Pasta Season is Upon Us

I meant to fire up this newsletter again at the dawn of Never-Ending Pasta season, when I was once more fresh-eyed and carb-hungry, just a kid with a crazy dream. I took a photograph of the very first bowl of pasta I received, at the Olive Garden on Burnet Road in Austin, with Kat sitting across from me and the waiter—whose name I meant to write down, but didn’t—saying Do I know you from somewhere? (Yes, I told him, you know me from being here last year during pasta season.) Here is that photo:

It’s a photo of cavatappi with five-cheese marinara (want to make it six, the waiter asked, before grating the parmesan) and crispy chicken, one of my go-to orders.

I meant to write about the Olive Garden in Southeast Dallas, in the strip mall next to the Buffalo Wild Wings and the Hyatt Place hotel and nothing else, in an eerie development that felt like someone planted a flag that said suburb coming soon, then sprinkled seeds that would someday grow into a Target and a Lowe’s and a slew of houses priced from the mid-200’s, but not yet.

I meant to write about the night I got caught in a hailstorm on my bike, heading home from downtown, and arrived drenched and freezing, seeking warmth and comfort and solace in a meal, which naturally led me to the Olive Garden, looking for those things amid the spirit of hospitaliano, rejecting the Ziosk terminal in favor of the friendly face of another waiter whose name I’ve forgotten.

But I didn’t, and now it’s like when you keep putting off a letter to a friend, when you’ve passed the point where you can just say what you meant to say, and first have to start with an apology for taking so long to write back, and then what’s even the point, they didn’t write to you to get an apology—

Oh, but nobody writes letters anymore, do they? And anyway, now I am in Los Angeles for a couple weeks, a city with a surprising dearth of Olive Garden locations. There’s one in Culver City, by the airport, but who drives to LAX when they don’t have to? There’s one in Burbank, one in Glendale, and I expect I’ll visit at least one of them, at least once, but it’s not an easy commute, because nothing in this city is easy, except the weather.

The weather is perfect, though, and there’s better Italian food here than the Olive Garden, which is a sentence that is true in many cities in America, except the one that I live in 45 weeks or so of the year, when I have not packed up a suitcase and the dog and driven to Los Angeles to be here with Kat. There is La Pergoletta, which has two locations that are each (at least slightly) easier to get to, and serve much better food. There are countless random, strip mall red-sauce Italian places that are all, if I am honest, at least as good as Olive Garden, and often better, even if the portions do, in fact, end. There is even Dan Tana’s, which is just down the block and historic and ridiculously overpriced.

I had, I think, 11 Olive Garden meals in Texas before I left for L.A. That ain’t bad, means that I already made the $100 back on the pass, even if I haven’t taken full advantage of it. (I have been more brazen, though, about taking my final portion as a to-go order for lunch the next day, asking outright for the second helping and a box, leading every single waiter to say, yeah, of course, but i have to bring them separately because we’re not allowed to do that, and me to leaving a grateful extra dollar or two on the tip.) I’m not sure yet when I’ll be back in Austin—it could be a couple of weeks, which would push us to the edge of Never-Ending Pasta season, so we might cap this one around lucky 13.

But I’ll probably keep this newsletter going even when I am not eating at the Olive Garden, which I intended to do last year, and which I might succeed or fail at this time around. But I’ve been meaning to, because I miss it, and I’ve been thinking about writing and the Internet and audience, and how good it is to write for an audience that is there to read you, as opposed to reading what they got linked to on Facebook or Twitter or whatever, even if the promise that got them to sign up was that it would be all about pasta.

Nobody writes letters anymore, though, and it won’t hurt my feelings* if you unsubscribe when I break that promise. But I have been thinking lately about how we use the Internet these days versus how we used it when it all felt better and less constricting and more fun. The transition happened gradually, and I didn’t even really notice it at the time, but the initial portions of Internet we were served came out in large bowls, with heaps of parmesan on top, and the promise of newness—and then we started getting the smaller portions, and corporate said that we weren’t allowed to take it with us as a to-go serving, and we were left to rely on the kindness of a waiter who doesn’t care about enforcing that policy in order to eat at home. Or something, I know I’m straining this metaphor, but I did promise you writing Olive Garden and I am trying to deliver when I can.

I’ll be in L.A. for a while still, and I’ll send updates from here. The weather is great, and I won’t be needing a bowl of pasta to keep me warm when I’m drenched to the bone, but I’ll do my best to use the email address you have entrusted me with in the spirit of hospitaliano in one form or another.

* it will, actually, who am I fooling? But that is on me, not on you, who deserve an inbox full of only the things you’ve asked for.