Italian Exchange Student Tries Olive Garden For His First Time And Apologizes For ‘Betraying Italy’ After What Happened

The Olive Garden is, at its core, an American institution. First opened in 1982 in Orlando, Florida, Olive Garden is the Tex-Mex equivalent of American-Italian cuisine and serves numerous dishes that would never be found anywhere in Italy, dishes whose mere existence cause the blood of some Italians to boil, but dishes that are incredibly delicious by any objective measure.

And while the rest of the world loves to mock Americans for our high-caloric food, time after time we see them travel to the United States only to discover that our food is beyond compare. Case in point, this Italian exchange student going viral after trying the Olive Garden for his first time and quickly apologizing for feeling as if he was “betraying Italy” with how much he loved it.

Italian Exchange Student Tries Olive Garden For His First Time

‘Europeans trying American cuisine’ is a hugely popular genre of content on social media these days. It’s not too far off from ‘person listens to popular song for the first time’ where we get to see a person who is different from ourselves in some meaningful way experience something we enjoy for the first time and come to appreciate it.

In this case, it is an Italian exchange student who goes to the Olive Garden, presumably with his host family. He starts off timidly, afraid to indulge. They start filming in the parking lot and he asks “is there a McDonald’s nearby?” upon realizing they are at the Olive Garden. Then temporarily refuses to get out of the vehicle before relenting.

The first video doesn’t actually have any food tasting in it so we’ll pick up the action in the second and third videos.

Still pushing for McDonald’s, he looks like a deer in headlights when the person filming the video suggests he orders the Fettuccine Alfredo. For what it is worth, Fettuccine Alfredo was created in Rome, Italy by Chef Alfredo di Lelio back somewhere between 1908 and 1914, the actual origin date is unclear.

Eventually, they ordered fried ravioli, mozzarella sticks, bread sticks with dipping sauce, and he also sounds off for a while on how ‘Alfredo’ sauce is not an Italian dish when as we just covered, it is and was created by an Italian chef in Rome back in the early 1900s at the Alfredo alla Scrofa restaurant. Evidently though, it never caught on.

Interestingly, the first thing to hit his palate in the second video is a peach iced tea. When asked what he thinks he is smiling from ear to ear saying “it’s very good” and it is at this point that it might have start to set in that he’s got a smorgasbord of insanely delicious items coming.

The third video is where the food tasting actually occurs. This is where we get to watch the Italian exchange student slowly accept that everything he’s ever been told about the Olive Garden was a lie. Delicious food is delicious food.

Italian Exchange Student Falls For The O.G. With Every Bite

Collectively, the three videos have racked up 25.1 million views and counting in just three short days. All of TikTok is enamored with the story of this hater slowly coming to realize that with enough fat and butter, everything is delicious.

One of the top comments echoes a sentiment many feel toward the Olive Garden. They wrote “Olive Garden is like Taco Bell. We all know it isn’t authentic but it still slaps and is its own thing.”

Nobody in their right mind would ever try and convince you that Olive Garden is authentic Italian. It’s an Italian-American cuisine catered towards Americans but with dishes that transcend cultural barriers because they are delicious.

Have I been to the O.G. once in the past 10 years? No. Did these videos make me want to hop in the car and go for lunch today? Absolutely, yes. This is guerrilla marketing at its finest. It has to be.

It also makes me want to hop a flight to St. Louis and pick up some authentic toasted raviolis. The best of the best.

And for what it’s worth, the mainland United States is not the only place you will find Olive Garden restaurants. Outside of the lower 48, they can be found in Puerto Rico, Guam, Aruba, Brazil, Canada, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Mexico, Panama, The Philippines, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia.