“Fast. Fresh. Italian.” Two Out Of
Three Ain't Bad
To start with, I actually kind of like
Fazoli's. I realize “actually kind of like” is not exactly a
ringing endorsement, but it could be worse. The chain's current
advertising hook is “Fast. Fresh. Italian.” To which I say,
“Okay, two out of three ain't bad.” I say this because Fazoli's
is about as Italian as hot dogs and apple pie. It's the American
ideal of an Italian eatery, which is to say it's not very Italian at
all.
Founded in 1988 in the cultural hotbed
of Italian-ism that is Lexington, Kentucky, Fazoli's was a forerunner
in the concept of fast Italian. Originally conceived as a pizza
joint, it took Kuni Toyoda, a Japanese entrepreneur, to establish the
format and menu as we now know it. Toyoda realized that the world
didn't really need yet another pizza chain, but that there was a
definite niche for fast-food-style pasta dishes. The early,
pre-Toyoda pasta offerings were fairly dreadful: small portions of
badly overcooked noodles. Toyoda was instrumental in (marginally)
improving the quality of the pasta and increasing the portion size.
Soon Fazoli's locations were springing up like dandelions. By the
late 1990s, Fazoli's had become one of the most popular and fastest
growing restaurant concepts in the country. It currently operates or
franchises more than 320 restaurants in 27 states and is looking to
expand overseas. The chain's appeal is driven by people searching for
alternatives to the standard McDonald's/Burger King fast-food menu of
burgers and fries. You've got to admit, nobody else is serving up
fast-food spaghetti.
Fazoli's current menu consists of what
it considers to be “classic Italian” dishes. Things like Chicken
Parmigiano, Penne with Creamy Basil Chicken, Chicken Broccoli Penne,
Ultimate (Chicken) Fettuccine, Three-Cheese Tortellini Alfredo, and
Baked Spaghetti. And then there are the signature “Submarinos”
sandwiches, featuring the likes of Turkey Mozzarella Fresco and
Turkey Club Classico. Fazoli's also offers pizza, salads, desserts
and, of course, unlimited garlic bread sticks. The problem here is
that there's not a single authentic Italian item in the bunch.
Everything is Italian-American at best and stuff made up to sound
Italian at worst. For some reason, Americans just don't jibe with the
idea that Italians don't put chicken in their pasta. In fact,
Italians aren't much for mixing any kind of meat in with their pasta.
You won't find anything “Alfredo” on an authentic Italian menu,
and while turkey is a popular sandwich meat in Italy, piling it high
on a toasted garlic sandwich roll with lettuce, bacon, mozzarella,
and Parmesan peppercorn ranch dressing is anything but “classico.”
To add insult to injury, the few real
Italian offerings on the menu are served up American-style. Dining at
the Shallowford Road location in Chattanooga, Tennessee the other
day, I ordered a simple spaghetti marinara. Now, they don't actually
do spaghetti “marinara” in Italy: it's spaghetti al pomodoro,
but I don't want to
nitpick.....much. What I got was a heaping plate of bland
spaghetti with a lot of red sauce dumped over the top. Sorry, that's
not Italian. It may be what
Americans have been conditioned to expect, but it's simply not
Italian. Kuni Toyoda may have made inroads into introducing pasta
cooked al dente, but
he didn't quite get there and he definitely didn't do anything about
the pasta's flavor – or lack thereof. Pasta has to be cooked in
aggressively salted water in order to achieve any flavor of its own.
Otherwise, it's bland and flavorless. And once it's been cooked, you
can't dump enough salt on bland, flavorless pasta to make it taste
anything other than salty. I know. I tried.
On the plus side,
the tomato sauce with which they top the pasta isn't bad. The texture
is good and the flavor is acceptable for the commercial sauce that it
is. If only they would prepare the dish in the traditional Italian
manner of finishing the cooked pasta in the sauce rather than just
dumping the sauce over the top of the pasta. Cooking the pasta in the
sauce for a final minute or two allows the flavors to marry and
mingle. Ladling the sauce over the top of the cooked pasta does
nothing for either element. But again, it's what American diners
expect. I've had one or two customers in my restaurants object to
“having it all mixed up.” To them I say, “What does this place
look like, Fazoli's?”
Something to which
I object is gargantuan portions. I had the hardest time breaking my
cooks of the habit of piling enough pasta to feed an entire Italian
family onto a plate being served to just one person. Kuni Toyoda
succeeded in getting Fazoli's to Americanize their portion sizes.
Neither my wife nor I could get anywhere near finishing the portions
on our plates. And since we were traveling and boxing up leftovers
was not a viable option, the food just went shamefully to waste. But
to be fair, Fazoli's only provided us with twice as much food as we
could eat. I've been in “Italian” places where I've been served
three or four times what I'm capable of consuming – and I'm capable
of consuming quite a lot. So Fazoli's is not bad by comparison.
And that's why I
say I “actually kind of like” Fazoli's. Despite the advertising
claims, it's not “classic” Italian. But it is pretty decent
“Italian-ish” or Italian-American. The prices are very
reasonable, the portions, while oversized, are not staggering, and
the food is largely inoffensive. Service is very fast and generally friendly, two elements upon
which Fazoli's prides itself. Fazoli's offers table service, another
plus above the common fast-food experience. Much of the food is
served on real plates with real metal flatware instead of paper
plates and plastic sporks. The atmosphere is pleasant and
unpretentious and the restaurants are usually pretty clean. Okay, maybe a little Dean Martin on the radio might have added to the ambiance better than Megadeth or whatever it was they were playing when I was there, but, hey, I'm old. What do I know? All and
all, non c'è male.
Among the fast-food
gamut of hockey-puck hamburgers, greasy chicken, unpalatable fish,
and whatever the hell they put in those tacos, even mediocre Italian
looks pretty good. So, if you are out and about and just can't
stomach the thought of another anemic, run-of-the-mill burger, don't
look for golden arches, look instead for a big tomato in the sky. Try
Fazoli's and you might “actually kind of like” it, too.
Locations
nationwide.
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