The Star of Olive Garden’s ‘Giant Italian Classics’ Menu: Huge Meatball | Eater
"The chain’s 'Giant Italian Classics' spring menu rehashes oversized versions of familiar red-sauce staples, but its centerpiece — the 'Large Adult Meatball' — registers as something more primal: a three-quarter-pound, showy meatball presented in advertising as dropping onto a pillow of spaghetti with splattering tomato and unlimited breadsticks. The item is framed as craveable value and theatrical abundance, yet prompts practical skepticism about how such a hunk of meat can be cooked through without charring; the brand declined multiple interview requests about the preparation. At roughly 1,300 calories it can serve as an entire day’s meal, and critics cast it both as an exhilarating, body-first temptation and as a lowbrow, potentially unhealthy symbol of an American appetite for ever-larger portions." - Jaya Saxena
