We tried Olive Garden's most confusing take on Italian food yet - here's the verdict

Hollis Johnson/Business Insider

• Olive Garden has released yet another unorthodox menu item - this time, it's the "Meatball Pizza Bowl."
• People's reactions are fairly mixed, but odd dishes are pretty common at the chain now, so many are taking it in stride. 
• Unfortunately, it doesn't fare as well as its "Italian nacho" cousin - the bowl is difficult to eat and kind of gross. 

Olive Garden's noble quest to disrupt the Italian food industry marches onward with the chain's new meatball pizza bowl. 

Meatballs? Pizza? With a bowl involved somehow? Apparently, it's a pizza crust that's molded into the shape of a bowl, then filled with alternating layers of ragu sauce, cheese, and meatballs. 

It sounds structurally insane, as though this lunch dish relies on a vein of Lovecraftian, non-Euclidean geometry to simply exist in our dimension. The description defies any attempt to place it within a recognizable genre of food items - is it a bowl, a pizza, a casserole? 

Whatever it is, it's available for lunch - on weekdays before 3 p.m. only - as part of Olive Garden's "Lunch Duos" deal. It starts at $8.99, but the cost can vary depending on location. 

The question is: is this strange dish worth getting?

Many online have made their revulsion and suspicion clear. 

Yet despite the culinary unease that automatically blooms after reading the description - well, even the name is enough to turn some people off - I have to give it the benefit of the doubt. After all, the chain's audacious "Italian nachos" that were released earlier this month were strangely good, despite every fiber in my being yearning to dislike them. 

So, off I went to Olive Garden to try it for myself. 

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