Let it be written, let it be said: I could eat at Olive Garden daily until the day that I’m dead. Especially when the Olive Garden in question is as stellar as our Olive Garden in Owensboro.  On a recent Friday excursion, my husband, our oldest daughter (Emily) and I enjoyed a wonderful lunch at the Owensboro Olive Garden.  My husband and I both had the Chicken & Gnocchi soup.  This is, hands down, one of the best soups in the world.  The Chicken & Gnocchi is a creamy soup made with roasted chicken, traditional Italian dumplings and spinach. The Italian dumplings are the stuff culinary dreams are made of.  Emily ordered her favorite, the Zuppa Toscana ( Spicy sausage, russet potatoes and cavolo greens in a creamy broth).

The Soup, Salad, and Breadsticks lunch is just $6.95.   You get their delicious garden-fresh salad, choice of homemade soup (you HAVE to try the Chicken & Gnocchi) and Heavenly warm garlic breadsticks.  The $6.95 special price is only until 4 p.m.

We ordered a dessert on this trip and haven’t quite gotten over it yet.  It was the Dolcini: Three beautiful and delicious little desserts served on a platter (pictured at the top).  The unforgettable trio consisted of: Chocolate Mousse with Dark Chocolate Cookie Crust • Strawberry & White Chocolate Cream Cake • Limoncello Mousse with Vanilla Cookie Crust

The chocoholic that I am, I immediately dove into the chocolate dessert.  Then the Strawberry one… then the Lemon one. The Linoncello Mousse with Vanilla Cookie Crust – or, as this Kentucky gal refers to it, the lemon one, had a scrumptious little candied lemon on top.

Each time I eat at Olive Garden, and if you’re a regular reader, you know it’s weekly, I’m struck by the friendliness of the staff and the deliciousness of the food.  We also marvel at how fast they are – at lunch, anyway.  Most of us want our lunch to be fast but filling and inexpensive but memorable.  If we can have a gorgeous, relaxed setting and friendly people, we consider it a wonderful bonus.  If anyplace delivers all of this any better than Owensboro’s Olive Garden, I’ve yet to find it.

Pictured below is another Olive Garden obsession of mine: The Raspberry Peach Tea. SO GOOD!

See more places to eat lunch in Owensboro Kentucky.

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If you need a last minute gift, here’s the most delicious idea possible: A beautiful gift basket from the Great Harvest Bread Company!  I got the one above this year and have been THOROUGHLY enjoying everything about it.

• The White Bread is so aromatic it practically fills the kitchen with its goodness. It tastes even better.
• The Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Bread is Heavenly.
• The Pumpkin Pie Butter is delectable on each of the breads above.
• The Ham Spread is surprisingly a knock out! When I saw it, I thought, “Hmm. Not sure about that.” But I can’t stay out of it! It’s so good, I could smear it on a shoe and eat it.
• The Wild Huckleberry Preserves combine with the white bread (toasted) for an other-worldly experience.
• The Roasted Garlic Potato Soup and I have a date for the day after Christmas: Soup and Ham sandwiches!
• The Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies are some of the best cookies I’ve ever put in my mouth and, believe me, I’ve had every cookie in the world. Cookie Monster has nothing on me.
• The gorgeous basket will be around long after the wonderful food is gone. It makes a beautiful fruit basket.

You’re able to pick out the components of the gift basket, and I must say (as always) my husband did an exceptional job.  This is my second Great Harvest Bread Co gift basket and I’m hoping and praying it’ll be an annual tradition.

Every single thing the Great Harvest Bread Co. sells is outstanding – the bread, cookies, Kentucky tea (you HAVE to try this amazing tea!), ham spread (uncommonly delicious), etc.  The Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bread and Pumpkin Pie Butter are so delicious it isn’t even funny.  Every single thing in the basket is, for that matter!

If you live near Owensboro, Kentucky – our Great Harvest Bread Company is at 3211 Frederica St, across from Kentucky Wesleyan.   The friendliest people in the world work there and the food’s to die for.  Even if you don’t need a gift basket to GIVE, buy one for yourself! That’s what my oldest daughter intends to do.  Smart girl.

