We tried the dish Olive Garden says was so bad they stopped advertising it, and saw exactly why the company made that decision
- Olive Garden rolled out a build-your-own lasagna called the "Lasagna Mia" in August.
- In December, executives at Olive Garden parent company Darden Restaurants blamed the "Lasagna Mia" for a rough quarter.
- Twitter users were baffled by the shape of the new lasagna, with some describing it as appearing to look like "pasta pancakes" in the photos advertising the new item.
- Business Insider went to the Olive Garden in New York's Times Square to try the new pinwheel-shaped Lasagna Mia and founds its new shape definitely did not work in its favor.
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Editor's note: Olive Garden released a build-your-own personal lasagna in July, Lasagna Mia. On Thursday, the chain said the dish contributed to a significant and unexpected deceleration in sales for the most recent quarter.
"We're sitting here today admitting that we didn't hit the mark on Lasagna Mia and we pulled off the promotional advertising to support that," Darden's chief financial officer Rick Cardenas said on a call with investors.
Business Insider's Irene Jiang taste-tested the dish back in August. Here is her review:
This was not the first time the Italian-American megachain has rolled out the Lasagna Mia, which is designed to be a personal, customized serving of lasagna. It had a brief limited run in the summer of 2018 when it took the form of a standard cubic lasagna serving.
This time around, it looked a little different.
Instead of the classic cubic lasagna, Olive Garden has decided to go with a pinwheel design that has drawn some less than enthusiastic reactions from the Twittersphere. Several users described the new Lasagna Mia design as "pasta pancakes," comparing the ribbons of sauce cascading down the sides to maple syrup down a stack of flapjacks.
—Olive Garden (@olivegarden) July 29, 2019
But make no mistake — no unflattering description of food can keep me from eating it. I had a solemn moral responsibility to give Lasagna Mia a fair trial. It was, as far as I was concerned, pasta until proven a pancake.