I know you all were waiting for this to return...

Pasta Pass is back

For an extra $200, you can have Child Services take your children away for also subjecting them to seven weeks of pasta. :D

I'd buy the individual pass for $100 but my nearest OG is 25 miles.

If the location were convenient I'd probably use it thrice weekly, synced with my cardio workouts, so that's under $5 per meal (assuming carryout, so no tip).

Interesting.

My theory about Olive Garden, Chilis, Outback etc is that it's like wine for the vast majority of people. Just like most people can't tell the $15 bottle of wine from the $50 bottle, most people won't tell the difference between a $12 Olive Garden entree vs an entree from the 'local' Italian restaurant that goes for $25.

But in today's society Olive Garden is an uncool place where on the rubes eat, so we have to make excuses as to why we don't like it For some it's too much salt. For others it's not enough salt.

For all the crap it takes online, IME Olive Garden, though by no means a gourmet experience, tends to be a whole lot better than the "local Italian restaurant" I get directed to in Podunk, Your State. The Italian I've had in Iowa has been about a step below Chef Boy-ar-Dee out of a can; I would've killed for an Olive Garden when I was last in Cedar Falls.

Honestly, the Italian meal I was served in supposedly the finest Italian restaurant in northern New Jersey was inferior to Olive Garden, and by a pretty substantial margin. I've had great Italian food in Italy (natch), Pittsburgh, Ohio, Chicago, and California, but New Jersey? So far as I can tell it's a bunch of joints serving mobsters with no taste whatsoever.

Need I remind you that the average FlyerTalker won't eat anywhere that doesn't at least have a Michelin Star? :)

Then they're going to die of malnutrition if they need to spend a lot of time in Iowa.

Olive Garden isn't that bad. Like others have said, at least you know what you're getting if you go to one. Went to one a couple months ago and the food was blander than I remembered, though it could have been the thing I ordered. I also wish they didn't cut down on the number of breadsticks that they bring to the table; it seems like having to ask the servers to bring more bowls of them negates any cost savings they would have gotten.

I've gone there for soup and salad bar--both delicious. I mean really, how can you [mess] up S&S?

Where have you found an Olive Garden that has a salad bar? Don't think I have EVER seen that in an Olive Garden.

We would have gotten this if I had known about it..... how often do they do this? Never heard of this pass before.

I need to pay more attention to this thread. :)

They did it last year with much fanfare, and all 1000 passes sold out in under an hour. I did not see much marketing for it this year, then again, I wasn't really looking.

I received an email about it, but that's it.

I go for the soup and salad reasonably often, maybe once or twice a month. Salad is always quality ingredients, though a little boring, and I like the Zuppa Toscana. Breadsticks are pretty good, too.

I was in Italy with a friend recently, and after eating some amazing food on the trip, she commented that she couldn't wait to return home and go to Olive Garden for Italian food. :rolleyes:

I was a bit shocked.