There’s the initial rush and excitement of ordering your food, the anticipation, and then - it arrives! This photograph is my attempt to capture that moment - where the alfredo sauce seeps into the various crevices of the noodles, and you feel a mixture of bliss and shame.

I don’t suffer from celiac disease, and I’m really glad for that - this pasta is mushy and flat-tasting and has been for the dozen+ times I’ve ordered it. Granted, it’s a better option than no pasta at all, but so is suicide.

I named this pasta after my favorite food-related blogger/writer, who once penned a turn of phrase that really stuck with me when it comes to describing a sauce. He might say that the meatball here is “enveloped in a thick, creamy robe” of five-cheese marinara.

Then again, he might not say that. I don’t know what Mr. López-Alt thinks about Olive Garden’s food. I do know that his book totally changed the way I approach both cooking and food in general, and I highly recommend it if you’re at all interested in the science of the subject.

The artist has captured the rustic simplicity of a humble laborer’s midday meal. Notice his use of tasteful lighting to match the tasteful ingredients.

This time I’m trying ordering it on the side, with sauce on top. Did I succeed? The picture would be even better if I just cropped out the sausage entirely, so probably not. But I’m going to keep trying.

Could we have fritta for breakfast?
Pappardelle, pappardelle?
We gotta have it with lettuce
And flakes of basil, zinfandel

Fashion faux pas alert! This shrimp fritta has “accidentally” let its breaded coating slip, providing us a tantalizing glimpse at the flesh beneath. Dinner *and* a show!

Looks like the chef who prepared this one got a little overzealous with the alfredo sauce, but can you blame him? It’s a tasty dish! Plus, he probably makes like $8 an hour serving up thousands of bowls of this stuff to ungrateful slobs who wolf it down without a second thought.

The water from the sauce has begun to settle out into the bottom of the bowl in a fairly unappetizing way. This is one of many problems that are solved by pre-mixing your dish before serving, but I understand that the Olive Garden is a high-volume restaurant. The extra step was probably deemed fiscally untenable by some accountant somewhere, but here we are now, dealing with the aftermath.

Naturally, all Italian Sausages are beautiful in their own way, and each has its own unique bumps, marks, fordyce spots, et cetera. But there’s something funky going on with this one, and I really think you should get it looked at before it gets worse.

Ah, behold the subtle interplay of light and shadow. I haven’t seen a sausage photographed this tastefully since I uninstalled Snapchat.

Spaghetti and alfredo sauce is and always will be an artless combination, something a rookie pasta eater might ignorantly order at random off the main menu. When it arrives, he has to pretend that this is what he wanted, and eat the whole thing to save face. It’s really quite sad. I had a good seven minute conversation with my waitress as to how this was not the case with me, that I am actually a very important food blogger. She seemed convinced, but would not inform the chef as I instructed.