You’ll find a lot of great breads, snacks, and desserts to have on hand during the holidays as well. Perfect for family get-togethers and delicious for the bowl games and UK basketball games!  You pick out the food you want in the basket, but trust me, you’d do well to pick out the exact things my husband did.  I’ve trained him so well.

Click HERE to find the Great Harvest near you.

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If you’re in Owensboro, Kentucky at lunchtime, I have two words for you: Olive Garden. As I’ve mentioned on the Kentucky blog many times, my oldest daughter Emily and I eat lunch out each and every Friday.  Sometimes my husband/her dad is able to get off work long enough to join us and sometimes her sisters make it.  However, the one constant is this: Em and I do not miss Friday lunch out…. or our trip to Target and Starbucks afterward.

We kind of have a system we’ve developed over the years.  We’ll have lunch at Olive Garden one week, then branch out to a new restaurant the next Friday. Then we’ll return to Olive Garden the next… etc. If it weren’t for loving variety AND wanting to do a lot of Where to Eat in Owensboro Kentucky reviews, I can’t promise that we wouldn’t just head to Olive Garden each and every Friday.

I have to tell you, Owensboro’s Olive Garden may well be the best Olive Garden in the country.  I certainly haven’t eaten at all of their locations, so I can’t say with all certainty that they’re the best, however, our Olive Garden is flawlessly beautiful and beautifully flawless… so imagining another one beating them is pretty unreasonable.

How do you beat flawless?

So what do I love so much about Olive Garden at lunchtime?  To put it simply: They hit all the marks.

Below are the things I want and expect from a restaurant at lunchtime:

• Cleanliness
• Friendly host or hostess who seem genuinely glad to see you
• Friendly and helpful servers who seem genuinely glad to have you at their table
• UN FLAT diet coke, cokes, etc.
• Great tea
• Wonderful bread
• Wonderful salad
• Plenty of choices
• Healthy choices
• Reasonable prices – you get what (or more than what) you paid for
• Speed – who wants to spend precious time waiting?

Owensboro’s Olive Garden is all over each of these – as I said, They hit all the marks. The lunch menu is delicious, healthy, and unbelievably filling.  When we have lunch at Olive Garden, we’re always completely full until supper.  Their Soup, Salad, and Bread sticks lunch special is “all you can eat,” and so ridiculously delicious you will, indeed, eat all you can…. and then some.  Each of the soups are outstanding, but I’m so addicted to the Chicken and Gnocchi that I get it each time. You have no idea how much I’d love a bowl right now as I’m typing these words!

In addition to the best soups imaginable, delicious bread sticks, and my favorite salad in town, Olive Garden also has ridiculously beautiful and delicious appetizers (Could I interest you in Smoked Mozzarella Fonduta maybe???), pastas, flat breads, paninis (grilled sandwiches) and more.  There’s a Grilled Steak and Porotbello Panini with my name all over it. The paninis are served with your choice from their exceptional soups and Heavenly salad.

We have many wonderful places to eat lunch here in Owensboro, but Olive Garden sets the bar.  I have never had a hostess or host that wasn’t genuinely warm and friendly and I’ve never had a server who was less than a 10.  Not even a 9 -1/2!  They ooze class and friendliness and represent the restaurant the way a restaurant would want to be represented.

The food is always impeccable, flawless in every conceivable way.

As you know, I take my Kentucky Restaurant Reviews and restaurant recommendations SERIOUSLY.  I would hate (with every fiber in my being) to steer someone in a direction that could prove to be a bad experience for them.  That’s what I love so much about places like Olive Garden – I know, beyond a shadow of doubt, that they’ll never let me or my beloved readers down.  When it comes to restaurants, they don’t just set the bar, they set it high.

See Olive Garden’s awesome lunch menu.

Owensboro’s Olive Garden is located at 5204 Frederica Street.

