FARGO, N.D. -- A North Dakota newspaper columnist sat down to review her town's hot new Italian restaurant, rhapsodizing about the chicken Alfredo, crisp greens and "two long, warm breadsticks."
But because the restaurant was the Olive Garden, Marilyn Hagerty's earnest assessment swiftly became an Internet sensation, drawing comments both sincere and sarcastic from food bloggers and others. For the 85-year-old Hagerty, the response was bewildering - and it threatened to make her late for a bridge game.
Hagerty's column in the Grand Forks Herald focuses on local food, and in North Dakota that means chain restaurants that are shunned by big-city food critics. She's reviewed Ruby Tuesday, Pizza Ranch, Applebee's and Country Kitchen. Even fast-food joints such as KFC, Qdoba and Subway have undergone scrutiny.
But it was her unfailingly polite prose about the Olive Garden - complete with a detailed description of the bustling waiters - that catapulted her to online stardom, at least briefly.
"At length, I asked my server what she would recommend," Hagerty wrote in the column called Eatbeat published Wednesday. "She suggested chicken Alfredo, and I went with that. Instead of the raspberry lemonade she suggested, I drank water."
The Olive Garden is "the largest and most beautiful restaurant now operating in Grand Forks," she concluded. "It attracts visitors from out of town as well as people who live here."
By Friday morning, her appraisal had received more than 290,000 hits on the newspaper's website. The second most-read story - a report about the University of North Dakota's Fighting Sioux nickname - got a mere 5,500 views.
"I do not get it," Hagerty said Friday. "I mean, I'm sitting here minding my own business yesterday morning, trying to get my Friday column finished off so I could go play bridge. And all of a sudden, all hell breaks loose."
Within hours of appearing, the piece was spreading rapidly across the Web.
"Residents of Grand Forks, N.D., are lining up for blocks to enjoy a one-of-a-kind European dining experience that finally puts the city on the culinary map with its unique brand of Tuscany refinery," mocked the news website Fark. "It's called The Olive Garden."
But this is what Hagerty does.
"She writes five columns a week, and they are all this sort of this very direct, no-nonsense approach to what's going on," said Mike Jacobs, publisher of the newspaper. "She has her detractors, but she's very popular. She's a real asset to the Herald."
Jefferson’s Thaddeus Hall is a talker. He talks to his opponents, to his teammates. He smiles, gesticulates. He’s not bashful on the basketball court.But with his team down a point in the waning seconds of the PSAL Class AA semifinal against Wings on Saturday, Hall managed to back up his talking with a pair of clutch baskets that propelled top-seeded Jefferson to a 72-68 win over No. 4 Wings that should etch his name in postseason lore.“That’s what big-time players do,” said Jefferson coach Lawrence Pollard. “I felt confident with the ball in his hands.”With Wings leading 68-67 and 18.9 seconds left, Hall, a 6-5 lefty shooting guard, sliced into the lane with Wings’ Justin Jenkins tightly guarding him and muscled up a layup while getting fouled. The bucket gave his team a 69-68 lead. Hall’s free throw with 7.7 seconds left made it a two-point game. Wings had a chance to even the score or even win it but lost possession of the ball on the inbounds play when the ball was deflected by Jefferson’s Jaquan Lynch into the hands of Hall who sprinted in for a wild one-handed dunk as time expired, setting off a celebration that had Pollard vault off the bench as if he bounced off a trampoline.Hall finished with 22 points and won a mesmerizing one-on-one second-half matchup with Jenkins, who ended up with a game-high 23 points, 19 in the first half against constant double teams and nearly willed his team to victory.“It just feels really good to finally get to the Garden,” said Hall, who scored his team’s final five points and helped the Orange Wave make the program’s first ‘AA’ title game. “I kind of made up my mind that I wasn’t going to let us lose. I was able to make the plays to get us over the top.”Jefferson (25-6) trailed by four, 68-64 with 1:04 to play after Jenkins hit a double clutch runner in the lane and Jaequan Brown hit one of two free throws. But Jefferson refused to go away, and it was unlikely player with big-shot experience who helped the Orange Wave mount a comeback. With 50.7 seconds left, Nazai Stokes buried a three-pointer to cut the deficit to 68-67.“He’s hit some big shots for us before so I wasn’t surprised that he hit that shot in that situation,” said Jefferson’s Lynch, who finished with 16 and dished out several assists.Brown hit a difficult runner in the lane with 37.8 seconds left that would have given Wings (25-4) a 70-67 lead, but he was whistled for a controversial offensive charge, drawing the ire of Wings coach Billy Turnage, who was in his third straight semifinal, desperate to make the title game.“That’s a horrendous call,” Turnage said. “The referees aren’t the ones who should decide the outcome of a game.”As it was, Hall was the one who took matters into his own hands, literally. 