To all the Olive Garden aficionados looking to gorge yourselves on as much fettucine, spaghetti, rigatoni and angel hair pasta as you can fit in your stomach, the magic hour is almost here.
The fast-casual restaurant chain will bring back its never-ending pasta bowl on Monday, Sept. 25—and it even has a countdown clock for people who can’t wait. The offer will run through Nov. 19.
The popular promotion returned last year for the first time since the pandemic with a few changes, the biggest being price. In 2019, the never-ending pasta bowl carried a price tag of $10.99. When it returned, it cost $13.99 (the same price the company is charging this year).
Lasagna, it appears, won’t be one of the offerings this time around (another repeat from 2022). And if you want unlimited meat toppings, including meatballs and chicken, that’ll be an extra $4.99. (For you pasta historians, the never-ending pasta bowl got its start in 1995—at a price of just $6.95.)
Also, the Never Ending Pasta Pass, which let select customers get all the pasta they could eat for an entire year for just $100 (plus tax) is not making its return just yet. Those passes were rare, but were so popular in years past that a black market for the card opened up, with passes selling on Ebay for up to $499.
Olive Garden parent company Darden beat earnings expectations Thursday, with revenues of $2.73 billion and earnings per share of $1.78 (four cents higher than analysts had forecast). That was the fourth consecutive quarter of earnings beats.
Can’t wait until Monday to begin carbo-loading? Current members of the Olive Garden eClub can dive in right now.