I'm pretty amused to find this thread. I travel throughout the US these days for meetings and I judge how civilized a town is by whether I can find an Olive Garden there :-) I've been to about 40 or 50 of them in different cities / towns. It's a running joke on facebook when I check in at one of them. My Italian friends yell in Italian (I'm assuming its cursing) and then some other friends simply are envious. They left Ontario (Canada) a number of years ago; couldn't make any money competing against the local firms it seems. I wish they'd come back we used to have fun going there in my late teens and early twenties with friends.

I get there's better quality food out there, but the tour of Italy does it for me with a couple breadsticks. Can't usually even eat it all.

Oh absolutely, I'm not saying they are all great, but somewhere like NYC/Long Island there is surfeit of Italian places that you don't have to put much effort into finding somewhere that is far, far better than an Olive Garden.

Need I say Umberto's of Long Island?

I don't get the point of this stuff when gratuity is excluded.

Similar to how "free delivery" excludes tip. So it's not really free.

I'll never forget that one faux-luxury hotel I stayed in where the valet parking was described to me as free "and they work on tips." Gee, thanks?

While this thread is acceptable in OMNI, we are going to move it to Dining Buzz where there is an existing thread on the topic.

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Cholula
OMNI Co-Moderator

Gross.

I bet the lucky recipient of this is also someone who goes to Friday's for their endless apps.

Gross.

Don't knock it man. Sometimes when you're working a city where Olive Garden is the best sit-down restaurant in town. A make your own bowl of pasta is like home!

Hey I've been there many times. Their salad and soups are very good. However my post was targeted most likely at someone who will not be eating the two aforementioned food categories and will be eating bowl after endless bowl of lasagna with sausages. lol

Cooked pasta with marinara sauce and grilled chicken.

What exactly is "gross" about this?

Pretty sure soup and salad is included in the pasta pass.

Their salads have way too much dressing IMO. I do like their soup but I can imagine its chalked full of sodium.

Not a big fan of any of the pasts I've had there, they tend to cook it much more than I cook pasta.

I'm honestly not sure why chain restaurants constantly overcook pasta. Is there a very short window between perfectly cooked and overcooked? Even if so, you'd imagine they have it down to a science.

I think there are a lot of Americans who think overcooked pasta is cooked correctly.