Columnist still waiting for viral fame

 I’ll have to confess I’m a little jealous of Marilyn Hagerty.

For those of you who don’t follow the blogosphere or media websites, Marilyn is the mild-mannered, 85-year-old columnist whose restaurant review of the new Olive Garden in Grand Forks, N.D., went viral a couple of weeks ago.

First food snobs chided her for having the audacity to critique a chain restaurant in her EatBeat column in the Grand Forks Herald, mocking her review that declared the long-awaited Olive Garden “the largest and most beautiful restaurant now operating in Grand Forks.” She noted the chicken Alfredo she ordered was “warm and comforting on a cold day.”

It wasn’t long before many foodies, including celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain, came to Marilyn’s defense. Bourdain tweeted: “Very much enjoying watching Internet sensation Marilyn Hagerty triumph over the snarkologists (myself included).”

The unexpected 15 minutes of fame resulted in a trip to New York City where North Dakota’s most famous food critic made appearances on the “Today Show” and other high-profile news shows and was featured in all kinds of newspaper stories, including the Wall Street Journal, where her son is a writer.

Marilyn dined at the high-class Le Bernardin during her whirlwind tour of The Big Apple. She declared the food elegant and the service impeccable in her latest EatBeat column.

And now I hear she’s going on a cruise to Italy for real Italian food, compliments of Celebrity Cruises.

It was no surprise to me that Marilyn chose to review the Olive Garden. In that neck of the woods (I grew up roughly 75 miles from Grand Forks on the Minnesota side of the border) eating out is a big deal, especially for senior citizens, and most don’t discriminate against chain restaurants.

My own mother lives for meals at Perkins, and when my dad was still living it was a nice day out if they stopped at Arby’s for lunch.

Dining out was a rarity for our farm family. We ate out once a year — Mother’s Day — and usually frequented either a bowling alley in the big city of Moorhead that offered a lavish buffet, or the Eagle Cafe in Barnesville.

Once Dad took the whole family to a fast-food burger joint and we ate burgers and fries in the car. It was the mid-1960s. We still laugh at my younger brother, who exclaimed out loud as we dined in the old Ford: “Wow, this is really living!”

But back to my petty jealously. None of my columns have gone viral or produced a free trip to anywhere. Now Marilyn T-shirts and her e-book are available on the Herald’s website and she’s tweeting on the road — one tweet mundanely noted “I’m at Menard’s (in Moorhead).” Not bad for a woman who just three weeks ago didn’t know what “going viral” meant.

Marilyn mania has set the bar pretty high for those of us who can only dream of such fame for our literary efforts. Still, all I need is just one good idea.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by e-mail at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.