For tonight’s dinner, I took a short drive to Altamonte Springs, FL in Seminole County, which is the 11th county I’ve visited for Pasta Pass. It fortunately wasn’t too far of a drive as I was working in Orlando today. My server tonight was Karla, who provided fantastic service, and she mentioned at the end that it was her FIRST DAY! I was definitely surprised considering I had no idea she wasn’t a seasoned pro. I made sure to let the Manager know she did fantastic.
For my dinner, I went with a refill portion of Rigatoni, Five Cheese Marinara & Meatball:
It was good, but not spectacular. The meal I altered was from Day 1, Meal 2, which had Italian Sausage instead of Meatball, which was quite a bit better with a 9/10 rating. The big issue with this meal was I felt it needed more Meatball:Pasta ratio. I would rate this a 7/10. I actually had a mini battle with myself as I had a delicious looking Meatball sitting on another plate on my table as this originally came with 2 (on accident as I meant to imply I wanted a single but forgot):
Since one of my rules/goals is to stay within that 1300 calorie meal limit, I didn’t want to add another 140 calories of Meatball which would cut into precious dessert portions and I was ready to eat this entire slice of Seasonal Sicilian Cheesecake:
Yet another fantastic dessert. Olive Garden is really impressing me with these fantastic choices outside of my normal comfort zone. This literally just melts in your mouth. Good firm texture, the crust was excellent, the filling was smooth and creamy and wasn’t overpowering at all, as personally I don’t like traditional Cream Cheese based Cheesecakes. This on the other hand is Ricotta based, as the description states: “Ricotta cheesecake with a shortbread cookie crust, topped with seasonal strawberry sauce”. I would give this an 8/10, and the only reason why it’s not a 9 is I felt the strawberry topping was slightly overpowering (probably not a negative for most people, however; and personally, I’d love to try this with a chocolate topping instead 🙂 This brings the combined meal rating to a 7.5, rounded up to an 8.
After dinner, I went over to the close-by cinema, AMC Altamonte Mall 18 to see Blade Runner 2049:
I used my MoviePass card, so it didn’t cost me anything! MoviePass is an awesome subscription server where you pay $9.95 a month, and can see a movie every single day, free.
Here is the Ziosk showing a cost savings of $14.75:
Here is the nutritional information for this meal:
