The Olive Garden hot dog

it's endless if you supply the wieners

Hi, clowns!

It’s me, the greatest food writer in all of history, Dannis Ree. I know it’s been a while, and for that, I’m sorry—I’ve missed you so much.

Davida gave you a life update on my behalf in the last edition of the newsletter, and currently I’m still dealing with some really challenging complications with my crummy eye. I have my occasional okay days and frequent bad ones, and my doctors are doing the best they can to treat me with the limited knowledge they have of Coat’s disease.

Unfortunately, I’m still in the thick of it, and will be for a while yet until they strike a truce with this complicated thing. But I have to keep my head up somehow, so I figured, fuck it. Why not kick the tires and take this ol’ thing for a spin on the days I’m feeling okay?

You have sent me countless messages of encouragement, and signed up for paid subscriptions to support us (I love you guys); the least I could do was get back on my horse and try to laugh through the pain with you by my digital side.

Photo credit: roxisasewingmachine; Imgur

Today’s edition of the newsletter is inspired by a photo that goes viral every now and again—and when it does, people tag me frantically in the comments for it on social media.

“Dannis! Dannis!” everyone says, “You need to see this right now! OMG!”

The photo is of a hot dog that utilizes a very specific vehicle as a bun: an Olive Garden breadstick. It was originally posted in 2020, originates from the photo sharing site Imgur, and features an Oscar Mayer hot dog crammed snugly into an OG breadstick that’s barely bigger than it is.

You know, I gotta say, even though this is just a hot dog cradled into an unexpected type of bun, it’s a weirdly entertaining concept, mostly because someone dragged Olive Garden’s ass into it.

I don’t know about you guys, but I think people’s love for Olive Garden is both mildly concerning and somewhat fascinating. Do not send me death threats, but I personally have never really been a big fan of it. This is mostly because the food always tastes like it came straight out of a bag to me. I find my own opinion about this puzzling especially when I am such a passionate fan of Taco Bell.

But whenever I start talking shit about Olive Garden, everyone starts pointing at me and shouting, “The breadsticks! The breadsticks!” Then suddenly, I’m the asshole.

Anyway, immediately after a particularly discouraging trip to the doctor, I decided that I needed to cheer myself up by experiencing this Olive Garden hot dog hybrid myself. On paper, this is just a hot dog in a breadstick, which doesn’t sound so novel—but then I asked myself a very important question.

“Dannis, what if you snuck a hot dog into Olive Garden and made one yourself in the actual restaurant?”

I’d be embarking on this trip solo because Davida was at work.

I know all about solo journeys into half-blindness anyway, so sneaking a hot dog into Olive Garden would be kid’s play. After I told my beautiful wife about this idea, she told me lovingly, “If you get us banned from Olive Garden, I’m never going to forgive you.”

I first stopped by our nearest big hot dog stand, Portillo’s, and grabbed two plain hot dogs to go. (The second one was to shove up my ass.)

I brought a little adorable tote bag with me containing a book that I would pretend to read while eating, which would also contain the secret hot dogs and a steak knife.

The steak knife was there in case all Olive Garden had to offer tableside was shitty butter knives. I didn’t want to be caught struggling with a breadstick in a compromising position because the restaurant provided utensil was a piece of shit.

Fortunately, our local Olive Garden is like two doors down from Portillo’s, which clearly means God built it in that specific location just for me to do this.

Speaking of God, as soon as I got settled into my booth, I ordered the endless soup, salad, and breadsticks, and whipped out the prop book that I planned on pretending to read while I was eating.

It is called More of Jesus, Less of Me, and is advertised on the cover as “an entirely new and revolutionary approach to weight control.” I looked at it, then realized that observing someone reading this book by themselves at Olive Garden might actually raise more suspicions than quell any, so I put it cover-side down on the table and just let it sit there.

I also ordered a side of dipping sauces for my breadsticks—they come at $5.49 for a single serving, also miraculously endless, but the deal is you can only order a new helping once the previous one is finished. I asked my friendly server if I could try all three at the same time (marinara, alfredo, and five cheese marinara), and he did some thinking about how to do this within the rules, and disappeared.

Not long after I placed my order, he returned with a shitload of food, along with all three dipping sauces I’d asked for.

Now it was time to assemble this viral hot dog.

There were way more challenges to this than I’d expected. One of them was that this particular Olive Garden was busy as shit, and apparently everyone’s grandparents dined at this one for lunch.

The age of my fellow patrons might seem like an irrelevant detail, but it affected my ability to stay undetected in ways I could not have predicted. First of all, the wonderful server assigned to our section was extremely attentive, checking in on everyone frequently—but whenever he did so, he’d have to spend extra time with the older folks and repeat what he had to say.

