I walked into the restaurant with my head bowed, letting my hair fall over my face to hide my features. I had slipped out of work for a standing weekly lunch date and didn’t want to be recognized. I quickly scanned the main dining room and found my partner already seated in a quiet corner, swaying slightly to a Frank Sinatra song. “Good, we can have some privacy here,” I thought.
No, I wasn’t stepping out on my husband. I was engaging in something much more clandestine — meeting a friend for Olive Garden’s Never-Ending Soup, Salad, and Breadsticks. I was just over three months pregnant, unaware at that point that I was carrying twins (long story), and my friend was a few months ahead of me in her own pregnancy. We each had an insatiable appetite for that tasty trinity of cozy soup, buttery bread, and oil-slicked salad.
The Zuppa Toscana is a perennial favorite at “The O.G.,” as the author calls it.
Courtesy of Olive Garden
But why did I try to hide my love of the perfect trifecta? Because I was a food editor, and my friend had recently been one, too. We were accustomed to daily work sessions in the test kitchen, where we’d nitpick the minutiae of every recipe. (“This soup needs a teaspoon or two of sherry vinegar to lift its earthiness.” “Let’s brown the pork more deeply to get a good crust before adding the braising liquid.” “We should scale back the cardamom by an eighth of a teaspoon.”) In short, because our jobs were about striving for perfection in every dish, we thought we were too cool for the mainstream likes of “The O.G.,” as we called it.
Yet the allure of The O.G.’s bottomless signature was one we couldn’t resist! I longed viscerally for these lunch outings. That minestrone — chock-full of beans, veggies, and little seashell pasta bobbing in a tomatoey broth — hit like nothing else, nourishing me, my babies, and the deepest depths of my soul.
In that stage of my life, when I was growing new life within me, what my heart wanted was the enduring pleasure of steaming soup, crisp salad, and tender breadsticks.
The breadsticks? Those soft, garlicky pillows were the stuff of dreams — I literally dreamt about them in the days leading up to my weekly lunch date. Some weeks, I was all about the tangy salad, seeking out the scant prized olives and practically licking the bowl clean of any residual vinaigrette. I wouldn’t eat the onions for fear of pregnancy heartburn (if you know, you know), but I loved the allium notes they left behind on any leaves they had touched.
Now, as “an old” (as my sons refer to me), I understand fully that I have never been cool, and it was silly for me to be embarrassed of my cravings. Besides, who cares? As Emily Dickinson famously wrote, “The heart wants what it wants.” In that stage of my life, when I was growing new life within me, what my heart wanted was the enduring pleasure of steaming soup, crisp salad, and tender breadsticks.
The author introduces her sons to the endless delights of Olive Garden’s soup, salad, and breadsticks special.
Photo by Patrick Pittman
Fast-forward 21 years. My kids are now twenty and sophomores in college. My husband and I had taken them to Olive Garden only once before, when they were in high school, and they traversed the Tour of Italy on that visit. Feeling sentimental when they were home recently for the holidays, I wanted to introduce them, as parents often do, to something meaningful from my past.
So we headed out on a windy, rainy day for Never-Ending Soup, Salad, and Breadsticks. “This combo is in your blood,” I told them, reminiscing about those secret lunch dates two decades ago. They humored me and listened good-naturedly to the story they’d heard multiple times.
As we leaned over our bowls (me still with the minestrone, them with the chicken-gnocchi and Zuppa Toscana), I felt the tender pangs of nostalgia — all the excitement and uncertainty of pregnancy — give way to a sense of mourning. How had so much time passed so quickly? I sat there astonished that those little humans who once lived inside me were now sitting across the table as full-fledged men.
“Yep, that’s pretty legit,” one of them said to break the tension, having sensed the impending danger of wistful mom tears at the table. I laughed and agreed. I didn’t cry. They didn’t roll their eyes too hard. The soup was still minestrone, the breadsticks still perfect. That felt like enough.
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