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I’m launching a new series of posts today dedicated to one subject: Where to Eat Lunch in Owensboro, Kentucky. Not only do my family and I enjoy a great lunch out, I hear from A LOT of people around Kentucky who always want to know where to eat in Owensboro.   Many people apparently make many trips to our great city during the day and are always on the lookout for a delicious lunch in a friendly setting.  As a proud Owensboro resident, I’m always very careful where I send people.  After all, if they’re cool enough to read my articles and if they trust me enough to ask for my opinion, I take my recommendations SERIOUSLY!!!

I have done many Owensboro restaurant reviews on Genuine Kentucky over the years, but I like to keep my reviews as current as possible.  The hard cold truth is that sometimes restaurants change… and sometimes that change isn’t necessarily for the better.  If you see a restaurant (Owensboro’s Olive Garden, Tumbleweed, Red Lobster, and Old Hickory would be good examples) mentioned many times, rest assured that they’re on top of their game and not falling off in the least!

The Where to Eat Lunch in Owensboro, Kentucky will focus entirely on lunches and lunch menus.

My oldest daughter, Emily, and I had lunch today at Owensboro’s Tumbleweed.  Here’s the bizarre thing: She and I have eaten at Tumbleweed often for dinner but have never thought of it as a “lunch” restaurant.  Okay, we were completely wrong.  They very much have a lunch menu and it’s as delicious as their supper menu. It’s also exceptionally priced. Very, very reasonable.  Emily ate for less than $8 and my meal was just a little over $10 (I HAD to add some of their black beans to my meal or I’d have kept it under $10 – they were worth it!).  Even after we each tipped our adorable and sweet server Laura generously, we still ate for a lot less than a lot of places.

Their Tex Mex menu items are always so delicious that it takes me aback. Each time I eat at Tumbleweed it’s as though I forgot just how amazing it was the time before!  Their chips and salsa are wonderful, the black beans and refried beans are as good as those you get in authentic Mexican restaurants, and their rice?  Personally, I think their rice is better than the rice in authentic Mexican restaurants.

Tumbleweed’s rice is flavorful and never dry.  It’s outstanding.

I ordered the Bean Burrito and, as you can see from the picture, it was as big as my plate.  You’re given a choice of toppings for burritos (in fact I think you can have toppings on anything you order!), and I went with the sour cream.  Great choice, if I do say so myself.  It was so darn good.

I ordered peach tea and it was delicious. Tea’s a big deal for me. A restaurant always gets extra points from me if their tea’s great and Tumbleweed’s is. I also love that our server never let our drinks get empty. They never got anywhere close to empty. Our girl was on it!

Another thing I love about Tumbleweed, besides the great food, friendly staff, and beautiful setting, is the fact that they’re incredibly fast. JUST what you want a restaurant to be, especially at lunch.

Owensboro Tumbleweed is located at 5257 Frederica Street. It’s really close to Owensboro’s Ulta Beauty Store, so be sure to check it out after you eat!

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I’m over the moon excited about this news and I’m certain all of Owensboro will feel the same way.  Two Orange Leaf Frozen Yogurt shops are coming to Owensboro Kentucky!  The first one will be in Frederica Plaza at 5035 Frederica Street (the retail center between Walmart and Don Moore Hyundai on South Frederica).  The target date for the opening is the first or second week of October.

The second Orange Leaf Frozen Yogurt Shop will be on 54, and is set to open in March or April.

The colorful yogurt shop will provide a fun, healthy alternative for families who want to eat healthier.  Customers get a cup, pick a yogurt (over 50 choices! ), and then pile on the toppings.  Then you weigh your masterpiece and pay by the ounce.  You can see the menu, including all of the many flavors of yogurt and the great toppings on Orange Leaf Frozen Yogurt’s website.

I’ll see you in the Frederica shop on opening day. I’ll be the one trying to decide which of the many delicious combinations to start with.  How delicious does the picture of the frozen yogurt above look? Even without toppings, it’s driving me nuts. Hurry up, October!

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I had lunch yesterday with my youngest daughter (Stephany) and future son-in-law (Rusty) at Old Hickory here in Owensboro. It’s one of our favorite places to eat – lunch or supper. The food is just outstanding. Truth be told, simply sitting in the parking lot with your nose pointed upward is a other-worldy experience. The experience only gets better when you go through the doors.

