#8: Olive Garden Breadsticks
My dad, though adopted, is the biological grandson of an Italian immigrant, I believe, named Fredrich Sabatini. I feel quite certain he has died, on account of the Fred Sabatini Memorial Scholarship I found online, but can’t seem to locate any sort of obituary. Perhaps it’s like the summer I worked at our city pool - the same city where they just built a downtown plaza and relied on the community to help name it. Our entire lifeguarding staff voted on the name of our boss at the time, followed by Memorial Plaza. She wasn’t dead, and we didn’t even mean it as a bad omen, but she cut our hours and the plaza is called Pike Place.
Anyway, I have many questions about the Fred Sabatini scholarship, but all I can gather is that he was a Logansport lawyer, and maybe he’s not dead after all. What I do know, however, is that whatever trace of Italian blood flows through my veins has left me with a semi-permanent pasta craving, remedied only by America’s favorite inauthentic Italian bistro: Olive Garden.
I could write a whole essay on the Olive Garden experience, starting with the parmesan-capped mountain salad because no one at the table had the nerve to say “when,” and I’d conclude with the sweet kiss of chocolate goodbyes left on my lips by the Olive Garden-branded Andes Mints that taste far better in that red velvet lobby than anywhere else in the world. But I don’t have that kind of time and you don’t have that kind of interest, so I’ll settle on a heartwarming stick of doughy delight: the breadsticks.
There is something absolutely cathartic about that warm-meets-cold encounter when a smothering of chilled dressing meets the steaming breadstick dough. The buttery bliss is both soothing and awakening - it brings a fullness and yet a longing for more. I compare it to corporate worship or a long quiet morning between you and God. I do think food can bring that, and the amount of times Jesus was feasting confirms my belief. Also, the heaven-banquet comparison? Yeah, I feel like the OG B-Stix has to be on the table once or twice.
I also like how it brings things together, sort of in a way other parts of this life can’t. Like I can’t find my biological grandpa Fred Sabatini, I can’t gather effortlessly with college friends or relatives states away. I can’t rally all the students into my advisory session even when they desperately need to be there to get work turned in. But I can pick up a breadstick at Olive Garden and push leftover salad dressing into my lasagna goop. I can push the meat into the breading and the noodle to the sauce, and I can eat it - all of it - all together. And I can sit around the table and eat it with whoever will join, because people will join, if those breadsticks are there. Together. A little bit like heaven, a little bit like Olive Garden. I rank it 8th.