Comment of the Day: The Danger of Unlimited Breadsticks
Today we took a look at what your favorite casual dining restaurant says about you. One of the places on the list was the Olive Garden, home of unlimited soup and breadsticks. Great deal, right? Not necessarily, warns a commenter.
My friend - who, incidentally was in med school at the time - went out to the Olive Garden. Apparently it was meant to be one of those bromantic dinners where straight guys all get together and then sit amidst the Tuscan finery and trompe l'oeil frescoes of Italy, or maybe just a strip mall on the Boston Post Road. Either way, being straight men and being presented with the concept of "endless breadsticks," the inevitable ensued: an eating contest.
The waitress had to go back and forth several times. They said that at first she was grossed out but then eventually she started to get impressed, which is gross but also understandable I guess because I'm not sure how I'd respond in that situation, so, yeah, let's just go with sexxxy! But anyway, my friend actually won the contest and thus the fleeting admiration of the waitress and several other "Olive Gardeners." (I assume this is how they refer to each other.)
Our tale does not end happily, however, because on the way home, his stomach started to hurt. Being a group of med students, they all quickly realized that thanks to his hubris and to the bountiful magnanimity of the Olive Garden, he had a bowel obstruction. They rushed him to the hospital (where, you know, he worked every day) and had to put him on a morphine drip for the pain. This apparently slowed down his metabolism, prolonging the whole affair for well over a day.
I guess there's no such thing as a free breadstick...