A San Francisco-based writer blessed the interwebs Wednesday with the apparent answer to a question as old as Olive Garden’s most famous slogan: What exactly would a customer have to do to no longer be considered “family?”
Joe Wadlington wrote on Twitter that he went on a date Tuesday night and discovered his prospective love interest is a former general manager for the chain. But not just any Olive Garden ― his date was the general manager of the Times Square Olive Garden. You know, the one that’s three floors high, charges $400 a head for its New Year’s Eve bash, and leaves everyone wondering why tourists visiting New York are eating at an Olive Garden?
Wadlington reacted as any human with a pulse would have: He said he launched into a full-blown interrogation about the restaurant’s innermost workings and, of course, the infamous unlimited salad and breadsticks.
He related what his date declared the Garden’s worst-case scenario: The horror of running out of unlimited breadsticks is far more upsetting than anything else that can possibly happen at the restaurant.
Consider the story Wadlington says his date shared about a knife fight between two women in the restaurant.
“You may be surprised, but yes, Olive Garden running out of breadsticks is worse than a knife fight,” the date reported.
The extensive thread also answers many questions we’ve had about Olive Garden. Diners at the Times Square location pay higher prices that those at other locations; the restaurant continues seating until 2 a.m. and hosts mainly Brazilians, Puerto Ricans, and Americans from Ohio; and, most importantly, you can’t get kicked out for sitting and eating only as much unlimited salad and breadsticks as you can physically handle.
The Olive Garden did not respond to requests for comment. Wadlington declined to give the name of his date, saying that he’d already been a pretty good sport about the tweets. But he assured The Huffington Post the conversation really happened, though he notes it’s possible his date exaggerated. (Eater reports wait times aren’t as long these days as the two-hour delay Wadlington’s date described.)
Either way, we wish Wadlington and his date a lifetime filled with happiness and pasta passes.
“We will be going on another date,” Wadlington told HuffPost.
