The Ultimate Ranking Of Olive Garden's Pasta Offerings
There is a reason that Olive Garden is a popular destination for Italian-themed cuisine in America. The food is fast, convenient, affordable, and abundant. Between the seemingly endless breadsticks, soup, salad, and myriad pasta entrées, a family of four can enjoy a night out without breaking the bank.
And while there are a handful of specialty entrée items on the menu, the truth is that at Olive Garden, pasta is king. With a seemingly endless parade of sauces, types of noodles, and proteins, even the most discerning palate can find something on the menu to fill up on.
That said, there are some staple pasta dishes from which all the others are fashioned. We wanted to sample these standards, rate them, and rank them from least to most favorite. We will note the visual appeal, texture, and flavor. Where applicable, we will indicate pertinent nutritional information and any upgrades you can make. We think you will be as surprised by the results as we were.
7. Spaghetti with Marinara
A good marinara sauce is a thing of beauty when well executed. For this reason, we felt it was our duty to start with the most basic pasta dish on the Olive Garden menu. Not unsurprisingly, it landed in our bottom spot, not because there was anything inherently wrong with it. It's only because many other dishes had a more pronounced flavor.
A good marinara should highlight fresh tomatoes without muting their natural acidity. It should be balanced in salinity, have a hint of sweetness but not be overly sugary, and have some complexity in flavor conferred by onions, garlic, oregano, and basil. While this marinara was tomato-forward and not overly sweetened, it also was rather unremarkable in flavor. It lacked the nuance of a stellar marinara.
We also felt that the pasta was on the verge of being overcooked. Though some people don't like pasta cooked al dente, we do. Mushy pasta tends to become easily overwhelmed by the sauce. Though this wasn't a heavy sauce, it was dense enough to weigh down the noodles. Ultimately, if you want to eat plain spaghetti with marinara, you could probably do better at home at half the cost using a decent jarred pasta sauce.
6. Cheese Ravioli
Next on our list is the cheese ravioli, which we had high hopes for as we love ravioli. The Olive Garden menu indicates this dish is made with "a blend of indulgent Italian cheeses." Though it does not specify which cheeses, we can surmise there was ricotta, parmesan, romano, and perhaps asiago. The ravioli were solid, with a flavorful filling and decent al dente pasta. Our biggest beef was that they were obscenely large, which made them somewhat indelicate.
These were offered with our choice of sauce. We opted for the five-cheese marinara sticking with the fromage theme, which may have been a mistake. Again, we have no idea which cheeses were in the marinara, but likely they were similar to the ravioli filling. This sauce was heavy-handed on the sugar, throwing the balance off between the salty cheese and the tomatoes. It also was a bit underseasoned.
Though the initial visual appeal of this dish was impressive, the sheer amount of mozzarella on top of the ravioli and sauce was overkill. The dish was good, but it had some flaws that we could not look past. If we try it again, we will likely opt for a different sauce to help balance the quantity of cheese, perhaps the plain marinara or the meat sauce.
5. Spaghetti with Meat Sauce
Similarly to the marinara, we wanted to sample the meat sauce, as it is a staple of any Italian-themed restaurant. The menu indicates this sauce is prepared using pan-seared ground beef and Italian sausage, presumably added to the house marinara. The Italian sausage dominated this meat sauce. If there was beef in it, we did not taste it. That said, it had a decent texture and was not overly greasy. This was a thicker sauce with some chunks of tomato in it.
Our only beef, which wasn't the lack of it, was that the sauce was a bit under-seasoned. We generally like sausage that is a bit more spicy and has strong notes of fenugreek in it. That is our preference, and when a restaurant is trying to accommodate a wider swath of the population, under-seasoning is a better choice than overseasoning.
Yet again, the pasta was somewhat overcooked, although not quite so as the spaghetti with marinara was. The meat sauce coated the noodles well and didn't drown them. With some freshly grated cheese on top, this was a solid dish. As with the marinara, you could recreate this at home with a far superior jarred meat sauce more economically.
