In 2014, Starboard Value set its sights on Darden Restaurants, the parent company of Olive Garden and Red Lobster. When Darden pushed ahead with the sale of Red Lobster despite shareholder calls to discuss it first, Jeff Smith and Starboard escalated, ultimately winning a proxy fight that replaced Darden's entire board, a watershed moment for shareholder activism. Along the way, Starboard released a sweeping presentation on how to fix the business, and one detail took on a life of its own: its critique of how Olive Garden served breadsticks. The late-night shows had a field day, but for Smith, the breadsticks were no joke. In this episode of War Stories over Board Games, he tells Institutional Investor's Julie Segal why something as small as a basket of bread revealed how far the company had drifted from its own discipline, and how Starboard made the case to shareholders that it could be trusted with the turnaround.