“Are you interested in any dessert today?” he asked.

“What?” came the inevitable reply.

“You get a dessert with the meal you ordered,” he said. “Does anything look good to you?”

“What?”

These booths were right by mine, which meant my server could see me sitting there and I did not want him to kick me out for inserting a foreign hot dog into a breadstick. When he finally wrapped up his conversation with one table, he had to go to the next one and repeat the exact same thing, so I just sat there and nursed my soup.

Once he left, I just grabbed the dull-ass knife that Olive Garden gives you and hacksawed my way into the center of the breadstick. The unexpectedly frequent appearance of my server had me panicking that he’d catch me using the serrated steak knife I brought from home, so I bailed on using it.

During my retelling of what happened, Davida asked me later why I didn’t simply ask him for a steak knife.

“For soup?!” I stared at her.

I reached into my tote bag, unwrapped one of the hot dogs inside of it, extracted it quickly, then shoved it into the now-open breadstick.

Phase one was now complete. I took a bite of the naked dog in the breadstick and tried to decide whether or not I liked it. The thing about a regular hot dog bun is that it’s spongy and squishy and easy to eat, while an Olive Garden breadstick is chewy by nature—which is a weird texture pairing for a hot dog.

But then again, the OG stick has a garlicky and buttery flavor, which is fun. Plus I could still not believe I was doing this, especially by myself. This stunt reminds me of the time I snuck raw meat into a Korean barbecue restaurant, which is both my greatest and most shameful accomplishment ever.

The real reason why I wanted the dipping sauces was because I thought it’d be fun to dip the hot dog into them.

I started with the marinara, which is sweet, acidic, and tastes like Prego from a jar, so if you’re into ketchup on your hot dogs, it’s not a bad option. You know, if you decide to sneak your own fucking hot dogs into Olive Garden.

Another unexpected pitfall of having delightful elder patrons around me was just how long the transit time would be for them to do anything.

I mean, anything. If someone got up to walk to the bathroom to take a big OG (ol’ granny) dump at the OG, their shuffle past my booth would be seemingly interminable. One couple paid their check and got up to leave, and as soon as I saw the walker get whipped out, I let out an internal sigh and flipped my hot dog-stuffed breadstick upside down to conceal my shenanigans as they began the 10 minute departure process.

Then, of course, the server continued to come by frequently, and I even spoke to him a few times with the hot dog sitting there, casually upside down on my plate. If he noticed, he didn’t say anything.

After what felt like two years later, I finally got the chance to try the second sauce, the five cheese marinara, and this one was a winner.

Frankly, it’d be pretty good on no matter what it was on, because it’s sort of like a mix of alfredo sauce, marinara, and five unspecified cheeses all in one sauce, and I challenge anyone to dislike something like this. Even on a hot dog.

By the time I got to the last sauce, the alfredo, I had gotten my hot dog concealment down to a science, but the breadstick had gotten stale and was starting to fall apart on me.

I thought this one would be the most boring, but surprisingly, I think I liked it the most. There was something weirdly delightful about all that fatty, creamy, cheesy sauce on the juicy hot dog that worked better than I thought it would. If there’s a new alfredo hot dog trend on TikTok that’s made big all of a sudden, you saw it here first, dickholes.

Finally, I thought I’d try dipping the Olive Garden breadstick dog into my chicken and gnocchi soup, just because I wanted to push the limits of my newfound talent to sneak hot dogs into places I shouldn’t.

As you might imagine, this was sort of boring, mostly because Olive Garden’s soups are pretty watery. The soups feel designed more to fill you up from the sheer consumption of inexpensive liquid than they are to nourish your soul and heart. But you know what? That’s what sneaking in hot dogs is for. Real nutrition.

Though I might have still been bummed about my eye situation, the long lunch of concealed hot dog dipping distracted me from dwelling on it for a while. So I guess there’s that. Apparently the one thing Olive Garden doesn’t mention it has on the menu is a temporary cure for hopelessness—you just have to sneak in your own wieners.

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Thank you all for sticking with me. I mean it. If you liked today’s edition of the newsletter and would like to share the joy of hot dogs jammed in breadsticks, go hogwild. That share button does wonders for me.

And of course, if you’d like to support the newsletter, here’s the subscription button. Every other edition will still be behind a paywall as usual, I’m just not sure about the rhythm for now.

I’m not going to ask for much today—maybe just a little more patience. I might have to undergo surgery again in the next few weeks, but my treatment plan changes weekly, so that’s not guaranteed. Editions will be spotty for a bit longer until we have a game plan that works. As always, I love you all, and I’ll see you when I see you. Sooner, not later.