9 Worst Chain Restaurant Pasta Dishes, According To Reviews

Pasta dishes are a little harder to get right than you might think. Although most of them don't need a lot of ingredients or take that long to make (plenty of pasta recipes can be ready in about half an hour), what they do need is attention to detail and a fair bit of care. When that goes out of the window, pasta dishes can quickly become sloppy, mushy, tasteless, and above all, very disappointing — and sadly, that can happen a lot in chain restaurants. Many chains just don't have the same investment in their pasta as you'd find in a smaller restaurant, and honestly? With the amount of bad pasta dishes out there, it really shows.

Some chain restaurants, though, are downright terrible. Places like Applebee's and Ruby Tuesday may be known for their relaxed nature, affordability, and wide range of options, but specific pasta dishes on their menu have disappointed customers time and time again. Even restaurants that specialize in pasta or Italian-inspired cuisine, like Fazoli's or Olive Garden, have certain pastas that are almost tragic. Well, we decided that it was time to help customers stop making the wrong order. Drawing from customer reviews left in the last year, we rounded up the worst chain restaurant pasta dishes out there. Save your money, folks!

A good chicken Alfredo needs a certain amount of moisture. This pasta-protein combo shouldn't be swimming in sauce, but it should have enough of it for each noodle to be slick and well-coated, and so that you don't have to reach for a glass of water after each mouthful. Sadly, if you order the Classic Broccoli Chicken Alfredo from Applebee's, you're going to end up with a pasta that almost feels like it has no sauce whatsoever. Multiple customers have pointed out that this Alfredo from Applebee's is bizarrely dry, leading people to have to order extra sauce on the side, and that extra sauce isn't even enough to give it the moisture needed. Not just that, but you have to pay for that sauce. You shouldn't even have to do that in the first place — the pasta should have enough moisture and flavor already.

As well as this, it seems that Applebee's Classic Broccoli Chicken Alfredo has some consistency issues, which makes ordering it a little risky. Customers have noted that this dish can come with barely any broccoli, despite it being, well, a broccoli Alfredo. The chicken can also be undercooked, making it not just unpleasant but risky to eat. We think this one's a skip, folks.

Panera Bread's fall from grace over the last few years has been pretty spectacular, and nowhere can it be seen more vividly than in the deteriorating quality of its food. There was once a time when Panera's food was fresh, tasty, and affordable, but now, it's often none of those things. Need proof of this? Check out the fall-off of its Mac and Cheese. This Panera menu item used to be a favorite, but more recently, customers have flagged its poor flavor and preparation time and time again as a major issue, speaking of cold bowls and old-tasting pasta. Yuck.

Not only that, but people increasingly feel that they're paying a premium price for an inferior product, with one person on Reddit saying that the Panera Bread Mac and Cheese is "no better than the prepared stuff at the grocery store for less than half the price." Plus, as Panera's charging a lot of cash for its Mac and Cheese, it really should be able to do a lot better than just pulling out plastic containers and heating them up in-store — but according to customers who've seen their food prepared, that's exactly how they make it. None of this is particularly making us want to go to Panera any time soon.

There are a lot of reasons to like Ruby Tuesday, but its Chicken and Broccoli Pasta isn't one of them. This menu item falls short of what we expect a pasta dish to be, and it's inconsistent at best, incompetent at worst. Let's start with what's really bad: The sauce. Customers have noted in reviews that the Parmesan cream sauce that this pasta comes in has a pretty gross flavor. "Chicken broc pasta tastes like they mixed the sauce with some type of salad dressing or something, it's disgusting," said a diner on Google Reviews, before adding, "It isn't even edible." Yikes.

That's if you even get any sauce. Other Ruby Tuesday patrons have complained that their Chicken and Broccoli Pasta is totally dry, while others still have mentioned a lack of taste in the whole dish (which we assume is because it was undersauced — you're not going to forget that salad dressing flavor in a hurry). Elsewhere, this pasta dish can arrive at the table with barely any chicken on it, which is a real disappointment when you're hungry and when you're spending your hard-earned cash. Overall, it's a miss.

An Italian chain should surely be able to get a chicken Alfredo right, shouldn't it? We don't think anyone's told Fazoli's that. The restaurant's chicken Alfredo has received some disastrous reviews from customers, who have repeatedly flagged that this dish just isn't up to scratch. The main issue? It can be as dry as a bone, and both the pasta and the chicken can lack any moisture or juiciness whatsoever. People have also noted that this dryness is accompanied by an unpleasant taste that seems both salty and overly processed. One customer on Grubhub noted that the "Alfredo sauce tasted like it came from a jar." That's a damning indictment of an Italian restaurant if ever we heard one.

All this wouldn't be too bad if the chicken Alfredo felt reasonably priced (although we'd still be a bit annoyed with it all, even if we were paying just a few dollars). Sadly, it isn't. Customers have been left feeling stung by the bill when ordering it, and with the sense that it's absolutely not worth the money. At this point, the only thing worth ordering at Fazoli's might be the free bread.

So most people know by now that Olive Garden isn't the place you go to get authentic Italian food. That said, it really should be a little better at making a lasagna. Its Lasagna Classico is almost notoriously bad, and customers who've ordered it have repeatedly been left deeply disappointed with the dish. Almost everything is wrong with it: The red sauce has barely any flavor, while the cheese is significantly lacking, and the whole thing is completely overpowered by the meat inside it. Balance is perhaps the most important element of a lasagna, and when every element is missing the mark, that balance is completely nonexistent.

