an expression of infinite wisdom and sorrow.

前景充满了一个有着炽热橙色头发和胡须的人物，他的脸——高更的脸——被描绘成错综复杂的细节，充满生机和温暖，看着地面，表情充满无限的智慧和悲伤。

“There I have painted my own portrait,” he wrote of the work.

“我在那里画了自己的肖像，”他在谈到这幅作品时写道。

“But it also represents the crushing of an ideal, and a pain that is both divine and human.

“但这也代表了理想的破碎，以及神圣和人性的痛苦。

Jesus is totally abandoned; his disciples are leaving him, in a setting as sad as his soul.” Gauguin found great richness in the story of Jesus, and often painted himself as the savior.

耶稣被彻底抛弃了；他的弟子们即将离开他，他们的心情和他的灵魂一样悲伤。”高更在耶稣的故事中发现了丰富的内容，并经常将自己描绘成救世主。

He called this painting, which now hangs in the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, Florida, Le Christ au Jardin des Oliviers , or, Christ in the Garden of Olives .

他将这幅画（现在挂在佛罗里达州西棕榈滩的诺顿艺术博物馆）称为“Le Christ au Jardin des Oliviers”，或者“橄榄园里的基督”。

There are two globally renowned olive gardens: Gethsemane, the grove where Jesus and his disciples prayed the night before his betrayal and crucifixion, its agony painted by Gauguin and by hundreds of other painters, and the fictional Tuscan hillside that lends its name to Olive Garden, a massive restaurant chain with more than 800 locations in North America.

有两个全球知名的橄榄园：客西马尼园，耶稣和他的门徒在被背叛和受难前一天晚上祈祷的小树林，高更和其他数百名画家描绘了它的痛苦；以及虚构的托斯卡纳山坡，橄榄园以它的名字命名，这是一家在北美拥有 800 多家分店的大型连锁餐厅。

The two appear to be unconnected: According to Darden Restaurants, owner of the Olive Garden chain, the phrase is intended to call to mind ideas of the olive harvest and Tuscan authenticity, not the final, anguished night of a prophet, dark hours spent in prayer, wrath, and silence.

这两者似乎没有联系：据橄榄园连锁店老板达顿餐厅 (Darden Restaurant) 称，这句话的目的是让人想起橄榄收获和托斯卡纳的真实性，而不是先知最后的、痛苦的夜晚，在祈祷、愤怒和沉默中度过的黑暗时刻。

Despite the promises of the name, it can be a challenge to find actual olives at Olive Garden.

尽管名字如此，但在橄榄园找到真正的橄榄可能是一个挑战。

The omission is intentional, though the irony is not.

这种遗漏是故意的，尽管讽刺并非如此。

It’s a simple matter of marketing: People don’t like olives.

这是一个简单的营销问题：人们不喜欢橄榄。

They don’t know what to do with them.

他们不知道该怎么办。

They show up occasionally on the menu; their most recent engagement, on a “Mediterranean flatbread,” seems to no longer be available, part of an unbroken chain of olive-adorned dishes that have languished, unordered and unloved, before being dispatched by less culinarily threatening options like Meatball Stuffed Pizza Fritta.

它们偶尔会出现在菜单上；他们最近推出的“地中海大饼”似乎不再可用，这是一系列不间断的橄榄装饰菜肴的一部分，这些菜肴一直萎靡不振、无序且不受欢迎，然后被肉丸馅披萨菜肉馅煎蛋饼等烹饪威胁较小的选择所淘汰。

Still, there are two places you’ll always find olives at Olive Garden, no matter which way the menu consultants declare that the wind is blowing: The bar, where green spheroids wait, limply piled, to be pressed into service for a martini, and in the salad bowls.

尽管如此，无论菜单顾问宣称风向如何，在橄榄花园里你总能在两个地方找到橄榄：酒吧，绿色的球体松软地堆放在那里，等待压入马提尼酒中，还有沙拉碗。

Two black olives — exactly two — are supposed to be in every family-size bowl, though when I was at an Olive Garden in Michigan City, Indiana, my server admitted that about half her tables ask for them to be kept out, or simply leave them on the side.

每个家庭大小的碗里都应该有两颗黑橄榄——正好是两颗——不过，当我在印第安纳州密歇根市的橄榄园时，我的服务员承认，大约一半的桌子要求将它们放在一边，或者干脆把它们放在一边。

She was a little surprised when I asked where all the olives were — she said it’s usually the middle-aged men who fling that joke at her, which maybe I should have seen coming.

当我问所有的橄榄在哪里时，她有点惊讶——她说通常是中年男人向她开这个玩笑，也许我应该预见到这一点。

According to her, they all order the Tour of Italy, a three-way sampler of lasagna, chicken parm, and fettuccine alfredo.

据她说，他们都点了“意大利之旅”，这是一份包含烤宽面条、鸡肉帕尔玛和阿尔弗雷多意大利细面条的三道套餐。

No one really wants to eat any olives.

没有人真正想吃橄榄。

The other joke she gets, usually from the same sort of men, is “Where’s the garden?” No one actually wants to see a garden, they just want to make the pretty waitress blush.

她得到的另一个笑话通常来自同一类型的男人，是“花园在哪里？”没有人真正想看花园，他们只是想让漂亮的女服务员脸红。

This was the third Olive Garden I’d been to in two weeks, and in the weeks to come I’d eat at half a dozen more — a grand tour of Tours of Italy, a chain of chains stretching from New York to California.