They’ve recently added mashed potatoes and gravy to the menu and I wanted to hug them for it. Stephany ordered this as one of her sides, along with macaroni and cheese. Rusty went with the macaroni and cheese and green beans, which I’m pretty sure he could eat his weight in. He ordered the “Combination” Plate which came with his choice of 3 meats, in addition to two sides. One of his meats was ham because, this is something you really need to know, Old Hickory has THE best ham in the world. True story.

He also had ribs which looked amazing. I can’t remember what the third meat was because I was busy enjoying my own meal. (Although I did eye that ham!)

Stephany and I almost every single time order chicken, ham, or chopped Bar-B-Q pork. They’re just EACH so outstanding, ordering something else seems silly. However, curiosity got the better of us and we BOTH ordered a catfish plate.

Seriously? We entered one of the best Bar-B-Q restaurants in Kentucky and we ordered catfish? How strange for mother and daughter to both lose their minds at once. The catfish wasn’t bad, by any means, but if I’m going to be honest, it doesn’t at all compare to every other meat on Old Hickory’s menu. Again, it’s not bad (it’s actually crunchy and flavorful), it just simply gets overshadowed by the world’s best ham, chicken so good you want to weep, and pork bar-b-q that makes you wish you had 2 mouths so you can enjoy it twice as much.

If you read very many of my Kentucky Restaurant Reviews on Genuine Kentucky, you know how I feel about sides. I hate (with a cruel and unusual hatred) for a restaurant to focus solely on it’s meat items. It’s as though they say, “We have great steaks, what does it matter if our baked beans taste like microwaved pork ‘n beans?!”

It matters, buddy, it matters.

Old Hickory obviously doesn’t rest on the laurels of it’s spectacular meats, their sides are so remarkable that you actually have to sit and think before choosing, With most restaurants, you order the same sides each time because they’re the only two worth ordering! Old Hickory plays a different game with their sides – every single one of them is mind numbingly delicious. It causes a real dilemma, to tell you the truth.

• Potato Salad – Excellent
• Cole Slaw – Excellent
• Bar-B-Q Beans – Excellent
• French Fries – Excellent
• Onion Rings – Excellent
• Green Beans – excellent

And now they’ve gone and added mashed potatoes and gravy that are also Excellent.

Another pet peeve is when restaurants overcook their fries or home potato chips.  Someone needs to tell them that food continues to cook when it’s removed from the oil – so if you allow it to become a little dark in the oil, it’ll be positively brown when it makes it to the plate.  This never, ever happens at a couple of restaurants and Old Hickory is one. Perfect fries and/or onion rings each and every time.

The Bar-B-Q Plates each come with pickle, onion, bread (our catfish came with wonderful fried cornbread!), the meat(s), and two sides.  The meats include mutton, pork, beef, ribs, mutton ribs, chicken, chix strips, turkey, ham (did I mention that it was the best in the world?), and catfish.

Sandwiches include: Sliced mutton, chopped mutton, sliced pork, chopped pork, sliced beef, sliced turkey, sliced ham, sliced ham and cheese, chicken, hamburger, cheeseburger, grilled cheese, and catfish.  They also serve chili (but it’s seasonal), burgoo, and bean soup (with cornbread).

If you have room for dessert after all of the excellent food, you can choose between various fruit cobblers (blackberry, apple, cherry) or pecan pie.  Order your dessert “A la mode” for just a little more.

Old Hickory gets extra bonus “Genuine Kentucky” points for serving Coke products.  Oddly enough, that’s one of the first things I notice about a menu!

Just to give you an idea of how much our family LOVES Old Hickory, we don’t just frequently eat there for lunch or supper, we gave them the ultimate compliment in October of 2010.  Our oldest daughter (Emily) and my now son-in-law (Dill) were planning their wedding.  We all looked at the many different choices for catering and unanimously chose Old Hickory.  One of the most important dates in our family’s history and we invited Old Hickory to the celebration.

Everyone loved the food and asked where it was from… as well as how to get to the restaurant.  And they hadn’t even tried the ham!!!