Amazingly, that may not be the worst thing about the Lasagna Classico. Numerous customers have pointed out that this dish lacks a real lack of freshness, and in perhaps the ultimate insult to Olive Garden, have compared it to microwave lasagna. "The Lasagna was no better than a frozen Stouffers," said one person on Reddit, while simultaneously putting the final nail in the coffin on this pasta dish. If you were thinking of ordering it, then you have more than enough reason not to now.

In recent times, Brio Italian Grille has been back on the comeback trail, and we love it when a restaurant comes back from the brink, folks. However, if it wants to keep that good run going, then it really needs to address its spaghetti bolognese. The strength of feeling around this Brio dish is pretty wild, and some customers have not held back on their opinions of it at all. "The bolognese was an utter joke. Laughable. Embarrassing. Essentially Hamburger Helper on cheap overcooked pasta," said one person on Yelp in an astonishingly honest review, before mentioning that they sent the dish back. Another reviewer over on Google said that "This was the WORST bolognese I've ever had," before pointing out that while the flavor was okay, the dish felt as though it had been sitting out for hours.

In other reviews, customers have lamented the lack of flavor in their spaghetti bolognese, or have otherwise mentioned that it feels unbalanced. Portions also seem to be an issue at Brio, with some people saying that their bolognese was tiny, or else had barely any meat on it whatsoever. All in all, it seems that this dish is best avoided.

As a steak restaurant, Outback Steakhouse isn't the kind of place that you usually go to for pasta. That said, if you're gonna put pasta on the menu, you should make sure that you're getting it right. Unfortunately, when it comes to its Queensland Chicken & Shrimp Pasta, it really doesn't. Customers have flagged repeated issues with this dish, from its flavor to its price, which makes it a pretty unappetizing prospect.

Let's talk about that flavor. The Queensland Chicken & Shrimp Pasta seems to suffer from a sodium problem, with customers highlighting its overly salty taste. Its sauce, meanwhile, doesn't quite nail the Alfredo flavor advertised: One diner on Google Reviews said, "The Alfredo pasta tasted like a macaroni and cheese dish instead." The pasta has been named and shamed for its chewiness, while the chicken is tough and past its prime. You get all this while paying a pretty hefty price for the pasta dish itself — Outback Steakhouse isn't super expensive, but nor is it cheap. Maybe it should stick to steak after all.

If you're expecting Domino's (which was originally called something else) to make Michelin-star-worthy pasta, then you're probably going to be disappointed. It's a takeout pizza chain, people, it's not going to be able to produce magic. However, what it should be able to do is make a better Chicken Alfredo Pasta than the one it's serving. This pasta dish has been sharply criticized for its flavor and for its shoddy presentation by multiple customers, who can't help but feel as though they're being cheated when ordering it.

The main flavor issue lies in the sauce. Customers have said that their Chicken Alfredo Pasta has a plasticky taste that kinda ruins the whole thing. This seems to be a fairly recent development, and it could well be the case that Domino's has started using a different supplier for its sauce, but it could just be that it's gone downhill. What's more, the portion size of Domino's Chicken Alfredo Pasta is almost laughable, with barely any actual pasta or chicken for what you're paying. It's a shame, because this pasta could be a great alternative to its pizza, or else a worthy side dish. As it stands, though, it's just a waste of money.

The joy of ordering a good mac and cheese can't be beaten — unless you're getting it with an equally good steak. Well, someone needs to tell Texas Roadhouse that if it wants its customers to experience that happiness, then it needs to address its Mac and Cheese, fast. Texas Roadhouse's mac and cheese is a rare loss for the chain, which otherwise serves food that's pretty on-point. "Texas Roadhouse had the worst mac and cheese," said one person on Reddit. "I refuse to even order it when I go out to places because I know it is going to be bad." Talk about a bad review, huh?

The issue with this mac and cheese seems to be a total lack of care. On the flavor front, it's lacking, with an indistinct taste that has no punch from the cheese at all. Then there's the preparation of it all. It appears that the process for making mac and cheese in Texas Roadhouse kitchens is simply to take cooked noodles and pour over a dollop of mac and cheese sauce. However, the problem is that the chefs often don't see fit to mix the two, leaving customers with a turgid lump of congealed sauce on bare noodles, and with no flavor or texture balance to be seen anywhere. The whole thing is ... pretty bad, honestly.

To find the worst chain restaurant pasta dishes out there, we first had to make sure we were working with the most recent data possible, and that it wasn't concentrated on one specific review site or platform. So, we went wide, and we went recent. We worked only with reviews left in the last year (at time of writing), and looked at sites like Yelp, Google Reviews, Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit to get a wide swathe of current customer opinions. Review sites can often skew particularly positive (like Google Reviews) or negative (like Yelp or Reddit), and so getting opinions across the board allowed us to make sure that we were finding dishes that were genuinely bad.

Then, we looked at exactly why these pasta dishes missed the mark so much. A lot of the time, it was due to a lack of care in the individual components of the dish, or a lack of harmony: Many pastas suffered from dryness, or from one or two ingredients feeling shoddily prepared. We also considered when these dishes felt overpriced, with small portion sizes or overly high price points. Ultimately, though, it all came down to flavor. If everyone agreed that the dish just didn't taste good, it earned a spot.