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In 2014, the hedge fund Starboard Value published a presentation criticising the business of the restaurant chain Olive Garden, a subsidiary of Darden Restaurants. The presentation claimed that:

Darden stopped salting the water in which it cooks pasta

According to Darden management, Darden decided to stop salting the water to get an extended warranty on their pots. Pasta is Olive Garden's core dish and must be prepared properly.

If you google "how to cook pasta", the first step of Pasta 101 is to salt the water.

This was widely reported at the time, e.g. in Business Insider: Olive Garden Is Breaking One Of The Fundamental Rules Of Cooking Pasta

However, the claim seems rather dubious to me. Most cooking pots, particular for professional use, are made of stainless steel, which is very resistant to corrosion. I have used them myself for cooking my entire adult life, as have most people I know, and I have never heard of them being damaged by salted water. Also, most liquid dishes, such as broths and soups, contain salt, so a warranty limiting salting would considerably interfere with regular cooking practices - it seems unlikely a restaurant would accept that.

Finally, in a related question on cooking.SE: Is there evidence that adding salt to water prior to boiling can damage a stainless steel pan?, one answer claims that while stainless steel can indeed corrode, the effect of salt is negligible.

The claim about Olive Garden and salting is referenced in many publications, but they all seem to be based on the same presentation cited above, so there really seems to be only a single source.

Is there any evidence that Olive Garden had a warranty for their pots that restricted salting?

Laurel
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sleske
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  • By the way, just because it wouldn't make sense to have a policy where you can't salt water for pasta, doesn't mean the pot manufacturer wouldn't have one in place. – TheWanderer Feb 05 '19 at 10:56
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    I remember hearing this story, and hearing that the problem is only if you salt the water before it is boiling. This makes zero sense to me, but I invite answerers to be clear on the matter if they are posting experimental results. – Oddthinking Feb 05 '19 at 11:03
  • @Oddthinking: Actually, the cooking.SE question I linked addresses exactly this question (and the answer is complicated). As to "posting experimental results": That would be off-topic, both because this site does not accept original research, and because I'm not asking whether saltwater does indeed damage pans, but whether there really were warranty terms preventing it. – sleske Feb 05 '19 at 11:44
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    @sleske: Ah yes, so it does. Fair point. (To be clear: I was referring to people who linked to (e.g.) peer-reviewed experimental studies, not personal original research.) – Oddthinking Feb 05 '19 at 12:47
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    @sleske By the way, it is unrelated to answering, but I think the assessment of how crucial the salting is to the pasta cooking process is overblown. Salting, as traditionally performed, likely has no effect on the *cooking* process at all, only on the resulting flavor of the prepared dish. https://www.thekitchn.com/does-salting-pa-158293 – called2voyage Feb 05 '19 at 14:26
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    @called2voyage: Yes, I know :-). However, many people consider the salting crucial precisely _because_ it improves the flavor. Many cooks consider the flavor a crucial element ;-). – sleske Feb 05 '19 at 14:30
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    I think the degree of impact to the flavor, however, is unlikely to be significant to a chain restaurant like Olive Garden. However, who am I to judge the degree of snobbery invoked? :) – called2voyage Feb 05 '19 at 14:31
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    "The author is Starboard Value, an activist investment firm that owns shares of Darden, Olive Garden’s parent company, and is trying to win control of its board." - quote from the New Yorker. Suggests some pretty strong biases on the subject. – Ben Barden Feb 05 '19 at 15:11
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    Business Insider quotes WSJ in 2016 saying that Starboard was successful in it's takeover, made a number of changes... but still doesn't salt the water. – Ben Barden Feb 05 '19 at 15:13
  • all of their dishes still have about 9,000mg of sodium anyway – WakeDemons3 Feb 05 '19 at 16:26
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    Wouldn't they make a lot more money selling non-bland pasta than they spend replacing pots? – dandavis Feb 05 '19 at 19:03
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    At that tier, pasta blandness can be handled with sauce. – Ben Barden Feb 05 '19 at 19:50
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    @Oddthinking Many manuals for stainless steel say the same thing, that salt should be added after the water starts to boil ([IKEA](https://www.ikea.com/ms/en_US/img/customer_service/IKEA365_warranty.pdf), [Wolfgang Puck](https://img.hsni.com/images/content/pdf/553105_CareGuide.pdf)). – Laurel Feb 05 '19 at 20:55
  • @dandavis - "Bland" is part of their brand. – Daniel R Hicks Feb 06 '19 at 00:09

1 Answers1

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It seems likely to be true.

In particular, Starboard Value made the claim as part of an extended, savage, and heavily reported critique of the then-management of the chain, where the "no salting" bit featured heavily in the reportage. The attack was clearly and openly being made as part of a takeover attempt. (https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/940944/000092189514002031/ex991dfan14a06297125_091114.pdf) The then-management responded to the particulars of the attack, and that response was reported on, but the salting thing was not addressed in said reportage. (http://fortune.com/2014/09/15/darden-olive-garden-starboard/) It was a key enough point that if it had been fabrication, or in some other way significantly incorrect, they would have been well-served to refute it, and that refutation would almost certainly have been commented on.

Finally, two years after the fact, after Starbound Value had been successful, there was some follow-up reporting that asserted that, in spite of making a number of other changes, they still weren't salting their pasta, due to the fact that it would endanger the warranty on the pots. (https://www.businessinsider.com/olive-garden-still-wont-salt-pasta-2016-4)

Thus, having this be false would require incorrect reporting not just once but in multiple independent cases, and would suggest strongly that the leadership of a major corporation failed to contradict an obvious falsehood while under direct attack. It's not impossible, but it is starting to look implausible.

Ben Barden
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  • My assertions were on the matter of the claims and reportage. I've now added links to the claims and reportage in question. Hopefully that will be sufficient to count as references. – Ben Barden Feb 05 '19 at 19:49