We started with the spinach and artichoke dip with “Tuscan bread”.  If that’s Tuscan bread, I would avoid eating in Tuscany.  It was white Wonder Bread with a crust; it offered no resistance when you bit into it, just collapsed on impact.  Come on,  both Carrabba’s and Macaroni Grill are chain restaurants, and yet they manage to make a bread that is crusty and chewy that is served with olive oil, so why can’t the Olive Garden?  If that’s all they can do in the bread department, then they should serve it with chips and not bread, for God’s sake.  Pretty much every restaurant I’ve ever gone to has spinach/artichoke dip, and it is always pretty much identical.  Not here.  It had the consistency of, well, poop, unfortunately.  It was strangely aerated and fluffy, no melted cheese that I could find.  I have no Godly idea of what was in it.  It scared me.  

As far as their famous breadsticks, I do not know why anyone would be enticed by “all you can eat”.  Maybe if I was a deer in the forest in the dead of winter…they certainly do resemble a salt lick.  They consist of the same Wonderbread-like texture, liberally basted with margarine and garlic salt.  Yes, all the great Italian chefs use a cup and a half of garlic salt on their breads – don’t they?  Even freakin’ Little Cesears puts parmesean-ish cheese on their breadsticks, for crying out loud!  I couldn’t stuff down more than one before succumbing to dehydration.

Knowing by the bread that I would likely be traumatized by attempting an Italian entree, I went for the mixed grill, steak and chicken & vegetables on a skewer, and (again) Tuscan potatoes.  I figured, you can’t go wrong with a grilled protein, right?  WRONG. To begin with, and as you might have assumed, it was cold.  I accepted this.  I would have been stunned, had it been above room temperature, anyway.  I forged on. There were 3 large hunks of “steak” and 3 of “chicken”…I put them in quotations, because the texture bore no resemblance to any steak or chicken I have previously eaten.  I ordered the steak “medium”, but when I cut into it, it appeared to be well done.  Until I tried to chew it.  The texture and visual appearance of the texture was like raw, squishy meat, but the color was brown.  I poked the other two pieces before abandoning the steak in favor of the chicken.  I cut a piece off of the edge…it was flavor-free, but seemed safe.  The second piece I cut…uh oh.  Again, no pink inside, but a weird, mushy texture that felt raw.  I don’t know how they did it.  I don’t know why they did it.  But I gave up, lest I die from some strange mysteriously formulated “meat” product.

The meat seemed to be sitting in a sauce of some sort, but when I tried to dip my vegetable into it to get some flavor, it moved.  Not like a liquid.  All in one piece.  It was like sauce colored jello, just sitting in a fruit roll up-like solid puddle.  Also, it didn’t have any dicernable flavor.  I ate the potatoes.  They were good, anyway.  Or at least, comparitively.  They were at least cooked on the inside, and brown on the outside.  So, basically, I paid $16.95 for a half a cup of fried potatoes.  Had I known this, I would have ordered only potatoes, maybe 4 orders of potatoes and a Diet Coke (by the way, to the person below who enjoys laughing at customers who order high calorie food and diet drinks:  many people prefer diet soda to regular, regardless of calorie count.  It tastes better to me.  Yes, I am not thin.  Yes, I ordered a meal in a restaurant that likely has a billion calories.  Why is this any of your business?  And even if someone orders Diet Coke to save calories, they are fully aware that their meal was not a diet one…perhaps they didn’t want to add another 450 calories to an already unhealthy meal.   Did they say, “Now that I have ordered my 1,500 calorie fettuccini alfredo, I will lose weight with this Diet Coke”?  Probably not.  Mind your own business and stop judging strangers.)  Sorry, just had to get that off my chest.

Well, in conclusion, I wanted to order dessert, seeing that it was likely not made by Olive Garden, and would probably have been edible. (Especially the Italian Cream Cake, which I happen to know is the exact same one sold at Sam’s Club.  Pretty good, too.)  But I couldn’t bear to give them any more of my hard earned money.  So I paid and got the hell out of there.  Next time my family wants to meet up for dinner, I will recommend Taco Bell or Pizza Hut.  Sadly, the food is better, and one third the price.  In the end, I did not get food poisoning.  And that, unfortunately, is the best thing I can say about the Olive Garden.

You cannot be successful until you realize that, sadly you are the kind of people that give the service industry a bad name, service does not have to be bad, and yes if you get bad service at any restaurant the manager and the owners are at fault.