If your house is anything like our house, your (mostly) adorable toddler eats three things: chicken nuggets, turkey and spaghetti. With the latter making it into the dinner rotation every third day, going to restaurants typically doesn’t make a lot of sense. Well, when you’ve had it up to here (imagine me drawing a line north of my head) with meal planning and the family still needs to eat, a frugal mama starts to look for some options.
Earlier this week I learned that one of our favorite restaurants, Olive Garden, is hosting an incredible promotion to diners that would make both the wallet and family happy–2 for $25 Italian Dinner. I can’t name a single restaurant where two adults can get an appetizer and balanced meals for less than that.
So, the Barry clan moseyed over to the OG located off 620 across the highway from Lakeline Mall for dinner. We got there at the perfect time, 6:30, and we were seated right away and greeted with a smile. The hostess brought Miss C her “colors and paper” so she would behave…for at least 20 minutes. We ordered drinks and proceeded to look at the menu. One of my favorite things about Olive Garden is that there is usually someone celebrating a birthday–in our case right next to us. I just love birthday diners–they are always happy and when you’re dining with a kid, the song and dance is priceless.
Anyway, the name of the game (2 for $25 Italian Diners) is that you get to select an appetizer or a dessert (we opted for an appetizer) and two entrees. Now, these aren’t your typical entrees, they offer the real deal–think chicken dinners, pasta with shrimp, etc. Like always, each entree comes with soup or salad and those oh so heavenly bread sticks.
We picked two new menu items: 1. Mezzaluna Ravioli with meat sauce and 2. Parmesan crusted stuffed chicken and started our dinner with lasagna fritta (this is sooooo not on any diet in the world, but it’s oh so delish.) Caroline selected the plain spaghetti (surprise! surprise!) with Parmesan cheese and grapes.
Everything was divine; from our incredible waitress, Leah, to the time it took us to get our dinner. One of my favorite things about our dinner experience, other than our happy bellies, was the “wrap up” services. Leah offered us both to-go cups for our drinks (nice touch, Leah!) and she packaged our left overs for us. Now Matt has lunch for tomorrow–two meals in one–score!
One other piece to Olive Garden’s promotion this month is that they are offering $5 to the purchaser of a $25 gift card, so if you buy a $25 gift card for your office secret Santa or the white elephant you need to pick up, you get a $5 gift card. You can’t beat that!
And to wrap up another delicious meal by Olive Garden, their famous mints that make any chocolate lover swoon.
Will you be visiting Olive Garden to try their great new promotion?
