Olive Juice Olive Garden

This past Saturday, 11/7/15, I was scheduled to run the Craft Brew 5k in Charleston.

It was cancelled. 

Weeeeeaaaaak. So weak. My mom and sister flew down from VT to do it with us. I rented a non-refundable room in Charleston. I really wanted good beer. The list goes on about how weak this was.

But whatever. Although I haven't done a review on lemons yet, when life does hand you some lemons, make some kind of fruity cocktail, or trade them in for oranges.

And damn straight that's what we did. We shuffled off to Charleston to run with the Happy Heretics. So we still got in our 5k, we still got to drink some beer, and we had a wonderful and imaginative tour of Patriots Point in Mt.Pleasant to boot.

(Patriots Point is pretty bad ass, by the way.)

Photo Courtesy of Patriots Point.

As much fun as I had though, I'm not going to type at you about my run. Nope.

Gonna type at you about something that may have become very dear to me. An experience shared with my mom, my sister, my girlfriend and a nearby table full of very experienced and well rounded consumers.

This is a review on............
Olive Garden!

I never expected to eat at an Olive Garden. Let alone in Charleston.
But our hotel was too far from town, and we didn't want pizza and there was shit else, other than Hooters, so Olive Garden it was.

The place was pretty packed when we arrived, maybe 7pm-ish or so. The hostess issued us that fun little Simon game beeper thing and said it was about a 15min wait. She lied, it was about a 3min wait.

After sitting down, I was pretty happy with the menu. It's pretty damn hard to find vegetarian options at many places in the south, but OG, that's what I'm calling Olive Garden now, had plenty. So I ordered the Ravioli di Portobello and a Long Island Lemoncello. I like goofy drinks, shut up.

Shitty picture, good drink

The Ravioli cost $12.99.  Normally I'd be pissed. I mean, paying that much for pasta? But, I gotta tell you, it was really damn good. The portobello stuffing was fantastic and the smoked cheese sauce was like nothing I've tasted before. So good. In fact, here's a link to that ravioli. It was worth the $12.99...that my sister paid.

Photo courtesy of Olive Garden

But there's more!

At OG, you get unlimited bread sticks! And if you order a salad with your meal, you get a big ass bowl of salad too. It's not a fancy arugula or beet salad or anything like that, it's a straight up iceberg and tomato salad, with dressing already on it. And it's good. I'm pretty damn sure it's bottomless too.

I'm a fat guy stuck in skinny guy. I like to eat. At the OG, I was able to eat like I wanted. It's very rare for me to be happy with most portion sizes. ALWAYS HUNGRY. But damnit, OG filled me right up. 

You can probably tell I'm pretty damn happy with OG. But let me say a few things here. 

Eating at the OG more than once every three months is going to cause Metabolic Disease. That's a pretty undisguised way of saying it'll make you fat. All that cheese, pasta and bread? Ya, it'll pack some pounds on.

If you're exercising regularly though, if you need to put on some pounds, if you need some glycogen restored, or if you need a massively heavy caloric recovery meal, then get to your local OG.

And bring some friends or family too man, it's a pretty fun atmosphere. Plus going out to eat alone is kinda sad.

Some secondary notes worthy of mentioning:
1) Our waiter was excellent, but I feel that funky little Wifi Tv thing on the table takes away from a dining experience. I understand that it probably saves the waitstaff some work, but who wants to interact with yet another piece of technology? Do I have to leave a tip to that damn thing too?
2) We didn't do desert. Too full. But the deserts did look pretty damn good.
3) My drink was good too. Easily the equal of a cocktail I got at Landshark the next day. 
4) I don't typically like chain restaurants, this is rare for me.

I had wanted to show more pictures of portion sizes and such, but the camera in my phone blows.

If I make it to the OG after my Ultra next weekend, I'll try to take pictures with Heather's real camera.

Till then, get to your local Olive Garden with some friends and family.