Good Reads: The Never Ending Pasta Blog
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
Seven weeks of Olive Garden is a lot of Olive Garden.
Remember a few weeks back when Olive Garden rolled out the $100 Never Ending Pasta Pass promotion? No? Well it's basically an all-you-can-stomach pass that entitles diners to seven weeks of pasta, salad, soup, breadsticks and soda at the temple of hospitaliano i.e. The Olive Garden.
It looks like a local AmeriCorps volunteer named Matt Pershe ("Follower of Jesus, AmeriCorps VISTA, Penn Urban Studies Class of 2014, sports lover, native of Park City, UT" according to his Twitter profile) got his hands on one of the 1000 passes that OG sold and he's documenting the whole thing at The Never Ending Pasta Pass Blog:
"My name is Matt, and I am one of 1,000 people in the United States who possesses a Never Ending Pasta Pass from Olive Garden. I hadn't heard of it until the morning the passes were released. Someone had sent a link over one of the college alumni listservs I'm on to a Gawker article entitled, "Olive Garden Offers 7 Weeks of Never-Ending Pasta, Breadsticks for $100." The subject line of the email that contained the link? "get extra fat at olive garden."
Despite these warnings, I now have one of these passes in my possession. I hesitate to call myself lucky for getting a pass because, well, I just bought a whole bunch of Olive Garden. How much? It's sort of up to me. See, the pass "entitles the named passholder to unlimited Never Ending Pasta Bowl entrees and toppings 9/22/14-11/9/14 at any Olive Garden location in the United States." For 49 days, I can visit Olive Garden for lunch and/or dinner. That's 98 meals. And to make the pass "worth it," I need to go
11 times, which comes out to about 11% of the potential mealtimes that I am entitled to with my pass.I intend to go much more frequently. See, I'm not in this for the attention or for an ardent devotion to Olive Garden. I did this out of the need to save money."
Looks like Pershe's first stop was the Olive Garden at Broad and Chestnut where he encountered a few issues with the Pasta Pass. Looks like it's going to be a fun seven weeks following this one.
