Toque of the Town: Tending the Garden

Olive Garden traces its roots, traveling to Italy to develop authentic dishes that don’t alienate mainstream America.

By Monica Rogers, Contributing Editor -- Chain Leader, 11/1/2007

On a mission to improve Italian food in America, Olive Garden development chefs Paolo Lafata (l.) and Flavio Tagliaferro travel to Italy for ideation and to lead training sessions.

Seafood does well at Olive Garden. Mussels di Napoli features mussels in the shell with wine, garlic butter and onions.

Grilled Shrimp Caprese, marinated shrimp over angel hair pasta with mozzarella, basil and tomatoes in garlic-butter sauce, was inspired by a trip to the Isle of Capri.

The Caramel Hazlenut Macchiato, Italian coffee with amaretto, caramel and hazelnut syrups, is topped with whipped cream and caramel drizzle.

A combination of slow braising and sous vide ensures a tender result for Chianti Braised Short Ribs, which are served over portobello-mushroom risotto.

Topeka, Kan., Tyler, Texas, and Des Moines, Iowa, are thousands of miles from Italy—on the map and in state of mind. With 621 restaurants sprinkled throughout these and many more middle-American towns, Olive Garden’s challenge has long been to bridge that gap. By conducting menu research and training in Italy, the Orlando, Fla.-based casual-dining chain has made progress toward that goal, creating more-authentic, Italian-style dishes here.

Risotto (creamy Arborio rice), for example, debuted in July 2006. It’s a dish that Director of Menu Strategy David Ellis says "eight years ago would have seemed out of left field to our guests." Next came gelato, the densely rich Italian ice cream, which also launched in 2006, followed by gnocchi, Italian potato dumplings, in July 2007.

The risotto is featured in two entrees: Shrimp and Asparagus Risotto, $14.95, includes the rice in creamy Parmesan cheese sauce with sauteed shrimp and asparagus. Chianti Braised Short Ribs, $15.75, includes risotto seasoned with Chianti and portobello mushrooms.

The $5.50 gelato stars as a dessert with three scoops topped with caramel sauce and dark chocolate pieces. And Olive Garden introduced gnocchi as part of its $13.75 Chicken and Gnocchi Veronese entree, with sauteed chicken and roasted red peppers in a Parmesan and ricotta cheese sauce.

Fifty-two straight quarters of same-store-sales growth suggest guests appreciate these authentication efforts, which augment, rather than eliminate, longtime favorite dishes. Old standbys such as Spaghetti & Meatballs, $12.25, and Lasagna Classico, $12.50, still make "Cucina Classica" Olive Garden’s best-selling menu category. But guests seem to be embracing the new as well: Pollo (Chicken) and Pesce (Fish) are the No. 2 and 3 categories, featuring new ingredients such as the aforementioned gnocchi and risotto.

"There’s no question that the American palate continues to become more sophisticated and that guests are more willing to try new things," says Bryan Elliott, restaurant analyst with St. Petersburg, Fla.-based Raymond James and Associates. "It’s also clear that Olive Garden has found the right balance between cutting edge and traditional dishes—a balance that allows the company to continue to drive frequency."

For Executive Chef Paolo Lafata, who came to Olive Garden 13 years ago, authenticating the Italian food experience for Americans "was more of a mission than a career move," he says. "I understood the power of being able to serve so many guests and felt Olive Garden would provide an amazing opportunity."

Italian Culture

Much of that vision has been realized through the Culinary Institute of Tuscany. Olive Garden established the center in 1999 for menu research and training. It is located in an 11th century restored village adjacent to the Rocca delle Macie winery in Tuscany.

CIT is a jumping-off point for Olive Garden’s ideation team. With Lafata and Chef de Cuisine Flavio Tagliaferro heading the core menu team and Ellis directing menu strategy, every fall 10 to 15 development chefs travel to three or four different regions of Italy. The teams visit restaurants, markets and wineries in search of recipes that might translate well for the American audience. They discuss their findings at CIT and then return to the States to ready best-fits for operations. Travels to Northern Italy in 2006 yielded the Chianti Braised Short Ribs. This year’s tour of Veneto brought Venetian Apricot Chicken, $13.25, to menus. And in 2008, the teams will head to Southern Italy.

On separate training junkets, about 100 front- and back-of-the-house managers travel to the CIT each year to follow Lafata, Tagliaferro and Tuscany-based Romana Neri, head chef at the CIT, through a whirlwind, week-long immersion in regional dining, cooking and winery experiences.