这是我两周内第三次去橄榄园，在接下来的几周里，我又吃了六家——意大利之旅的盛大旅行，这是一连串从纽约延伸到加利福尼亚的连锁店。

The brand is in the middle of a grand reimagining, an overhauling of its hundreds of stores, that will dispense with its tile and faux-stucco and genially middlebrow upholstery in favor of a more streamlined, anodyne aesthetic of white walls, dark wood, and colorblocking.

该品牌正在进行一场盛大的重新构想，对其数百家商店进行彻底改造，将放弃瓷砖、人造灰泥和和蔼可亲的中庸室内装饰，转而采用白色墙壁、深色木材和拼色的更流线型、舒缓的美感。

It’s a massive undertaking — not all locations are transforming at once — so while some restaurants I went to have entered the chain’s glossy future, many were still the Olive Gardens of the prior era.

这是一项艰巨的任务——并非所有地点都在同时转型——因此，虽然我去过的一些餐厅已经进入了连锁店光鲜亮丽的未来，但许多餐厅仍然是前一个时代的橄榄园。

In these, you can still find some olives: On the shoulder-height half-walls that carve cavernous dining rooms into sections, sit potted rows of faux olive trees, slim shoots sprouting dusty green leaves and clusters of dark plastic footballs.

在这些房间里，你仍然可以找到一些橄榄：在齐肩高的半墙上，将宽敞的餐厅分成了几个部分，盆栽里放着一排排人造橄榄树，细长的嫩芽长出了尘土飞扬的绿叶，还有一簇簇深色塑料足球。

You can’t eat them, but they remind you that somewhere, the real thing is growing on a real tree, and maybe you could.

你不能吃它们，但它们提醒你，在某个地方，真正的东西生长在一棵真正的树上，也许你可以。

I feel an intense affinity for Olive Garden, which — like the lack of olives on its menu — is by design.

我对橄榄园有一种强烈的喜爱之情，就像它的菜单上没有橄榄一样，这是有意而为之的。

The restaurant was built for affinity, constructed from the foundations to the faux-finished rafters to create a sense of connection, of vague familiarity, to bring to mind some half-lost memory of old-world simplicity and ease.

这家餐厅是为了亲和力而建造的，从地基到人造完成的椽子，营造出一种联系感和模糊的熟悉感，让人想起一些对旧世界简单和轻松的半遗忘的记忆。

Even if you’ve never been to the Olive Garden before, you’re supposed to feel like you have.

即使您以前从未去过橄榄园，您也应该有去过的感觉。

You know the next song that’s going to play.

您知道下一首要播放的歌曲。

You know how the chairs roll against the carpet.

你知道椅子是如何在地毯上滚动的。

You know where the bathrooms are.

你知道浴室在哪里。

Its product is nominally pasta and wine, but what Olive Garden is actually selling is Olive Garden, a room of comfort and familiarity, a place to return to over and over.

它的产品名义上是意大利面和葡萄酒，但橄榄园实际上销售的是橄榄园，一个舒适和熟悉的房间，一个可以一次又一次返回的地方。

In that way, it’s just like any other chain restaurant.

从这个角度来说，它就像任何其他连锁餐厅一样。

For any individual mid-range restaurant, return customers have always been an easy majority of the clientele, and chain-wide, it’s overwhelmingly the case: If you’ve been to one Olive Garden, odds are very high you’ve been to two or more.

对于任何一家中档餐厅来说，回头客一直是顾客的大多数，而且在整个连锁店中，绝大多数情况都是如此：如果您去过一家橄榄园，那么您去过两家或更多的可能性非常高。

If the restaurant is doing it right, though, all the Olive Gardens of your life will blur together into one Olive Garden, one host stand, one bar, one catacomb of dining alcoves warmly decorated in Toscana-lite.

不过，如果餐厅经营得当，您生活中的所有橄榄园都会模糊地融合在一起，形成一个橄榄园、一个接待台、一间酒吧、一处以托斯卡纳风格温馨装饰的地下餐厅凹室。

Each Olive Garden is a little bit different, but their souls are all the same.

每个橄榄园都有点不同，但他们的灵魂都是一样的。

Chain begets chain, or maybe chains are more comfortable among other chains.

链条产生链条，或者也许链条在其他链条中更舒服。

My own personal Olive Garden, the one of my childhood, the Olive Garden of which all subsequently visited Olive Gardens are projections, is in Matteson, Illinois, on a curb-edged island in the parking lot of a Quality Inn and Suites just off the I-57 interchange, across a six-lane street from the husk of an old shopping mall.

我自己的私人橄榄园，我童年时期的橄榄园，后来参观的所有橄榄园都是投影，位于伊利诺伊州马特森，位于 57 号州际公路交汇处附近的 Quality Inn and Suites 酒店停车场的一个路边小岛上，穿过一条六车道的街道，与一座旧购物中心的外壳相望。

It’s five miles to the south of where I went to high school, in a golf-and-doctors suburb; five miles more, and you’re past the edge of Chicago’s exurban sprawl, staring down hundreds of flat, unbroken miles of corn and soy.

距离我上高中的地方以南五英里，是一个有高尔夫球场和医生的郊区。再行驶五英里，你就已经越过了芝加哥郊区蔓延的边缘，俯瞰着数百英里平坦、连绵不断的玉米和大豆。

It’s not a coincidence that Olive Gardens tend to spring up near highways and shopping malls, within the orbit of mid-range hotels.

橄榄园往往出现在高速公路和购物中心附近，在中档酒店的范围内，这并非巧合。

Chain begets chain, or maybe chains are more comfortable among other chains — and in sufficient concentration they cause a little hiccup in the psychospace of reality, erasing any locality or sense of place, replacing it with a sanitized, brand-driven commercial hospitality.

