The Olive Garden uses in its advertising "When you're here you're family!". Their commercial usually has some contrived story about family relatives visiting from Italy and taking them to an Olive Garden chain restaurant. A recent USAToday article with an Italian Food Expert at the Olive Garden reveals why if you're looking to impress your Italian relatives, this may not be such a good idea.
I was never under the belief that "The Olive Garden" was an authentic Italian restaurant (no matter what their advertisements imply), an Italian family would never take their family out from Italy to a mass-market chain, just as no Chinese family would ever take their Chinese relatives to Panda Express or P.F. Chang's, because they aren't even close to being authentic Chinese food.
I can understand some of the changes that cuisine undergoes -- when my parents came to this country more than 30 years ago, there wasn't this international food network that exists today. My parents had to cook with whatever was available -- in those days chinese ingredients required a commute down to Monterey Park, a solid 30 to 45 minute drive for Diho Market. These days, life for my parents is a little easier -- both Diho Market and 99 Ranch are in a neighboring town, but the changes to recipes still exist today.
The best places that I've found for homestyle Chinese cooking are the little places where the name of the restaurant is only in Chinese characters and aren't translated into English, or if they simply have written "Chinese Restaurant" in all uppercase letters.
Oh yeah. One more thing. Okay. This is like calling California rolls authentic Japanese cuisine. =/
Yeah. There's probably more that we think is traditional ethnic food that isn't.