4. Fettuccine Alfredo
Fettuccine Alfredo is one of those comfort foods that virtually everyone enjoys unless you are lactose intolerant. It is also a dish that consistently performs well on Olive Garden's menu. We can say that we were not disappointed. This was a well-executed dish, if not just a bit boring. We ordered it plain without any toppings to assess the quality of the sauce and the noodles. You can get it with meatballs, sausage, mushrooms, broccoli, shrimp, or chicken to round out the meal. This dish is also a bit of a belly bomb at 1310 calories per serving without toppings added.
As far as the sauce itself, it had a nice texture that wasn't pasty or thick, a common mistake with Alfredo. It coated the fettuccine well, which was just a bit overcooked, and wasn't oily or greasy. We did feel that it was a bit overly milky and lacked cheese. It almost tasted like a bechamel sauce with some cheese added rather than a classic Alfredo. It also could have benefitted from some pepper and a hint of freshly grated nutmeg.
3. Ravioli Carbonara
The Ravioli Carbonara was one of the more appealing-looking dishes we sampled. The pillowy ravioli come garnished with a creamy sauce, bacon, and a blend of cheese that gets lightly broiled for a slightly browned crust. These ravioli were more delicate than the others we sampled, although still obscenely large. The filling was slightly underseasoned, but because the rest of the dish had ample salinity, this was not a deal breaker.
Our only complaint, which is more of a technicality, is that this is not a carbonara sauce. An authentic carbonara is a delicate, simple sauce made with guanciale, eggs, and Pecorino Romano cheese. The egg sauce is tossed with hot noodles and binding with the cheese to delicately coat the pasta, which is classically spaghetti. This was an Alfredo-like sauce with crumbled bacon bits and cheese on ravioli.
Setting aside the issues with the name of this dish, it was a flavorful item. At 1,230 calories, it was a substantial portion that could easily feed two people. We cannot imagine adding a topping like grilled or fried chicken or shrimp. You get your money's worth with this menu item, garnering it the third spot on our list.
2. Five Cheese Ziti Al Forno
The Five Cheese Ziti Al Forno was the most elegant looking of the pasta dishes we sampled. For reference, al forno means to the oven, in Italian. This culinary style is popular in Southern Italy, where many dishes are finished in a wood-fired oven. This baked ziti dish did not get baked in a wood-fired oven, but it did have a lovely crust. It was perfectly browned and garnished with fresh chopped parsley.
Yet again, we aren't sure what the cheeses were on this ziti, though they likely included parmesan, Romano, and asiago. Unlike the Cheese Ravioli, this dish was not overwhelmed with mozzarella. Instead, the cheeses were well-balanced, melted, and oozy.
The ziti pasta was overcooked, but that is easy to do when baking pasta. To obtain the ideal pasta texture in an al forno dish, you must cook the noodles very al dente before baking them to accommodate the extra cooking time and any steam or moisture they will take on in the oven. And like some other dishes, we felt this was a tad underseasoned, but not overly so. Overall, this was a flavorful dish we could see ordering again, and the portion size is ample enough to split a plate.
1. Lasagna Classico
We would have been remiss in not ordering the Lasagna Classico to round out our tasting of pasta dishes at Olive Garden. On first impression, if you were hoping to get what you saw on the menu, you would be dismayed. The plating of this dish was a hot mess, quite literally. Lasagna requires adequate time to set before being plated to hold its layers together. This one was plated before it could pull together, making it a bit sloshy, with some layers of filling oozing away from the lasagna noodles.
Visual appeal aside, the flavor and texture of this lasagna was good. The meat sauce-to-pasta ratio was well-balanced, and the ricotta layer was flavorful. We did feel that it lacked a bit of seasoning, but that has been a common theme with all the dishes we sampled.
If you are a lasagna purist, you will note that this recipe lacks spinach, and there is usually a bit more of a distinct meat layer than was included. Overall, however, this was the most complex menu item we tasted. It was made in-house and tasted fresh. Again, the portion size was plentiful and would either feed two or you'd likely have enough to take home for leftovers, especially if you've filled up on those yummy breadsticks.