连锁店催生连锁店，或许连锁店在其他连锁店中更舒服——而且在足够集中的情况下，它们会在现实的心理空间中造成一点小问题，消除任何地方性或地方感，取而代之的是经过消毒的、品牌驱动的商业酒店。

In downtown Salt Lake City or western Massachusetts or on the southern edge of the Chicago suburbs, wherever you see an Olive Garden, you’ll find something like a Quality Inn & Suites nearby.

在盐湖城市中心、马萨诸塞州西部或芝加哥郊区的南部边缘，无论您在哪里看到橄榄园，附近都会发现类似 Quality Inn & Suites 的酒店。

These accretions of commercial activity, stripped from geographic or historical identity, are what the French anthropologist Marc Augé talks about as “non-places.” (He also finds non-place in, of all places, Tahiti — specifically as seen through the eyes of a traveler, someone who is more interested in the fulfillment of his self-conception than in the spectacle that surrounds him.) What it means to be a non-place is the same thing it means to be a chain: A plural nothingness, a physical space without an anchor to any actual location on Earth, or in time, or in any kind of spiritual arc.

这些商业活动的积累，脱离了地理或历史身份，被法国人类学家马克·奥热（Marc Augé）称为“非场所”。 （他还在塔希提岛的所有地方中发现了非地方——特别是通过旅行者的眼睛看到的，这个旅行者对自我概念的实现比对周围奇观更感兴趣。）非地方的含义与链条的含义是一样的：复数虚无，一个没有锚定到地球上任何实际位置、时间或任何精神弧线的物理空间。

In its void, it simply is .

在它的虚空中，它只是存在。

Despite its flirtation with the existential abyss, a non-place isn’t necessarily a bad thing for a place to be.

尽管它与存在的深渊调情，但对于一个地方来说，一个非地方并不一定是一件坏事。

It may be bad sometimes, or even frequently, but it isn’t always .

有时，甚至经常，情况可能会很糟糕，但并非总是如此。

One of the things I love about the Olive Garden, the reason I continue to love it, despite its gummy pasta and its maladaptive, kale-forward response to modern food culture, is its nowhereness.

我喜欢橄榄园的原因之一，也是我继续喜欢它的原因，尽管它的意大利面粘稠，而且它对现代饮食文化的适应不良、羽衣甘蓝的反应，是它的无处可寻。

I love that I can walk in the door of an Olive Garden in Michigan City, Indiana, and feel like I’m in the same room I enter when I step into an Olive Garden in Queens or Rhode Island or the middle of Los Angeles.

我喜欢走进印第安纳州密歇根市橄榄园的大门，感觉就像走进皇后区、罗德岛州或洛杉矶中部的橄榄园时进入的同一个房间。

There is only one Olive Garden, but it has a thousand doors.

橄榄园只有一座，却有一千扇门。

I haven’t been to the Matteson Olive Garden in nearly two decades, though I may have eaten there more than at any other restaurant in the world.

我已经近二十年没有去过马特森橄榄园了，尽管我在那里吃的饭可能比世界上任何其他餐厅都多。

Still, I have only fragmented, sensory memories.

尽管如此，我仍然只有零碎的感官记忆。

The symmetrical architecture, a centered door opening onto a red-lit bar, and carpeted archways leading off to a smoking section to the left and nonsmoking to the right.

对称的建筑，中间的门通向红灯酒吧，铺着地毯的拱门通向左侧的吸烟区和右侧的非吸烟区。

I couldn’t tell you what the plush dining chairs looked like, but I can still feel how their wheels defied the physics of friction with the smoothest, most silken bearings.

我无法告诉你那些豪华餐椅是什么样子，但我仍然可以感觉到它们的轮子是如何用最光滑、最丝质的轴承抵抗物理摩擦的。

The hazy dimness of the wood-framed booth my parents particularly loved, in the very middle of the middle section.

我父母特别喜欢那个朦胧昏暗的木结构展位，它位于中间区域的正中央。

The plasticky sheen of a square of tiramisu, formally presented on a dessert tray meant to entice us into a final course, and the small, circular perfection of the chocolate cake we ordered, an off-menu “special occasion cake,” which provided dessert for our family of five for the low cost of $8, a birthday lie, and the indignity of a staff serenade.

方形提拉米苏的塑料光泽，正式放在甜点托盘上，旨在吸引我们进入最后一道菜，还有我们点的完美圆形小巧克力蛋糕，这是菜单外的“特殊场合蛋糕”，它以 8 美元的低成本为我们五口之家提供了甜点，生日谎言，以及员工小夜曲的侮辱。

I was an inveterate orderer of the fettuccine alfredo, a habit I kicked once I got old enough to internalize the unseemliness of an oversized female body.

我是意大利宽面条阿尔弗雷多的忠实顾客，当我长大到足以接受女性身材过大的不合时宜时，我就改掉了这个习惯。

Despite roughly annual visits to Olive Garden in the intervening years, I didn’t order the dish again for decades — not until a few weeks ago, at an Olive Garden in Glendale, California.

尽管在接下来的几年里，我大约每年都会去橄榄园，但几十年来我都没有再点过这道菜——直到几周前，在加利福尼亚州格伦代尔的一个橄榄园。

I don’t walk around feeling like I’m old, but when I ordered the fettuccine alfredo, maybe I gave away a hint, and my friend asked how long it had been since I’d last had it.

我走路时不会感觉自己老了，但当我点阿尔弗雷多宽面条时，也许我给出了一个暗示，我的朋友问我自从上次吃它以来已经有多久了。

I said the words “20 years” out loud, and almost choked on how far away the present turns out to be from the past.

