Three things in life are certain: death, taxes, and the annual “Never-Ending Pasta Bowl” promotion touted by a certain middlebrow Italian-flecked chain restaurant.
In a landscape awash in uncertainty, where the only constant is change, Olive Garden abides. Not only will it be bringing back the Never-Ending Pasta Bowl for its 27th year on the menu, but the price—$13.99—will be the same as last year, and the year before.
Although inflation apparently doesn’t exist in the pocket universe occupied by the Garden, the pandemic and its aftershocks undoubtedly do. In 2020, the company put the Never-Ending Pasta Bowl into hibernation, to much wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Two long years later, the company announced that high demand and “a return of pre-pandemic dining habits” permitted the bottomless bowls’ resurrection.
“The promotion has long been our most popular offer because it reflects exactly what our loyal guests expect when they dine with us: never-ending, abundant, craveable Italian food at an everyday value.” Truer words, Jaime Bunker, SVP of Marketing at Olive Garden, have never been spoken.
Indeed, in the grand tradition of unwavering steadfastness that the Olive Garden brand has come to represent, Bunker returned to roll out the bread carpet for the promotion this year.
“Never Ending Pasta Bowl is one of our guests’ favorite times of year, and we’re excited to welcome them back around our dining tables at the same price as the past two years,” she said, presumably as angels trumpeted around her.
“We want to offer our guests a great value when they dine with us, and there’s no better way than with endless pasta, soup or salad and breadsticks.”
The Never-Ending Pasta Bowl will be available to diners who deem themselves worthy of the challenge for 12 glorious, gluttonous weeks, from Monday, August 26 until Sunday, November 17.
As food writer Helen Rosner wrote in 2017, Olive Garden “is a machine of memory.” It remembers you, and it wants to welcome you back.
Pull up a chair. Select from the reassuringly familiar menu of fettuccine, spaghetti, angel hair, and rigatoni, and slather it in the goop of your choice: alfredo, traditional marinara, five cheese marinara, creamy mushroom, and meat sauce. Try not to think too hard about the fact that it’s all a marketing tactic to drive traffic during the restaurant industry’s historically sluggish pre-Thanksgiving weeks.
And, for the truly daring, there is also the option of adding a requisite never-ending topping—crispy chicken fritta, meatballs, or Italian sausage—for $4.99. An additional price, perhaps, but, once again, the same as in 2022.
All in all, more than 80 combinations of pasta bowls beckon, as boundless and timeless as the seas. As Rosner put it: “There is only one Olive Garden, but it has a thousand doors.”
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