I Ate Olive Garden's Never Ending Pasta With the HAPIfork
One vibrates when you're eating too quickly and one encourages the opposite.
— -- It was the best of times; it was the worst of times ... not to be dramatic or anything. We’re talking about Olive Garden’s Never Ending Pasta Pass, to be clear. The coveted $100 pass that gets the owner unlimited pasta with toppings any time they want for seven weeks.
Just 1,000 people across America are lucky enough to own the pass. Me included.
The restaurant’s spokesperson told me, “You are now part of an exclusive club,” and it was a membership I intended to take seriously.
Around the same time I received the pass, I also heard about the HAPIfork, an electronic fork that monitors the speed of your bites and vibrates when you’re eating too quickly. I told my friend about both, and she had the brilliant idea of taking the HAPIfork to my Olive Garden eating extravaganza to see which one would win out. I took her along for the ride on Monday, and she went for the one-time unlimited pasta option for $9.99, plus the price of one topping if you want one.
We got the low down from our incredibly friendly and attentive server, which includes certain limitations, like not being allowed to take anything home or order multiple plates at once. And then I placed my first order: linguine with alfredo sauce and fried shrimp.
My goal was to try all the sauces and toppings, of which there are four each, so that mean there were four courses ahead of me.
I was pretty hungry by the time the first pasta arrived (Okay, I had sated myself a little with a breadstick or two and some salad), so I was pretty anxious to dive in and eat. I powered up my HAPIfork and got to work. The first three bites went fine (and, like the rest of the meal, tasted fine, too – but no better) with no vibrations. But then on the fourth bite, the fork glowed red and vibrated gently in my hand. I didn’t really care, though. I wanted to keep eating, and so I did.
On the second course (whole wheat linguine with marinara sauce and meatballs), I let my friend give the fork a try. As soon as it vibrated for her, she shrieked and set her bite down, waiting to pick it up again. And every time it vibrated, she startled and stopped, which was the exact opposite reaction I had.
We abandoned the fork after that, since it wasn’t working for me, and it was working too well for her. My third course was penne with five cheese marinara (basically like a vodka sauce) and fried chicken, and my final course was cavatappi with meat sauce and Italian sausage.
It was an extremely excessive evening. Especially considering I didn’t come close to finishing any of my courses and wasn’t allowed to bring anything home, and since I wanted to try every option for the purposes of this article, an uncomfortable amount of food was just thrown away. I walked away from the meal not feeling great about who else that food could have benefitted.
I don’t plan to use my pasta pass again since I am surrounded by much better Italian food, and I sincerely wish I could give it to someone who needs it, but it has my name on it and is non-transferrable.
As for the HAPIfork, I gave it to my friend, since it actually seemed to affect her. I guess some gluttonous eaters can’t be tamed by a vibrating shame fork. Instead it was the shame of wasting food that caused me to put my fork down by the end of this meal.