我大声说出“20年”这个词，几乎噎住了，因为现在离过去太遥远了。

In the infinity of Olive Garden meals that make up my life, one stands out from the great glutinous mass of memory.

在构成我生活的无数橄榄园饭菜中，有一顿饭从粘稠的记忆中脱颖而出。

It took place outside of Madison, Wisconsin, off a commercial strip that I vaguely remember abutting a retaining pond that was home to an extremely aggressive paddling of ducks.

事情发生在威斯康星州麦迪逊郊外的一个商业区附近，我依稀记得那里毗邻一个蓄水池，那里有一群极其凶猛的鸭子在戏水。

At this meal, two great things happened.

这顿饭，发生了两件大事。

The first is that my boyfriend introduced me to toasted ravioli.

首先是我男朋友向我介绍了烤馄饨。

This was — and remains — the single greatest thing Olive Garden has ever sold.

这曾经是——现在仍然是——橄榄园有史以来售出的最伟大的东西。

“Toasted” is a euphemism for fried: The breadcrumb-coated squares of pasta are simultaneously crispy and chewy, filled with a savory meat paste that’s not dissimilar to the inside of a mild Jamaican beef patty.

“烤”是油炸的委婉说法：涂有面包屑的意大利面既脆又耐嚼，里面充满了美味的肉酱，与温和的牙买加牛肉饼的内部没有什么不同。

You dip them in warm marinara sauce, which comes in a ramekin on the side.

你把它们浸入温热的番茄酱中，番茄酱放在旁边的小模子里。

My boyfriend and I broke up a few weeks after we shared that meal, and when I next entered one of the many doors of the infinite and singular Olive Garden, I wanted the toasted ravioli appetizer, but I couldn’t find it on the menu.

我和男朋友在我们共享那顿饭几周后就分手了，当我下次进入无限而奇异的橄榄园的众多门之一时，我想要烤馄饨开胃菜，但我在菜单上找不到它。

The toasted ravioli turned out to be a parable: I scanned the name of every dish on the menu, hoping the next and the next and the next would turn out to be the one I was looking for, and came up with nothing.

烤馄饨原来是一个寓言：我浏览了菜单上每道菜的名称，希望下一个、下一个、下一个就是我要找的菜，但什么也没想到。

Here’s the secret: They were right at the beginning all along.

秘密是这样的：他们从一开始就是对的。

Tell your server you want to Create A Sampler Italiano , the very first thing listed on the menu, which involves selecting two or three items from a set of options, toasted ravioli among them, listed in the description in quotidian roman type.

告诉你的服务员你想创建一个意大利样品，菜单上列出的第一件事，包括从一组选项中选择两个或三个项目，其中烤馄饨，在日常罗马类型的描述中列出。

Then make every single choice the toasted ravioli.

然后选择烤馄饨。

In sufficient concentration, chains cause a little hiccup in the psychospace of reality, erasing any sense of place.

当注意力足够集中时，锁链会在现实的心理空间中造成一点小问题，消除任何地方感。

The second great thing that happened is that as we were leaving, my boyfriend stopped at the host stand and asked for a bottle of salad dressing.

发生的第二件大事是，当我们离开时，我男朋友在接待台前停下来，要了一瓶沙拉酱。

The only thing at Olive Garden that comes close to the greatness of the toasted ravioli is the salad: hunks of iceberg and half-moons of red onion and the crumbly croutons and that shriveled little insouciant pepperoncini and those two contractually obligated olives, all drenched in some kind of mysteriously exquisite dressing, the only thing at the whole restaurant, including the wine list, that seems to have any interest in brightness or acidity.

橄榄园里唯一能与烤馄饨的美味相媲美的是沙拉：大块的冰山、半月形的红洋葱、易碎的油煎面包块、干瘪的小意大利辣香肠和那两颗合同规定的橄榄，所有这些都浸在某种神秘精致的调料中，这是整个餐厅（包括酒单）中唯一对亮度或酸度感兴趣的东西。

And it turns out that you can just buy bottles of it!

事实证明，你可以买瓶它！

To have in your home!

你家里也有！

What did we ever do to deserve such blessings?

我们做了什么值得这样的祝福？

I don’t remember what we ate, besides the toasted ravioli; it didn’t register as particularly wonderful or particularly awful.

我不记得我们吃了什么，除了烤馄饨；它并没有显得特别精彩或特别糟糕。

This is how it should be.

事情应该是这样的。

This is what chains are: a well-paved path down the middle, a place where convenience for the consumer is surpassed only by convenience for the seller.

这就是连锁店：一条铺好的中间路，在这个地方，消费者的便利程度只能被卖家的便利程度所超越。

Be wary of chain restaurants that promise exceptionalism, be wary of promises of freshness or subtlety or sophistication.

警惕承诺例外主义的连锁餐厅，警惕新鲜、微妙或精致的承诺。

Food at an Olive Garden scale becomes a commodity; the point of a commodity is that it is infinitely interchangeable.

橄榄园规模的食物成为一种商品；商品的要点在于它可以无限互换。

It had been 20 years since I’d last had that fettuccine alfredo, which at the time was my very favorite food.

距离我上次吃阿尔弗雷多宽面条已经过去了 20 年，当时它是我最喜欢的食物。

I’m four inches taller now than I was when I was 15; I live in a louder, dirtier city; I’ve been to Italy; I’ve spent uncountable thousands of hours eating in and thinking about restaurants.

我现在比 15 岁时高了 4 英寸；我生活在一个更喧闹、更肮脏的城市；我去过意大利；我花了无数的时间在餐馆里吃饭和思考。

I’ve changed, is what I’m saying, so maybe it’s me: The fettuccine alfredo I had in Glendale two weeks ago was awful.

