Where Is The Original Olive Garden

11 surprising things you didn't know about Olive Garden

Updated

2019-10-17T13:37:00Z

The Italian-American casual-dining chain Olive Garden has been open since the 1980s.
Olive Gardens used to share buildings with Red Lobster restaurants.
In certain locations, you can buy a whole bottle of the chain's famous salad dressing.
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Olive Garden is a casual-dining restaurant chain that's widely known for its Italian-American dishes and, of course, its unlimited salad and breadsticks.

But there are many things you might not know about the eatery, even if you're a regular customer.

Read on for some surprising things you never knew about Olive Garden.

The look of the original restaurant resembles a Tuscan farmhouse.

In an effort to immerse you in the look, feel, and taste of Italy, the restaurants were once modeled after a farmhouse in Chianti, Italy, according to Eater.

The chain even offers a regional Tuscan menu in honor of the area that inspired their restaurant.

A spokesperson for Olive Garden noted that the newer prototype for the restaurants doesn't quite fit this mold, though.

Read More: What 6 dietitians order at Olive Garden

It started as a Florida-based restaurant.

The first Olive Garden opened in the 1980s.

The very first Olive Garden was opened in 1982 on Orlando's busy International Drive.

It's still open today, although if you visit, be aware that extensive remodeling has left it pretty unrecognizable from the original restaurant.

Olive Garden has an international presence.

You can visit Olive Garden locations around the world.

The chain has a growing international presence that includes locations in Mexico, Kuwait, Malaysia, and Brazil, among others.

You can buy a whole bottle of its famous salad dressing.

Olive Garden is known for its endless salad — and you can make your own version of it at home.

Some locations sell 16-ounce bottles of the chain's famous dressing. Olive Garden's site has a store locator so you can find the closest bottle to you.

There's a simple formula behind the number of breadsticks you get.

According to an investor presentation released in 2014, Olive Garden serves between 675 million and 700 million breadsticks each year.

After noticing that many of these breadsticks were going to waste, the company started reducing the number they initially bring to the table — the number of guests at the table plus one additional — and providing more only if the customers ask.

You can get eight weeks of never-ending pasta if you're lucky.

About 22,000 lucky pasta fans were treated to an eight-week unlimited pasta pass for just $100 in 2017. That year, the promotion, which Olive Garden has done since 2014, sold out in just one second.

Even in 2019, the brand continues to sell these passes each year.

Jimmy Fallon appears to own Olive Garden's most famous tag line.

The brand seemingly handed it over to Fallon on the air.

In 2013, when the restaurant parted ways with their famous tag line "When you're here, you're family," they decided to hand the slogan over to, of all people, Jimmy Fallon .

It's unclear if it was a parody or not, but Fallon signed an official-looking contract to receive the slogan while on the air.

Olive Garden's tagline was then changed to "We're all family here."

Many of Olive Garden's most popular recipes can be found online.

Unlike some restaurants who keep their recipes top-secret, Olive Garden decided to post the recipes for some of its most popular dishes on its website.