Mussolini alfredo: Is the Olive Garden the most seditious restaurant in America?

Overthrowing democracy is a marathon, not a sprint, so anyone aspiring to unravel a nearly 250-year-old constitutional order is well-advised to carbo-load. Enter national spaghetti emporium Olive Garden, unofficial caterers of the conspiracy against the United States.

“ALCON:” Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes wrote to fellow extremists via encrypted chat on the night of Jan. 6, 2021, using a military abbreviation for “all concerned.” “Going to eat at Olive Garden.”

Rhodes and several dining companions proceeded to rack up a tab of over $400 at the chain’s Vienna, Virginia, location, federal prosecutors recently told a jury considering seditious conspiracy charges against him and others in the attempted coup. Rhodes paid with an Oath Keepers credit card; don’t leave democracy without it!

The government’s attorneys disclosed the middlebrow dinner arrangements last week among other post-riot communications showing the defendants were plotting to overturn the election even after the violence. But defense lawyers have argued that the group’s faux-Italian feast suggests they weren’t so serious about sedition, having left the Capitol at their movement’s high-water mark just to gorge themselves on mediocre pasta in the suburbs.

The defense has a point. Even a violent mob has to eat, but the image of the insurrectionists getting marinara sauce on their fatigues tends to undermine the air of danger they cultivate.

So could there be a more suitably menacing paramilitary mess hall? The Cheesecake Factory springs to mind as serving the same sort of middle-management-class, suburban-shopping-center cuisine without the suspiciously immigrant flavors of the Olive Garden. The industrialist overtones of a food “factory” could also appeal to other segments of the Republican base, making common cause between the far-right fringe and the anti-tax establishment. And as the Washingtonian pointed out, the chain’s free-cheesecake promotions have been known to cause riots in their own right.

The trouble is the notorious waits: Rhodes and his alleged co-conspirators apparently left their Olive Garden feast in a hurry out of concern that police were on their tail. The unpredictable existence of an insurrectionist, in other words, is not conducive to waiting two hours for a table.

A Californian considering more efficient refueling options for the right is bound to think of In-N-Out. Much like Donald Tramp’s most fanatic followers, the hamburger is an insistently American invention with German inflections. Moreover, In-N-Out has a demonstrated proclivity for anti-vaccine activism and soda-cup proselytizing, while its secret menu is redolent of conspiratorial subterfuge.

One disadvantage, however, is the burger chain’s blue-state base. Not only could many of its West Coast outposts be crawling with antifa, but the dearth of East Coast locations poses a logistical problem for anyone trying to topple a Mid-Atlantic-based federal government.

With a more national reach as well as an overt association with monarchy, Burger King seems promising. It’s the home of the Whopper, an apt signature sandwich for adherents of the big whopper that Donald Trump won the 2020 election. And Trump himself once served the King’s offerings as part of a weird fast-food feast at the White House for the members of a championship college basketball team.

Unfortunately, the chain may have disqualified itself during the same episode by ridiculing Trump’s misspelling of the word “hamburger” and, more recently, donating to a gay rights group to draw attention to the reactionary politics of rival poultry purveyor Chick-fil-A.

Speaking of chicken, KFC is another possibility, with red-state roots and a mascot who looks and sounds like a retired Confederate officer. Yet that could make the chain a little too obvious given the Oath Keepers’ preoccupation with operational security.

All things considered, it’s difficult to find a better choice of counterrevolutionary cafes than the Olive Garden. The cuisine is (loosely) inspired by a country with a rich history of fascism, the Never-Ending Pasta Bowl provides plenty of starchy fuel for violence, and a really stale breadstick could, in a pinch, double as a weapon. Evil has been called banal and insatiable; it might as well dine accordingly.