我已经改变了，这就是我所说的，所以也许是我的问题：两周前我在格伦代尔吃的阿尔弗雷多意大利细面条太糟糕了。

Like so many foods that have been adopted into the American culinary pantheon, alfredo sauce has two simultaneous forms.

就像许多已被美国烹饪万神殿采用的食物一样，阿尔弗雷多酱有两种同时存在的形式。

There’s the version we’re used to eating, sold in heavy glass jars or ladled across chicken cutlets, a viscous concoction of garlic, milk, heavy cream, and the natural MSG of aged hard cheese.

有一种我们习惯吃的版本，装在厚重的玻璃罐里出售，或者舀在鸡排上，是大蒜、牛奶、浓奶油和陈年硬奶酪天然味精的粘稠混合物。

It can be magnificent, the particular magnificence of gastronomic absurdity: It seems almost biologically impossible to encounter such a dense concentration of fats and salts and glutamates and not respond with raptures.

它可以是壮丽的，尤其是荒谬的美食的壮丽：从生物学角度来看，遇到如此高浓度的脂肪、盐和谷氨酸盐而不感到狂喜几乎是不可能的。

Then, there is the real thing, an original recipe complete with cinematic origin story : a turn-of-the-century Roman restaurateur named Alfredo, a beautiful wife with a vanishing hunger, a plate of fettuccine drowning in butter and parmigiano, tossed and tossed and tossed until butter and cheese and water and air marry in a satiny emulsion, not adulterated by even a pinch of salt, until her appetites returned.

然后，还有真实的东西，一个完整的电影起源故事的原创食谱：一个名叫阿尔弗雷多的世纪之交的罗马餐馆老板，一个饥饿感消失的美丽妻子，一盘淹没在黄油和帕尔马干酪中的宽面条，翻来覆去，直到黄油、奶酪、水和空气混合成光滑的乳液，甚至没有掺入一撮盐，直到她的胃口恢复。

It’s the sniffing refrain of a certain breed of culinary wiseass: “A real alfredo doesn’t have cream.”

这是某种烹饪智者的老话：“真正的阿尔弗雷多没有奶油。”

I’m an alfredo opportunist, a willing advocate for whichever version of the sauce is in front of me.

我是一个阿尔弗雷多机会主义者，愿意拥护我面前的任何版本的酱汁。

(Next time someone tells you all that cream is an abomination, ask them what they think butter is made from.) But what I was served at Olive Garden defies both my defense and my memories.

（下次有人告诉你奶油是一种令人厌恶的东西时，问问他们他们认为黄油是用什么制成的。）但是橄榄园为我提供的食物既违背了我的辩护，也违背了我的记忆。

On the Olive Garden menu, alfredo sauce is both weapon and balm.

在橄榄园菜单上，阿尔弗雷多酱既是武器，又是香膏。

It comes over pasta, over chicken, over shrimp, over steak, in a standalone ramekin as a dipping sauce, spiked with hot sauce and declared to be “angry.” It’s the reason to order a dish, or it’s the thing that keeps you from hating it.

它放在意大利面、鸡肉、虾、牛排上，放在独立的模子里作为蘸酱，加入辣酱，并宣称是“愤怒的”。这是点菜的原因，或者是让你不讨厌它的原因。

There is really only one Olive Garden, one Olive Garden that has a thousand doors.

实际上只有一个橄榄园，一个有一千扇门的橄榄园。

At least, it’s supposed to be.

至少，应该是这样。

The pasta itself had no faults — it was competent, a nothingness, a minimum-viable-product that may or may not have been cooked in salted water — but the viscous whiteness puddled around it was pasty and gloppy, thick without being rich, a faintly savory nothingness.

意大利面本身没有任何缺点——它是合格的，是虚无的，是一种最低限度可行的产品，可能会或可能不会在盐水中煮熟——但它周围的粘稠白色是糊状的，粘稠的，浓稠而不是丰富的，一种淡淡的可口的虚无。

You could have used it as a binder for potato salad.

你可以用它作为土豆沙拉的粘合剂。

You could have poured it over biscuits and called it gravy.

你可以把它倒在饼干上，称之为肉汁。

You could have patched a hole in your wall.

你可以修补墙上的一个洞。

The lobster ravioli was even worse, fishy how lobster should never be fishy, in an intensely concentrated way that didn’t remotely square up with the relatively small amount of seafood each raviolo contained — but it didn’t matter, because the mistake there belongs to the person ordering lobster ravioli at the Olive Garden.

龙虾馄饨更糟糕，有腥味，龙虾不应该有腥味，而且浓度非常高，与每个馄饨中相对少量的海鲜完全不相符——但这并不重要，因为错误属于在橄榄园点龙虾馄饨的人。

By the same principle, it’s no great achievement that the chicken parmigiana was good.

同样的道理，帕尔马干酪鸡肉好也不是什么伟大的成就。

It had also been good at Olive Gardens in Indiana and Times Square.

印第安纳州的橄榄园和时代广场也表现出色。

It must be good.

一定很好。

The whole thing falls apart if it’s not good.

如果做得不好，整个事情都会崩溃。

You can’t really go wrong with any of their permutations on the holy trinity of carbohydrate, tomato sauce, and cheese, which are all fundamentally the same.

碳水化合物、番茄酱和奶酪这三位一体的排列绝对不会出错，它们本质上都是一样的。

The cheese ravioli is the lasagna classico is the fried mozzarella is the eggplant parm is the (conceptually ludicrous) lasagna fritta.

奶酪馄饨是经典烤宽面条，炸马苏里拉奶酪是茄子帕尔姆，是（概念上可笑的）烤宽面条菜肉馅煎蛋饼。

These are the backbones of the menu, the sun around which all other dishes orbit.

