8 Underrated Olive Garden Menu Items To Try On Your Next Visit

One of the best-known restaurant chains in the United States, Olive Garden has expanded to numerous countries, attracting eager diners with its timelessly tempting soups, salads, and breadsticks in unlimited quantities. With a wide selection of Americanized Italian dishes to round out a hearty meal, the restaurant's flavors are iconic, and regulars know exactly what to expect. But diners in the know also enjoy the fact that they can have a more active role in customizing their orders, thanks to all the different ways the menu can be modified to accommodate different cravings and creative combinations. 

With a menu full of crowd pleasers and fan favorites, Olive Garden also boasts a long list of secret menu hacks, making it hard to go wrong with any of the decadent entrées. But there's also an assortment of lesser-known menu staples, both savory and sweet, that don't get as much attention as some of the more well-known classics, and these might pleasantly surprise first-timers or seasoned regulars alike. From appetizer to entrée, drinks to dessert, here are some of the hidden gems on Olive Garden's menu. 

While soup and pasta tend to take center stage at any given Olive Garden location, chicken margherita is one of the restaurant's entrées that doesn't get as much widespread hype. Consisting of chicken breast topped with pesto and mozzarella, fresh tomatoes, and crowned with a lemon garlic sauce, this mouthwatering assortment of ingredients deserves more attention, and is a definite win for anyone who still wants to save room for breadsticks. A consistently satisfying choice that's hearty and succulent but not over-filling, this dish is something those in the know have tried to hype up. Customers themselves have attested to the fact that chicken margherita doesn't get as much attention as it could or should.

Fans of the dish have described it as underrated but also recommend it highly, and those who order it regularly also have their own hacks for amping up the wow factor. Though the dish typically comes with broccoli as an accompaniment to the chicken, one Reddit user specified that this can be substituted with any kind of pasta, adding an extra layer of can't-go-wrong decadence to heighten the chicken margherita's appeal.

When the menu leaves diners with a bit of choice paralysis, there's one dish in Olive Garden's line-up that transcends committing to only one entrée. Known as the Tour of Italy, this dish is a flight of Italian favorites, consisting of three classics: Chicken Parmigiana and Lasagna Classico, bookending a serving of Fettuccine Alfredo. Technically three entrées in one, it's the perfect choice for those who can't decide, and with its sampling of Italian flavors, it's hard to go wrong with this choice. The Tour of Italy is also an easy option to choose if you're planning to share an entrée and max out on the endless soup, salad, or breadsticks that come with a typical Olive Garden order.

While this menu item is full of classics, it remains an especially underrated choice for its potential to be modified. Those who order it regularly recommend this dish as another way to play around with the three-entrée combo for a bit of personalized variety. Technically, each of the three options in this Tour of Italy can be substituted for other items on the menu — zitti, scampi, or whatever else your taste buds are craving. This means that the Taste of Italy can function as a highly flexible entrée that's all about variety, but the classic triad without modifications is certainly worth trying too.  

There are a few things on Olive Garden's menu that stand out because they don't seem especially Italianesque. One of these is steak. Olive Garden offers a few steak dishes, but among the most underrated is the grilled sirloin. Because it might seem a bit out of place on a menu largely dedicated to Americanized Italian cuisine, many diners might be hesitant to try it, but Olive Garden's grilled sirloin remains an unexpected hit amongst those who take the gamble of ordering it.

Typically paired with a side of Fettuccine Alfredo, the grilled sirloin is a satisfying meal at a good value for what it offers. The 6 oz sirloin itself, as one diner described on Reddit, is "always so juicy and flavorful," something which surprises first-time tasters. The meat is made even more succulent with the addition of herbed butter sauce. While it may not be a conventional choice for those who have their regular pasta orders, Olive Garden's grilled sirloin, when paired with the side of pasta, is hearty, satisfyingly filling, and sumptuously savory.

Customers have deemed Olive Garden's Chicken Marsala a certifiably underrated menu item. Those in on the Marsala's secret recommend it as a lesser-known delicacy that will please anyone who enjoys chicken entrées. Diners agree that the Chicken Marsala is among the best dishes at Olive Garden — it's the Marsala sauce that has converted fans of this dish, made ultra decadent with mushrooms, cream, and Marsala wine. 

