Okay, so last time I talked about the drink and the salad. I have to mention the soup. I used to always get Pasta e Fagioli, sort of a hearty Italian chili. Someday I'll tell you the story of how two of my friends and I ate so much soup and salad they had to call the fire department.
The last couple of years, though, I have switched to mainly the Zuppa Toscana, which is spicy sausage, potatoes and cavalo greens. I have no idea what cavalo means, but it works. I still like the Pasta e Fagioli, but if I eat like bowls of soup, I'll get three Toscana and only two Fagioli. (I don't eat the Minestrone, which I'm sure is wonderful, but Carrabba's Minestrone ruined me for anyone else's.)
Sadly, because of all the salad, I only got to eat one bowl of soup. I'm still upset about it. But that's okay, because we got an appetizer!
Smoked Mozzarella Fonduta, which I'm pretty sure just means fondue, but all fakey-Italian and everything. (They do this quite a bit in the food industry. Portabellas? A made up word. They are just giant crimini mushrooms. Suckers.) Whatever. The fondue was awesome, with about ten different cheeses, and Tuscan bread makes a great dipper, in case you were wondering. I could eat this every day. This brings us to the main course.
My mother got the Venetian Apricot Chicken. She liked it okay, except they overdid the vegetables. I got to try (read: devour) what she brought home, and it was delicious, but I think her main problem was that my food looked better. Not trying to be sexist here, ladies, but it seems that very often when dining with females, they seem to like what other men order better than what they got. Have you experienced this phenomenon? What is the deal? Are women just not good orderers? Are they just not satisfied with what they have. (That has to be part of it.) Do they not order what they actually want for some weird psychological reasons even they don't understand? Further inquiry may be needed, but not right now, because I need to talk about what I got:
Never ending Pasta Bowl!!!!! (With Italian Sausage, Baby!)
Never ending pasta bowl is a wonderful idea, with the only downside being that if you fill up on soup you can't eat as much pasta. I guess next time I'll just get salad and suck it up. I often get fettuccine alfredo for my first course, since I know I like that, but this time I was intrigued by a new sauce: smoked Mozzarella Alfredo, and a new pasta: Orecchiette. The server recommended it, and I got.
So freaking good! The sauce was to die for, and there were breadcrumbs and tomato bits on top to mix in. I cannot wait to go try it again. And the Orecchiette held up the sauce very well, grabbing little bits of Alfredo and breadcrumbs along the way.
My mother was absolutely fascinated by the shape, which had a little reservoir tip on the end. Here is a picture of what they look like (not mine.)
What my mother couldn't figure out was how they got each little piece of pasta into that shape. When I got home, I wrote Dragon, our resident food expert, and she explained that Orecchiette means "little ears," which makes sense if you look at the picture. However, as I said, ours had a little reservoir tip at the end, which made them look incredibly like condoms, or what condoms are supposed to go over. Look at them again, and tell me this doesn't look like Paris Hilton's Saturday night:
All in all, a wonderful night at Olive Garden. We were there, and we were family!
1 comment:
What was your 2nd course?
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