这些是菜单的支柱，是所有其他菜肴围绕的太阳。

When the painting was finished, Gauguin considered Christ in the Garden of Olives to be the best work he had ever created, a vivid and intimate expression of the truth of his heart.

当这幅画完成时，高更认为《橄榄园里的基督》是他创作过的最好的作品，生动而亲密地表达了他内心的真实。

To a friend, he wrote “It is a sad abstraction, but God knows that sadness is my cord.” To another friend, in a note sent with a sketch of the painting, he wrote “I keep the item at home,” explaining that he had no intention of ever sending it to be shown and sold.

他在给朋友的信中写道：“这是一个悲伤的抽象概念，但上帝知道悲伤是我的绳索。”在给另一位朋友的附有这幅画草图的便条中，他写道“我把这件作品放在家里”，并解释说他无意将其发送出去展示和出售。

“The canvas is not meant to be understood.”

“画布并不意味着被理解。”

Gaugin did part with the work eventually, in an 1891 sale that funded his first visit to Tahiti, where he would later move and remain until his death.

高更最终在 1891 年的一次拍卖中放弃了这幅作品，这笔钱为他第一次访问塔希提岛提供了资金，他后来搬到了那里，直到去世。

The serpentine olive trees that make up the painting’s background — which, because of his principled refusal to paint from life, were Gauguin’s own expression of olive trees, an abstracted imagining of them, intentionally filtered through his memories and miseries and anger — appeared again in works made during his time in Tahiti, their curvilinear forms repurposed as swooping palms and vines.

构成这幅画背景的蛇形橄榄树——由于他原则上拒绝写生，这是高更自己对橄榄树的表达，是对橄榄树的抽象想象，有意地过滤了他的记忆、痛苦和愤怒——再次出现在他在塔希提岛期间创作的作品中，它们的曲线形式被重新设计为俯冲的棕榈树和藤蔓。

The resemblance is particularly uncanny in Where Do We Come From?

这种相似之处在《我们从哪里来？》中尤其不可思议。

What Are We?

我们是什么？

Where Are We Going?

我们要去哪里？

, a monumental canvas painted over 1897 and 1898 that, like Christ in the Garden of Olives before it, Gauguin considered to be both an allegory for his philosophical devastation, and the pinnacle of his artistic achievements; he meant to kill himself when the painting was done, but miscalculated the dose of arsenic.

，这是一幅在 1897 年和 1898 年创作的纪念性画布，就像之前的《橄榄园里的基督》一样，高更认为这既是他的哲学毁灭的寓言，也是他艺术成就的顶峰；画完成后，他本想自杀，但错误地计算了砒霜的剂量。

The echoing forms of the olive trees may be why in 1908, five years after Gauguin’s eventual death in a Tahitian prison, an art adviser confidently (if erroneously) identified Christ in the Garden of Olives as painted in — and a depiction of — Gauguin’s tropical refuge, and urged a wealthy client from Bordeaux to buy it.

橄榄树的形状相呼应，这或许就是为什么在 1908 年，即高更最终死在塔希提岛监狱五年后，一位艺术顾问自信地（如果是错误地）认定《橄榄园里的基督》是在高更的热带避难所中画的，也是对高更热带避难所的描绘，并敦促一位来自波尔多的富有客户购买这幅画。

It’s unclear whether Gauguin’s abstracted Mediterranean olive garden was a premonition of Tahiti, or if his interpretation of Tahiti was colored by the long shadows of his past.

目前尚不清楚高更抽象的地中海橄榄园是否是塔希提岛的预感，或者他对塔希提岛的诠释是否受到了他过去的漫长阴影的影响。

What’s clear is that the trees are not really olive trees, and they’re not really palm trees.

很明显，这些树并不是真正的橄榄树，也不是真正的棕榈树。

They’re something else entirely and they both transcend and undermine the things they claim to be.

它们完全是另外一种东西，它们既超越又破坏了它们所声称的东西。

The well-paid suits who run Olive Garden have tried, many times, to breathe new life into their chain, and it always backfires spectacularly.

经营橄榄园的高薪人士曾多次尝试为他们的连锁店注入新的活力，但总是适得其反。

They’ve flirted with small plates, they put kale and polenta on the menu, they recently started slicing the breadsticks down the middle and making sandwiches out of them.

他们尝试过小盘子，他们把羽衣甘蓝和玉米粥放在菜单上，最近他们开始把面包棒从中间切成薄片，然后用它们制作三明治。

Most tables and bar seats have little unobtrusive video screens on which customers can hail their server for a refill, or pay $1.99 to test their trivia knowledge against other players who allegedly are real, but almost certainly are not.

大多数桌子和吧台座位上都有一些不显眼的视频屏幕，顾客可以在屏幕上向服务员招手，要求续杯，或者支付 1.99 美元，与其他据称是真实玩家（但几乎可以肯定不是真实玩家）来测试他们的琐事知识。

At most locations, the fake olive plants with their twisty branches have already been chucked in the trash, the walls have been un-stuccoed, and the chairs have been stripped of their exquisitely smooth-rolling wheels.

在大多数地方，枝条弯曲的假橄榄树已经被扔进垃圾桶，墙壁没有粉刷，椅子上光滑滚动的轮子也被拆掉了。

By next year, they’ll all be gone.

到明年，他们都会消失。

Every time Olive Garden tries to freshen its image, to move away from its cultural role as a punchline for faux authenticity and mediocre mall food, everything collapses.

每当橄榄园试图刷新自己的形象，摆脱其作为虚假正宗和平庸商场食品的笑点的文化角色时，一切都会崩溃。

Nobody wants to eat kale at Olive Garden.

