The Incredible Costless Abundance of Macaroni Grill’s Free Bread | Bon Appétit

"If I ever ate anything other than the free bread at Romano’s Macaroni Grill, I can’t remember it. I must have ordered the fettuccine Alfredo (what ten-year-old could resist) or begged my parents for the New York–style cheesecake, but the only food that is lodged in my mind all these years later is that bread: pleasingly square, scented with rosemary, glistening with oil like a competitive bodybuilder. It would land on the table sometime between when the server introduced herself, scrawling her name (Jessica, Rachel, Dani, Mel) backward and upside down on the paper-lined table in crayon so that each guest could read it, and when she took our orders. But almost as soon as the cracked black pepper, fresh from a mill the size of a baseball bat, hit the chartreuse olive oil, the bread was gone, torn to bits by grabby preteen hands." - BySarah Jampel