Emptying the Garden of 15 Olives

What does an endless bowl of pasta look like? To be honest, I'd never seen one before. Neither had my friend. That brought us to Olive Garden last September. We needed to find out if such a thing existed. We were suspicious, because we'd heard that everything must come to an end at some time.

We dined for about two hours, running through a considerable gamut of conversation. My friend got through 6 plates and I cleared 15, to the amazement of the server.

Honestly, there's no way I can remember the names of all the different combinations I ordered. For fairness I tried to get a bit of everything. It seemed like a great deal all around.. how do you beat $9 for 15 bowls of restaurant-grade pasta?

So, why did I stop at 15? It's not an even number, or a lucky number. I wasn't stretched to the limit. But, I was facing a 2-hour drive home from Orange County and wanted to make it home comfortably. If I didn't relish the ability to drink water on the way home, I might have finished 4 or 5 more bowls.

Endless is a fancy term, but it still refers to a limited number. It's all relative. My endless capped off at 15, and it's nothing I'm going to complain about now. At least I didn't have to cook all those combinations of pasta!