Because it remained a lesser-known and lesser-ordered item, the original Chicken Marsala on the menu was recently modified. It used to be served over a bed of fettuccine noodles, but now comes as an entrée of stuffed chicken accompanied by mashed potatoes. Though this shift disappointed many fans of the Chicken Marsala, this underrated entrée didn't go the way of the long line-up of discontinued Olive Garden menu items — fans have affirmed that it is still possible to recreate the original version by being creative with the menu. Fortunately, restaurant locations still generally have all the ingredients required to make this dish in its original iteration. Asking for substitutions under the guise of the build-your-own pasta portion of Olive Garden's menu is a sneaky way of ordering the original version.

In addition to a large selection of entrées and appetizers, Olive Garden also has an extensive drinks menu. While the chain does serve alcohol, including a selection of beers, cocktails, and especially wines, which might pair well with any of the signature pasta dishes, some of the non-alcoholic beverages have names that sound especially tantalizing. Refreshing combinations such as Bellini Peach Raspberry or Desert Pear go well with a savory meal, but these aren't quite as popular as the sweet and citrusy Strawberry Passionfruit Limonata. As a flavor that diners can't get enough of, regulars lament that this is one of the drinks on the menu that does not come with the option for unlimited refills. 

To have the best of both worlds — fruity, refreshing, and bottomless — diners have been open about sharing their creative resourcefulness. One sneaky hack reported by fans is to order Olive Garden's raspberry lemonade, to get something fairly similar in terms of flavor, and with no limit on how much you can order. Though its name might have less exotic appeal, this raspberry lemonade is well-loved in its own right, by many diners. It was even recommended by the server in Marilyn Hagerty's infamous Olive Garden review that swept the country in 2012, a testament that this beverage has been a crowd pleaser for a long time.

Though not on the official Olive Garden menu, the creamy minestrone soup is one of the chain's better-known secret menu items. Diners love ways to make Olive Garden's minestrone heartier, and this secret soup is a mix of two classics — Zuppa Toscana and regular minestrone. The combination is satisfyingly savory, warming, and full of flavor. Mixing the potatoes and creaminess of the zuppa with the tomatoes and spices of the minestrone,  fans in the know say this combination is a must-try, hearty enough to be a satisfying meal in itself.

Due to its secret status, the creamy minestrone remains inherently a bit underrated, and might not be available at all Olive Garden locations, but it's certainly worth asking the server to be sure. This soup's low-key popularity serves as a further emphasis of how flexible the Olive Garden menu really can be, making for a pleasantly interactive ordering process for those who enjoy bending the rules just a bit.

One aspect of Olive Garden's menu that often gets less attention in general is the short section dedicated to desserts. With ample entrées and sides, diners don't always have room for something sweet to top off a hearty meal. For this reason, most locations offer the convenience of desserts to go. There's a classic list of perennial options, from the decadent chocolate lasagna to the warm Italian doughnuts. But there is one dessert item which remains especially underrated because it's only available for a short period of the year — the pumpkin cheesecake is one of Olive Garden's secret weapons when it comes to sweets. 

An active participant in the fall frenzy for all things pumpkin and spice, this seasonal specialty was a pleasant surprise when it was first introduced, and has become another reason to make an extra trip to Olive Garden in the fall. While the pumpkin cheesecake is a fall favorite in its own right, some Olive Garden locations recently one-upped this recipe for an even more luxurious version: Pumpkin cookie butter cheesecake. The defining attributes of this ultra-decadent dessert are a layer of classic cheesecake atop a layer of pumpkin cheesecake, set in a graham cracker cookie crust with drizzles of caramel and cookie butter on top. This mouthwatering delicacy was such a hit after its first season that the chain brought it back again in 2025. Fans are hopeful that this dessert will continue to make a regular, albeit seasonal, appearance.

As the most legendary item on the menu, Olive Garden's breadsticks remain a major draw for many diners, both regulars and first-timers. Purists might prefer these buttery breadsticks in their natural state, but as they come in bottomless baskets, there's ample opportunity to make use of their dipping potential. While they're a convenient way to sop up any leftover sauce from an entrée, there's one underrated way of ensuring no limit to the sauces available — diners can simply order a variety of sauces separately for the express purpose of dipping breadsticks, with the typical trifecta being Alfredo, marinara, and five cheese marinara. This is one crowd-pleasing appetizer that provides a sampling of all the savory flavors the restaurant has to offer, and gives diners the variety they don't find if they pick just one entrée. 

In addition to simply ordering sauces dedicated to breadsticks, diners have come up with another creative way to merge the two. A clever trick is to fill Olive Garden breadsticks with sauce, rather than simply dipping them. But no matter the method, it's the variety and savoriness that really count. Your taste buds won't be mad about that.