没有人想在橄榄园吃羽衣甘蓝。

Nobody wants garlic hummus .

没有人想要大蒜鹰嘴豆泥。

We want soup and salad and unlimited breadsticks, we want never-ending bowls of pasta with a variety of sauces, we want giant glasses full of Coke and tiny wine glasses full of plonky reds and fruity whites.

我们想要汤、沙拉和无限量的面包棒，我们想要吃不完的各种酱汁的意大利面，我们想要装满可乐的大玻璃杯和装满笨重的红葡萄酒和果味白葡萄酒的小酒杯。

Just about the only stunt Olive Garden has ever pulled that’s been successful — and it’s been a raging success, an astounding, nearly unbelievable one — has been the Pasta Pass.

橄榄园唯一成功的特技就是意大利面通行证，这是一次巨大的成功，令人震惊，几乎令人难以置信。

For $100, you can buy a card that entitles you to seven weeks of unlimited unlimited soup, salad, and breadsticks, and unlimited never-ending pasta bowls.

只需花费 100 美元，您就可以购买一张卡，让您可以在七周内无限量享用汤、沙拉和面包棒，以及无限量吃不完的意大利面。

Or you could buy it, if you were one of the 22,000 people who managed to snatch them up before they sold out in one second .

或者，如果你是 22,000 人中的一员，在它们在一秒钟售完之前抢购一空，你就可以购买它。

One.

一。

Second.

第二。

That’s how much no one cares if Olive Garden serves kale.

没人关心橄榄园是否供应羽衣甘蓝。

You can’t really go wrong with any of their permutations on the holy trinity of carbohydrate, tomato sauce, and cheese.

碳水化合物、番茄酱和奶酪这三位一体的排列组合绝对不会出错。

Darden, the company that owns Olive Garden, is publicly traded, and in the last two years, the stock has been steadily on the rise.

拥有 Olive Garden 的达顿公司是一家上市公司，在过去两年里，该公司的股价一直在稳步上涨。

This may be because in 2014, a hedge fund with a significant stake in the company delivered a 294-page treatise outlining all the ways Olive Garden was getting in the way of its own success, including giving away too much bread, not pushing enough alcohol, and overly dressing the salads.

这可能是因为，2014 年，一家持有该公司大量股份的对冲基金发表了一篇长达 294 页的论文，概述了 Olive Garden 阻碍其自身成功的所有方式，包括赠送太多面包、不提供足够的酒精以及过度调味沙拉。

But I think the real lesson isn’t buried in a PowerPoint deck, it’s right there in the wild success of the Pasta Pass: Olive Garden’s biggest asset is, in fact, that none of the attempts to make it better are working.

但我认为真正的教训并不隐藏在幻灯片中，它就在“意大利面通行证：橄榄园”的巨大成功中，事实上，它最大的资产是，所有让它变得更好的尝试都没有奏效。

All the stunts and menu revamps and dining room redesigns are met by diners with indifference at best, and outright hostility at worst.

所有的特技、菜单的修改和餐厅的重新设计，食客们最多只能表现出冷漠，而最坏的情况下则表现出彻底的敌意。

Inevitably Darden retreats and regroups, falling back on the only thing that ever reliably gets people in the door: pasta, a lot of it, cheaply, with soup and salad and breadsticks, and a vague veneer of Italy.

达顿不可避免地会撤退并重新集结，依靠唯一能可靠地吸引人们进来的东西：意大利面，大量的，便宜的，配汤、沙拉和面包棒，还有一层模糊的意大利面。

Olive Garden has always gone to great lengths to claim its authentic Italianness, even in the face of overwhelming proof otherwise.

橄榄园一直不遗余力地宣称其纯正的意大利风味，即使面对压倒性的证据。

This may have been different in the early ’80s, when the chain launched, and America was only beginning to shake off our understanding of the cuisine as a monolith of red sauce, red gingham tablecloths, and candles wedged into wicker chianti bottles.

这在 80 年代初可能有所不同，当时这家连锁店刚刚推出，而美国才刚刚开始摆脱我们对美食的理解：红酱、红色格子桌布和塞在柳条基安蒂酒瓶中的蜡烛。

Relaxed trade agreements meant that Americans had easier access to real-deal products like extra-virgin olive oil, balsamic vinegar, prosciutto di Parma, and serious Italian cheeses.

宽松的贸易协定意味着美国人更容易获得真正优惠的产品，如特级初榨橄榄油、香醋、帕尔马火腿和正宗的意大利奶酪。

Marcella Hazan had exploded onto the scene in the mid-1970s, with cookbooks that refused to Americanize recipes, techniques, or ingredients; by the time the first Olive Garden opened in December 1982, Sheila Lukins and Julee Rosso’s The Silver Palate Cookbook had been a runaway bestseller for nearly a year, inculcating home cooks in the novel wonders of pancetta and pesto.

玛塞拉·哈赞 (Marcella Hazan) 在 20 世纪 70 年代中期突然崭露头角，其烹饪书拒绝美国化食谱、技术或原料；到 1982 年 12 月第一家橄榄园开业时，希拉·卢金斯 (Sheila Lukins) 和朱莉·罗索 (Julee Rosso) 所著的《银味食谱》已成为畅销书近一年，向家庭厨师灌输薄肉和香蒜酱的新奇奥妙。

The rejection of red-sauce Italian-American is right there in the name, once you get past all the jokes about the lack of olives on the menu.

一旦你克服了菜单上没有橄榄的所有笑话，就可以从名字中看出对意大利裔美国人的红酱的拒绝。

A garden of olives!