Old Hickory is on 228 Washington Avenue in Owensboro Kentucky – Off of Frederica.  There’s a large parking lot, with parking on either side of the restaurant.   Use the map below for directions – I don’t want you to miss out on this outstanding food.  It’s the flavor of Owensboro, and it’s really something to enjoy.

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Owensboro has been looking forward to the 2011 Ultimate Live Music Festival for a long time. It’s almost hard to believe it’s this weekend! Downtown Owensboro will be rocking like it hasn’t rocked in a long time at Rivermont Park on May 21, 2011. Gates open at 11 a.m. and the music will begin one hour later.

Check out the lineup:

• Montgomery Gentry
• Rodney Atkins
• Kellie Pickler
• Jason Michael Carroll
• LoCash Cowboys
• Jaclyn Graves
• Brett Eldridge

Click HERE for more information.

For the best places to eat in Owensboro Kentucky, check out my recommendations.  After all, I live here, I know the best spots in town!

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This is pretty exciting!

The Kentucky High School Hockey State Tournament will be held at the beautiful Edge Ice Arena in Owensboro, Kentucky on March 4-6. This will be the first time Owensboro has hosted this tournament and it’s being officially hosted by Owensboro’s own team, the Owensboro Rampage.

If at all possible, get out there and cheer them on.  Seriously, could hockey ever NOT be entertaining?

Ice Hockey Tournament at The Edge. 1400 Hickman Avenue in Owensboro, Kentucky.

For more information, call 800-489-1131  or 270-926-1100

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Kentucky Bison’s owner Jay Sills announced on the Kentucky Bison’s website that the America Basketball Association franchise would be suspending operations after two seasons in Owensboro. In a message on the website, Sills blamed lack of community support for the decision.

“We deserved better support than we got from many, even from the city,” Sills said. According to Sills, the team had a difficult time making money during home games at the Sports Center, and couldn’t travel because of a lack of advertising money.

Apparently the ABA has been working with him to move The Bisons to another city.

“I love Owensboro, but apparently only a few of our loyal fans feel the same way about our effort, and to you we sincerely apologize,” said Sills.

Ironically, The Kentucky Bisons were a huge success on the court. The team won a championship in 2009, and made the ABA finals again last season.

As someone that calls Owensboro home, I have to say that there’s plenty of blame to go around. I don’t think it’s fair to level it entirely at anyone in particular.  For what it’s worth, here’s how I see the blame’s distribution:

• First of all, there’s a little thing we like to call the economy.  Over the past two years, it stink, stank, stunk.  When most families are doing well to put food on the table, pay the bills, and keep the car running – luxuries like sporting events fall to the wayside.
• There was absolutely zero (or next to zero) effort to develop a relationship with the community. In fact, I’d say that half the people in Owensboro couldn’t tell you anything about The Bisons.  It would have been pretty cool to see the players/coaches involved in community events – putting their faces and names “out there.”
• Advertising? Again, I’m not sure where the blame would fall on this one, but there was very little (very, very, very, very little) advertising.  People can’t jump on board when they aren’t aware there’s even a train!
• Most of us were under the impression that the Bison’s were only temporarily calling Owensboro home.  In all fairness, who wants to get involved in supporting a team that only has one foot in your city limits?

I regret that the team is having to pull out of Owensboro. This is a wonderful town and the people are great. I’ve always wanted the town to have a minor league team – a baseball team would be pretty great.  It probably would have helped our chances if the arrangement with The Bisons hadn’t ended in… well… extinction.

I hope that the Kentucky Bison’s next “home” is a permanent one.  I hope the players and coaches reach out to the very community who’s support they expect and  want. I also hope that fate will bring us such a team in Owensboro. It could be a lot of fun. Just because this arrangement was a bust doesn’t mean the next one would be for either side.  Live and learn, right?

Best of luck to an exceptional team.  I feel like I hardly even knew you.  Guess that’s the problem.

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Thanks Em and Dill!

Panther Creek Park is located at 5160 Wayne Bridge Road, Owensboro Kentucky.  Click HERE for directions.

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