Steveats: Celebrate MURRICA with Olive Garden Deep Dish Spaghetti

Debuting a new, semi-regular feature! I tryout questionable food items so that you don’t have to in… Steveats. (Note: Title developed in about 10 seconds of brainstorming.)

To me, there are few things more AMERICAN than the Olive Garden. We took a form of cuisine that was just about perfect, dumped some salt and sugar in it, and quadrupled

the normal portion sizes. C’est magnifique! I wouldn’t call the Olive Garden high cuisine, but I loved going there as a kid, and even now, I can easily be talked into it.

However, they’re trying to go Full Glutton with their most recent special offering, the deep dish spaghetti. I got an email saying that this was the last weekend to get it, which seems appropriate, because it is the most AMERICAN of their many pasta dishes.

First things first – If you get it takeout, like I did, they give you the world’s god damn biggest bag to take it home in. I had a 32-ounce sodey pop in my car, and I could

have fit about 10 of them inside this bag. I will throw this bag away eventually, but for now, I’m using it to line a big hole in my boat. (JK, I don’t own a boat. I’m going to use it as pantaloons.)

By “deep dish spaghetti,” what Olive Garden means is that they’ve shoved roughly a pound of bland spaghetti into this cake-like slice. There is a bit of a crust on the sides and bottom, and cheese on the top, but otherwise, it’s unseasoned. It is also literally about a pound of pasta – there was some definite heft as I held that tray up.

You can get chicken alfredo with your deep dish ’ghetti, or meatballs, which is what I opted for. They throw in a bunch of extra sauce, which I’m guessing it to compensate for how naked the spaghetti is.

One other note about this production – As if a pound of pasta isn’t enough for you, they also give you one of their “salads.” I’m not going to hate on their soup, salad and breadstick deal, which is fine, but when it comes to the takeout salad, they basically just give you a head of lettuce, two olives, two tomato slices and a small packet of croutons. I seldom have leftovers for my meals, but I couldn’t shove all of that watery lettuce down my gullet.

Anyway. The Fourth of July is on Monday, and it’s really your civic duty to check out this meal while it’s still around – it is all about bland gluttony, and the freedom of America, or something!

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