This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2014, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
It's not every day someone walks up to you and asks if you would like some free, warm fettuccine Alfredo with breadsticks, right then and there.
But dozens of hungry people, including the homeless, dined on free pasta for months, thanks to Matt Tribe, a generous Ogden man with an Olive Garden Never Ending Pasta Pass and a big heart.
From late September to early November, Tribe took advantage of Olive Garden's promotion to order takeout and pass the Italian food off to friends and strangers alike. By the time the promotion ended, he — and his sister, who helped while Tribe was out of town — visited 11 Olive Garden restaurants and handed out 125 meals. That's a lot of free pasta.
"We applaud Matt for his generous use of the Pasta Pass, and we're proud to play a small part in his powerful story," Jessica Dinon, Olive Garden spokeswoman, said in a statement.
The $100 pass allowed Tribe to order a free pasta meal from any Olive Garden (he said the best one is in Riverdale, and he ranked the downtown Salt Lake City location the worst); but after he bought his pass in September, he started wondering if he had made a mistake.
"I didn't know how I was going to eat enough pasta to justify buying the $100 pass," he wrote on the blog he created about the experience, Random Acts of Pasta. Then he was struck by an idea. "I decided it might be fun to randomly take Olive Garden to people."
Tribe's quest to surprise people with hand-delivered pasta began with friends, family and his mail carrier; he also used it on himself 14 times. But it was always his intention to help the homeless.
"However, I rarely had time during the day because of work and at night I would sometimes drive around for hours looking for them, but I could never find any — they disappear at night," Tribe wrote. But on Oct. 16, that changed when he took a long lunch break and, after a short search, found "one of the nicest dudes I had ever met. I asked him if he was hungry and then I returned to the car and came back with Olive Garden. The dude was incredibly grateful and offered to share the meal with me."
The most locations he visited in one day was five, and the most meals he got in one day was nine.
By Tribe's estimation, he ultimately fed 10 homeless people, including a woman who made quite the impression on him. When he brought her the pasta meal — his go-to became fettuccine Alfredo with chicken, salad, breadsticks and a Diet Coke — her first response was asking if she could share it with her friends, who were nearby.
"First of all, the initial thought of someone who has nothing was to share it with someone else — that's pretty incredible," Tribe wrote. "… I went back to the car and got a few more bags of pasta and took it on over to them."
Random Acts of Pasta was one of the "most fun and fulfilling things I've ever done," Tribe wrote.
"Just imagine how cool it would be if everyone did something like this in their life. Obviously not everyone has a pasta pass or has the time to do something of this scale, but what if everyone spent a couple days a month just doing something nice for someone else?" Tribe wrote at the conclusion of his blog. "One thing I can tell you for sure, is that you, as a person, would be much happier. Don't believe me? Just try it."
Twitter: @mikeypanda