Little Ears and Sauce

A couple days ago Melanie and I decided to go out for some Italian food for the first time since getting back from Italy. We decided to go to Olive Garden because we had a gift card.

We started with caprese flatbread. It was fairly good, for a chain restaurant. It was a flatbread topped with tomato, basil, and mozzarella. The tomato didn't taste the freshest. It wasn't bad by any reason, but it can't compare to tomato bought fresh from the farmer's market. The same for the basil and mozzarella. The cheese tasted like a semisoft mozzarella as opposed to a creamy fresh mozzarella.

For the main course I got the "Taste of Tuscany with Sausage." It was grilled italian sausage with orrechiette (ear shaped) pasta, broccoli, sundried tomato, in a garlic butter sauce. The best part of the dish was the sausage. I enjoyed the taste of it. It was grilled nicely, and had a nice spice to it. It was moist, not overcooked and dried out which was nice. The pasta unfortunately was not up to standard. Individual ears of pasta were overcooked way past al dente and stacks of pasta were sticking together causing the inside of the fused bunch to be undercooked. The broccoli was cooked nicely and kept it's bite and wasn't mushy. The sundried tomato got lost in the sauce. The sauce had a nice garlic flavor to it. However the sauce was really, really, salty for my taste. For my two sides I had a spinach salad with balsamic and a bruschetta with feta and tomato. The impression of the bruschetta was similar to the flatbread.

Melanie had the Taste of Tuscany with Chicken." I only had one bite but the chicken tasted pretty good, and the tortellini was fair. I can't really comment on it as I only had a small bit of it.

I do have to say the service we had was good. Our waitress was very good and was very apologetic when it took 5 tries to get my drink. It wasn't her fault, they were just out of everything I ordered and then the machine wasn't working. She handled it well. The only thing that would have made it better would have been if the manager comped my drink because I had to choose 5 different things before getting one.

Overall it was a good experience. To be honest the food was what I would expect from a chair restaurant in America doing Italian food. I have to admit I have been spoiled eating Italian food in Italy. But given that, the food was pretty good for what it was.