One Of My Restaurant Nightmares: Unlimited Olive Garden
Thanks to Neil for passing along this story earlier today.
Olive Garden sold $100 passes today that entitles the buyer to unlimited pasta, salad, bread sticks and soda for a 7-week period. They sold out in under 2 hours after their website initially crashed from the load.
Now, I don’t have anything against chain food. Red Lobster, the original reason the Olive Garden discussion came up with my friend Neil, is something of a regular stop for us a coupe times a year. Our daughter tried crab for the first time at a favorite restaurant of ours in New York, City Crab. And, she liked it!
As parents, we wanted to continue to foster a love of seafood, but living in Northern Virginia and having a 3-year old can make that tough. We have good seafood from the grocery store (and, occasionally Costco), but not much in the way of seafood restaurants that also cater to a 3-year old.
Just my two cents, and I’m sure I’ll get shouted down by all sorts of folks, but I don’t feel the same way about Olive Garden. Red Lobster is reasonably priced seafood, which I find harder to mess up given more simple preparations. And, the biscuits are pretty darn tasty.
However, bad marinara is, well, something of a crime in my family. So is bad bread.
But, you can get as much of both as you’d like for almost 2 months for $100. Or, if you missed the sale, just hit eBay.
Mile Junkie Inside Joke: Insert affiliate link for Chase Ink Bold and 5X points on Olive Garden gift cards at office supply stores.
Agreed. Yuck.
Yeah, but double calories the first Friday of each month!
But you’re Italian, so you’re naturally more picky than me about Italian food. There’s an Olive Garden only a few blocks from my home, the staff there is really good, and I do like several of their entrees and bread. Not shouting you down at all, but if I saw a similar offer, I might go for it, especially with that 5x on the Ink.
Well said, Dave. Where do you live? I might need to have a quick contest and fly to one reader’s home city and buy them good Italian food. 😛
Kansas, not necessarily a hotbed of great Italian cooking…
Dave, very true. But, you do have some pretty decent BBQ.
A shortage of seafood restaurants?!!? Its not like you live in the Midwest! You are not THAT far from the ocean! There are tons of options within a 60 minute drive from you. Make the trip up to the Baltimore area and visit any crab house!
J, Baltimore is about an hour away and that’s not a “forever” distance. But, it’s also not a distance our 3-year old takes lightly, so I can’t say we would go every weekend.
Went there once…my wife asked for her pasta “al dente”. The waitress said “What’s that?” She had absolutely no clue!
Chip, where’s the like button? 🙂