Marilyn Hagerty, Whose Olive Garden Review Went Viral, Dies at 99

Marilyn Hagerty, a food columnist who startled the online world with an earnestly detail-oriented and nonjudgmental appraisal of a North Dakota Olive Garden, and who was startled in turn when the review racked up more than one million page views, bringing her national media attention and a book contract, died on Sept. 16 in Grand Forks, N.D. She was 99.

Her death, in a hospital, was from complications of a stroke, said her son, the journalist James R. Hagerty.

Ms. Hagerty had been writing The Eatbeat, her restaurant column in The Grand Forks Herald, for 26 years when, in early 2012, she filed her report about the opening of the city’s first Olive Garden outlet, part of a local branch of a national Italian restaurant chain where the warm breadsticks never ran out.

The Olive Garden’s menu was enormously popular but also routinely mocked for taking starchy, cheesy liberties with the cuisine. Ms. Hagerty did not engage with that debate. Her descriptions of the restaurant and its food were direct and matter of fact.

“The chicken Alfredo ($10.95) was warm and comforting on a cold day,” she wrote. “The portion was generous. My server was ready with Parmesan cheese.”

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