Chicken Gnocchi Soup For The Soul

A few weeks ago Pearl and I went to The Olive Garden for lunch. Pearl had the chicken gnocchi soup for lunch. I tried it and it was very good. We decided then and there that we would have lunch when I was on vacation. I’m on vacation this week. We decided to go today, the first day of it. We wanted the all you could eat soup, salad, and bread stick lunch we had been waiting for. We sit down hardly even look at the menu because we already KNOW what we want. Our waiter, his name happens to be Bryan, ( a great name) greets us and asks us what we would like to drink. We tell him and I feel so sure of what we want that I go ahead and order for the both of us, that is something I never do.

Bryan brings us our salad and informs us that they are out of the chicken gnocchi soup. We had been dying for that soup for weeks now. We dejectedly decide to try another soup. Some Tuscan soup, I forget the name, it didn’t matter because it wasn’t what I really wanted anyway. As we are eating our salad, Bryan comes back and tell us that they have the gnocchi soup and asks if we would still like it. Duh! it is what we ordered to begin with. He brings us two bowls of our treasure and I quickly hurry through the rest of my salad to get to it. I put one spoonful of it in my mouth and Bryan comes back and asks if it is lacking flavor because they tasted it in the kitchen and they thought something was missing. I tell Pearl to taste hers, she is the real expert on the soup. I noticed right away that the soup seemed thin. Pearl tells Bryan that and takes a bite. She says that the soup is definately missing something and has NO flavor. He tells us that they are fixing the problem. We take that to mean that they are making more soup and would be bringing us a new bowl, so we both stop eating it. A while later Bryan comes back and asks us if we would like more tea, but brings us no soup. He asks if we liked the soup we tell him no and ask for the Tuscan stuff again. He returns with the new soup which we didn’t really want in the first place. I take one bite and reach for the salt and pepper. If possible, it had even less flavor the the other soup. Absolutely no flavor at all. We finished our salt and pepper gruel and Bryan asks if we wanted more. Politely we said no but inside I was thinking ” I wouldn’t eat more of that if you were paying me to”. All we wanted by now was to be set free. He brought us our check and tells me he’s going to talk to the manager because he knows this wasn’t  a wonderful dining experience for us. They took one of the meals off our check,which was great, but honestly I would have payed the whole thing  just to be able to leave.

Pearl and I think that both soups sucked because they watered them down to extend them through the lunch rush. How else could they have magically come up with soup that they didn’t have? We also decided to try again later in my vacation to have our soup. We still want it. We need it!! We’ll try a different Olive Garden to get it!!!!

The menu describes the soup as “A creamy soup made with roasted chicken, traditional Italian dumplings and spinach” Ours was like water,and mine had absolutely no chicken in the bowl! One more thing, they ran out of breadsticks! How is that possible at Olive Garden?