The Major Complaint Olive Garden Customers Have With Its Pasta

Hungry customers come from miles around to dig into Olive Garden's pasta, but it turns out some of them have a problem with how the chain cooks its noodles. These customers claim that Olive Garden blatantly ignores a crucial pasta cooking rule and overboils everything, failing to pull the pasta from the fire once it hits al dente. 

For those who can't tell when their pasta is al dente, the key is to make sure the pasta reaches a level of doneness that isn't too firm, but isn't too mushy. You want a certain resistance when you bite into a noodle and some customers swear that Olive Garden's pasta dishes never reach that vaunted level of excellence. The technique the chain allegedly uses to cook their pasta is apparently common in commercial kitchens; the food is cooked to near-doneness, then shocked in an ice bath. After being stored, the pasta is boiled again on a timer, then seasoned, sauced, and served.

It's a method that gets mixed results. "A lot of people in here apparently like mush. Because that's what you'll get with this method: a fine slurry," a user complained on r/iamveryculinary, adding that they needed to use a spoon to eat the pasta during their last visit.

"There are so many reasons to rag on Olive Garden, but parboiling pasta isn't one of them," said a user on r/iamveryculinary, and they weren't the only ones willing to stand up for the way the restaurant makes its dinners. "I like Olive Garden. Their Tour of Italy tastes like how my grandma used to cook," said another. Even those who didn't enjoy other elements of the restaurant's menu were willing to admit that the pasta was at least a solid affair. "I don't care for their marinara but the pasta has never been overcooked," remarked another commenter. 

It's worth noting that Olive Garden has been trying to lure foodies in by incorporating fancier ingredients like capers into their meals while trying to reassure sensitive American palates by dishing up comfort food like simple bowls of spaghetti and meatballs and slabs of lasagna. The simplest trick to doing that might be boiling their pasta to a different degree of completion — but then again, the chain's popularity is a testament to their way of doing things.