橄榄园！

It’s lush, sun-drenched, exquisitely Mediterranean, with whispers of both the exotic and the old-world.

这里郁郁葱葱，阳光普照，充满精致的地中海风情，充满异域风情和旧世界的气息。

“Olive Garden,” as a phrase, only implies Italian food — or Italian caricature, black-dressed nonnas and loud family gatherings and the indefinable absurdity of “hospitaliano” — because it asserts the validity of its connection so loudly that it can’t be ignored.

“橄榄园”作为一个短语，只意味着意大利美食——或者意大利漫画、黑衣修女、喧闹的家庭聚会以及“医院”的不可定义的荒谬——因为它如此大声地断言了其联系的有效性，以至于不容忽视。

Even in 1986, the chain’s advertising budget was in the millions .

即使在 1986 年，该连锁店的广告预算也达到了数百万美元。

Olive Garden’s authenticity hard-sell is less exciting now, in the age of ubiquitous, regionally genuine Italian food.

如今，在正宗意大利美食无处不在的时代，橄榄园的正宗性强行推销已经不那么令人兴奋了。

For every mention of their “culinary institute” in Tuscany, there’s a Reddit AMA from an employee actually sent there, happy to debunk the fairy tale with tales of an off-season hotel and a couple of half-hour cooking demos.

每次提到他们在托斯卡纳的“烹饪学院”，就会有来自那里的员工发来的 Reddit AMA，他们很乐意用淡季酒店的故事和几个半小时的烹饪演示来揭穿这个童话故事。

We can get pesto anywhere now, even at Subway, and balsamic vinegar is so uncool that it’s almost cool again.

现在我们在任何地方都可以买到香蒜酱，甚至在赛百味也是如此，而香醋却不太酷，几乎又凉了。

Some 35 years later, in a world bestrode by Mario Batali and Lidia Bastianich, a hint of rosemary or a red wine braise doesn’t go quite as far as it used to.

大约 35 年后，在 Mario Batali 和 Lidia Bastianich 的世界里，迷迭香或红酒炖菜的味道不再像以前那样强烈。

But Olive Garden has transcended Olive Garden, the way Gauguin’s olive trees transcended olive trees.

但《橄榄园》已经超越了《橄榄园》，就像高更的橄榄树超越了橄榄树一样。

It’s the ur-chain, a restaurant whose exquisite mediocrity — heightened, not undermined, by the flashes of greatness in the toasted ravioli, the salad, the shockingly delicious soups — is the very fabric of its appeal.

这是一家连锁餐厅，其精致的平庸——烤馄饨、沙拉、美味得令人震惊的汤中的闪光，增强了而不是削弱了——正是其吸引力的基础。

It’s the subject of parody, like the MadTV sketch of a racist, vituperative Italian-American family gathered to eat horrifying food, and it’s immortalized in fine art — Chloe Wise’s installation Olive Garden of Eden is a marble block draped in romaine and croutons , lashed with oozy, willfully sexual splatters of Caesar dressing.

它是戏仿的主题，就像 MadTV 中一个种族主义、谩骂的意大利裔美国家庭聚集在一起吃可怕食物的小品一样，它在美术中永垂不朽——克洛伊·怀斯 (Chloe Wise) 的装置作品《橄榄伊甸园》(Olive Garden of Eden) 是一个铺满生菜和油煎面包块的大理石块，上面沾满了渗出的、故意性的凯撒酱。

Olive Garden doesn’t even serve Caesar salad.

橄榄园甚至不提供凯撒沙拉。

But it doesn’t matter.

但这并不重要。

What matters is this: Olive Garden is a machine of memory.

重要的是：橄榄园是一台记忆机器。

You go to Olive Garden because you’ve always gone there.

你去橄榄园是因为你总是去那里。

You bring your children there, and they grow up having always gone there.

你把你的孩子带到那里，他们就一直去那里长大。

It is a restaurant that’s good at some things, a few of them on the menu, more of them about price and convenience and a general exhausted tolerance for unruly children and arguing couples.

这家餐厅在某些方面很擅长，其中一些在菜单上，更多的是价格和便利性，以及对不守规矩的孩子和争吵的夫妇的普遍容忍。

It is extraordinarily good at being a non-place.

它非常擅长成为一个非场所。

It’s uncannily good at being itself: A restaurant that calls on Italy without ever looking at Italy, that promises family without community, that is — in its ubiquity — nowhere, and is better for it.

它出奇地擅长做自己：一家呼唤意大利而不关注意大利的餐厅，承诺没有社区的家庭，这无处不在，而且更适合它。

Every time it strays from itself, the collective force of memory intervenes, and it returns.

每当它偏离自身时，记忆的集体力量就会介入，然后它就会回归。

Helen Rosner is over fettucini alfredo for good now.

海伦·罗斯纳 (Helen Rosner) 现在已经不再吃阿尔弗雷多宽面条了。

Julianna Brion is an artist based in Baltimore.

朱莉安娜·布里昂 (Julianna Brion) 是一位居住在巴尔的摩的艺术家。

Edited by the ghost of Paul Gauguin Copy edited by Rachel P.

由 Paul Gauguin 的幽灵编辑 副本由 Rachel P. 编辑

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郊区连锁店的文化和经济衰落

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五位食客，四代人，近7000卡路里，一条濒临死亡的连锁店

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What one typical American town reveals about the fate of the great suburban chain restaurant

一个典型的美国小镇揭示了一家伟大的郊区连锁餐厅的命运

Remembering a dad, a divorce, and weeknights filled with fried cheese and ice cream

纪念父亲、离婚以及充满炸奶酪和冰淇淋的工作日夜晚