Visiting culinary managers from the States spend much of their time with Neri learning Italian cooking basics. "We look closely at the importance of every ingredient—the olive oil, the meat, the cheese, the produce," says Lafata, who serves as director of the CIT. "And we especially emphasize the Italian techniques of layering flavors in sauces one step at a time." Olive Garden restaurants produce 24 sauces from scratch each day.

But Lafata says the larger aim is to fully immerse managers in Italian culture. "In Italy, everything is done over the table: we marry, we fight, we discuss our lives. It’s vital that our managers understand that," he says.

Building on Comfort

Travels and training come together on Olive Garden’s menus. "We’re taking a building-block approach to familiarizing our American audience to more-distinctive Italian items," Ellis says.

Building on America’s comfort level with chicken, for example, it made sense to use the protein as the base for Italian ingredients new to many guests. Venetian Apricot Chicken, for example, features grilled chicken breasts in a sweet and sour apricot-citrus sauce. The sauce, explains Lafata, derives from medieval Venetian fruit sauce recipes. "But getting it just right for the American palate took a lot of development," he says. "We didn’t want to end up with something that tasted like apricot marmalade."

Likewise, Olive Garden used chicken as the nonthreatening vehicle for its introduction of gnocchi, a Veronese specialty. Chef Tagliaferro, a Verona native, drew on years of training to develop Chicken and Gnocchi Veronese. "In Italy, it’s a celebration dish," he says. "We used that as inspiration."

Olive Garden adds three or four new items to the core menu each year. In addition, items with a more seasonal slant are featured as limited-time offers. Examples include Olive Garden’s summery Sicilian Grilled Shrimp, which ran in July, and October’s cooler-weather Chicken Florentine and Asiago Chicken promo.

Besting Benchmarks

For any item to make it onto the menu, it must meet a variety of benchmarks for guest and operator satisfaction. "The aim is not only for an item to do well, but for it to raise overall satisfaction levels," Ellis says. Since adding the CIT, Olive Garden reports that guest-satisfaction scores have improved every year.

Once the decision’s been made to launch a new dish, Olive Garden creates training aids such as photos and printed materials to support the launch. Two culinary trainers for each of Olive Garden’s seven divisions conduct an all-day training session for the directors of operations in each division, along with their chosen culinary managers. These culinary managers then train the rest of the culinary managers in the region. Next, managers in each restaurant meet to learn the new recipes and discuss their rollout. The remainder of the culinary and service staff is trained on the dishes during restaurant-skill sessions.

Finally, one week before launch, dishes are "whiteboarded," or offered to guests without being on the printed menu, giving teams time to remove any kinks from production prior to the official launch date.

Even if all goes smoothly through launch, chefs may continue to tweak and enhance items after they’re introduced to help operationally and with taste. Early versions of the Chicken and Gnocchi Veronese, for example, included grilled chicken. "But we found that sauteing the chicken made it possible to more consistently deliver the best dish with the most flavor," Lafata says.

Ensuring that the menu doesn’t get too ungainly, lower-selling or redundant items come off the menu when new dishes come on. That meant Chicken Gardeno, Chicken Vino Bianco and Mediterranean Shrimp Scampi were removed when Olive Garden launched its new core menu in July.

While Olive Garden will not say what’s coming to menus next, CIT graduates say they’ll continue to reference what they learned in Italy. "I’ve put a much bigger focus on following recipes the way we were shown in Italy to ensure consistency and better flavor," says Jenifer French, general manager in Tyler, Texas. "I also want to make sure my guests feel as welcomed as I did at the restaurants I visited there."

Jim Beltz, general manager of an Olive Garden in Des Moines, Iowa, agrees. "The biggest thing I brought back was the ability to explain to the culinary team why we do things the way we do them," he says. "That, and reaching out to my guests with the same warmth that proprietors there extended to me."

Menu Sampler

Appetizer

Smoked Mozzarella Fonduta, oven-baked mozzarella, Parmesan and Romano cheeses with Tuscan bread, $6.50

Carne (Beef & Pork)

Pork Filettino: grilled pork tenderloin marinated in extra virgin olive oil and rosemary, served with Tuscan potatoes and bell peppers, $16.25

Pasta Ripiena (Filled Pastas)

Braised Beef and Tortelloni: sliced short ribs with portobello mushrooms and Asiago-filled tortelloni in basil-marsala sauce, $13.25

Pollo (Chicken)

Tuscan Garlic Chicken: pan-seared breasts with roasted garlic, red peppers and spinach in a white-wine and garlic cream sauce over curly fettuccine, $13.50

Pesce (Fish & Seafood)