Olive Garden: "The cheese keeps coming 'til you say 'when'"

Question

There's an Olive Garden commercial which has the line:

At Olive Garden, the cheese keeps coming 'til you say "when".

I certainly understand what it's saying: only when I tell them to stop with the cheese will they stop. But something about the sentence feels a little wrong.
To me, the following sounds better:

At Olive Garden, the cheese doesn't [stop] 'til you say "when".

which would mean:

The cheese keeps coming until you say when [it should stop].

But the original version, using a parallel interpretation, would mean something completely nonsensical.

The cheese keeps coming until you say when [it should keep coming].

But I'm not sure whether the parallel is valid.

Is the original sentence technically 'correct'? (Aside from being understandable). It feels wrong to me, but I can't pinpoint the reason.

Answer 1

[The original wording] feels wrong to me, but I can't pinpoint the reason.

If you don't mind, I'm going to rephrase the examples slightly.

(1) At Olive Garden, the cheese keeps coming 'til you say "when [to stop]".
(2) At Olive Garden, the cheese doesn't stop 'til you say "when [to stop]".
(3) At Olive Garden, the cheese keeps coming 'til you say "when [to keep coming]".

Essentially, (1) is the original phrasing, (2) has equivalent meaning but with different phrasing, and (3) is a phrasing that feels logical to you based on the second construction... but you understand leads to the wrong meaning.

If I had to guess a reason why (1) "feels wrong" to you while (3) "feels logical" despite being wrong... I would guess that it is because you are assuming that the omitted phrase should match the earlier verb in the sentence. While that is a common form of construction (and usually more clear) it is not strictly necessary.

However, in attempting to do the verb-matching for (3) you have ignored the negation present in (2). If one keeps the negation of (2) when doing a matched-verb example like (3), the result should actually be:

(4) At Olive Garden, the cheese keeps coming 'til you say "when [to not keep coming]".

Which hopefully feels more "right" and comfortable to you on account of the matched verbs, while conveying the correct meaning. And if you'll also notice... both (1) and (4) are equivalent as-spoken [when omitting the bracketed phrases] and in meaning!

Answer 2

"Say when" or "till you say when" is an idiom. The idiomatic use is understood from context. In any situation in which a person is being offered something and invited to indicate how much they want (by saying "stop") the idiomatic use is understood.

So here, no native speaker would try to analyse the parallel sense, because the situation is clearly the idiomatic one. "Say when" means "Indicate the point at which you want to stop".

It is not unusual for native speakers to engage in word play, by literally saying "when" to indicate that the server should stop, instead of saying "stop" etc. Again, "when" doesn't mean stop in any normal context, but it is understood in a casual and joking sense.

Answer 3

Is the original sentence technically ‘correct’?

Yes, for idiomatic usage. “Say when” has an understood “… to stop.” Sometimes the other person will respond with “When.” to mean “That’s enough.” in a slightly cheesy, joking manner that projects a faux literal interpretation of the instruction.

“Keeps coming” and “doesn’t stop” have roughly equivalent meanings, both informal. Some marketers may prefer positive phrasing that hints at abundance.

Answer 4

Mandatory YouTube clip

The commercial shows various dishes with cheese being the main ‘player’

"At Olive Garden our cheese will make you melt and leave you bubbling with joy"

This line is of course metaphorical. Many cheeses melt when they reach a high enough temperature, and in English we say people melt when they see or hear something so pleasant (or so cute) it induces a teary-eyed reaction and feelings of warmth and tenderness. Likewise, very hot cheese bubbles, and if a person is especially excited, enthusiastic and/or particularly joyful that sense of anticipation and happiness can be described as bubbling.

The rich cheese theme continues with:

‘…the best part is it keeps coming until you say “when”. Olive Garden, we're all family here.’

In writing, the idiomatic meaning of when can be in scare quotes, this avoids any possible ambiguity, and makes the meaning clearer. The cheese will not stop coming until you (the client) tell it when to stop.

say when

said when you are pouring a drink for someone and you want them to tell you when to stop pouring

• She started pouring the water and told me to "say when."
  Source: Cambridge Dictionary

Answer 5

This is a case of ellipsis — omitting superfluous words from a sentence without breaking it. Like if you anwser "tomorrow" to "When can you start?", you mean "I can start tomorrow".

Your cheese case could actually work as "the cheese keeps coming 'til you say", as the context implies there's something you can say to have it stop. But as other answers point out, "say when" is a well-known idiom, itself involving ellipsis, so it's used here.

Answer 6

The quotation marks around 'when' indicate that the sentence literally means "The cheese keeps coming until you say the word 'when'". I'm sure that waitstaff would stop dispensing cheese in response to many other possible utterances, but I think the phraseology is intended to avoid any implication that the restaurant would keep dispensing cheese until customers demanded that they stop, or that the restaurant would dispense cheese until the customers were willing to concede that they couldn't reasonably demand more.

The "say 'when'" idiom treats the quantity of cheese as something akin to the volume adjustment on the sound system for a reception or other such event. The sound engineer may ask the client to stand in the middle of the venue, and then increase the volume until the client indicates it's satisfactory, but the sound engineer would hardly view the continued rotation of the volume knob as any kind of burden. Rather, the task would be to find whatever volume setting would best please the customer.

Likewise, the implication with Olive Garden would be to suggest that their goal was to establish whatever balance between cheese and other ingredients would best suit the customer's palate, even for customers where the balance would tilt heavily toward the "cheese" side, and that Olive Garden had no desire to give any customer more or less cheese than the customer would want.

I think the notion of "say 'when'" rather than "say 'stop'" is to avoid any perceived need for the customer to precede an imperative with "please". A customer may respond to a question like "Would you like cream" with "Yes, please" or "No, thank you", but not "Please yes". The response to "Say 'when'" is a response to an implied question, rather than an imperative, thus not requiring a preceding "please". A polite customer may respond to "Say when" with "Thank you" as soon as a suitable amount has been dispensed, or may say "When", and follow that with "Thank you" after dispensing ceases.

Incidentally, the "say when" construct also implies that the waiter intends to be 'directly controllable' in other ways without need for social niceties. Saying 'slower, please' or 'more toward the shrimp, please' would be preferable to 'Could you please slow down a little bit?' or 'Could you please shift more toward the shrimp?'