A 99-year-old woman died yesterday.

Though I’d never met her, I cried as I read her obituary.

Her name was Marilyn Hagerty, and even as a nonagenarian, she was still writing the same gentle restaurant reviews that had made her briefly but brilliantly famous.

She wasn’t famous in the new way — she wasn’t on TikTok, and she didn’t have a podcast — but I’d heard of her, and you might have, too.

Over a decade ago, she wrote a review in The Grand Forks Herald of an Olive Garden that had just opened in the North Dakota town. Its generous tone, praising the “impressive” Tuscan farmhouse decor and commenting favorably on the fettuccine alfredo portions, at first made her an object of scorn, then one of praise.

The celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain, not typically found taking up the banner of ch

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