Olive Garden Just Ghosted Mild: New Calabrian Chili Dishes Don't Do Demure

This summer, Olive Garden is turning up the heat with some limited-time menu items featuring a special pepper: Calabrian chili peppers. As one of the most popular restaurant chains in the country, Olive Garden's menu evolves regularly over the years, adapting to trends and diners' tastes. As part of that, Olive Garden sometimes introduces limited-time and seasonal menu items like the recently launched dishes featuring Calabrian chili peppers. 

Calabrian chili, as the name indicates, is a pepper from the Calabria region in Southwestern Italy. These peppers are usually medium-hot with a little sweetness and tartness that give them a bright flavor. This particular chili pepper is beloved by many famous chefs. For example, it's Bobby Flay's favorite pepper, and a secret ingredient in Giada De Laurentiis' tomato sauce. 

From June 1 through July 19 (what Olive Garden dubs the Calabrian Summer), four dishes made using Calabrian chili peppers will be available, and they aren't playing around with the spice. Read our thoughts about these boldly flavored dishes below.

I personally went to an Olive Garden near me to sample the new Calabrian chili dishes and see if they're worth checking out. I visited the Olive Garden located on Venice Blvd. in Los Angeles and tried all four Calabrian chili dishes with a friend. 

While one of the pasta dishes has been available on the menu for a few months now, it's part of Olive Garden's "Calabrian Summer" promotion, so I included it in this tasting. I judged the dishes based on the flavor of the sauce as well as the texture of the different components and how well they were prepared.

This addition to Olive Garden's appetizers lineup incorporates Calabrian chili peppers into a trending condiment: hot honey. The dish consists of bite-sized pieces of chicken that are battered, deep-fried, and coated in hot honey with Calabrian chili peppers. It's served with ranch dressing for dipping to help tone down the heat.

You certainly can't go wrong with fried chicken, and this is currently Olive Garden's only fried chicken appetizer. After tasting this, though, I hope the chain keeps a fried chicken appetizer on the menu in some form. The chicken meat itself was tender, and the batter was nice and crunchy without being too thick. 

The hot honey has a noticeable spiciness, which is tempered by the sweetness of the honey itself. If that's still too spicy for you, there's the ranch dressing to cool it down further. These chicken bites are actually rather addictive. Priced at $12.49, it's definitely a good appetizer to order for the table to share. 

The Calabrian Steak & Shrimp Bucatini is actually the pasta that started the whole Calabrian Summer special. This dish was first introduced as a limited-time special in the summer of 2025. According to my server, enough customers complained when it was taken off the menu that Olive Garden decided to put it on the core menu a few months later.

For those not familiar, bucatini pasta is a long pasta resembling spaghetti, except it is hollow in the middle. The pasta had a nice texture, and the sauce was spicy yet creamy; it had a bold flavor. The shrimp was also nicely cooked. 

My only complaint was that the steak was cooked to a medium temperature by default, which is not my preferred temperature. Thankfully, though, it was still tender. It was the most expensive of the Calabrian chili dishes at $28.29. Fortunately, you do get a generous amount of steak and shrimp with it. 

The new pasta additions for the summer are both varieties of spicy rigatoni. First up is the Spicy Chicken & Peppers Rigatoni. The rigatoni is tossed in almost the same sauce as the Calabrian steak and shrimp bucatini, except that when it's sautéed, cheese is added. The cheese addition makes the sauce creamier, but you can still taste the heat from the Calabrian chili peppers, and it doesn't taste as heavy or as rich as Alfredo sauce. 

This rigatoni is also sautéed with red and green bell peppers and topped with slices of grilled chicken breast. Grilled chicken breast is normally not my go-to order as it is often dry, but thankfully, that was not the case here. The pasta itself was also al dente. 

This pasta was priced at $21.49. Like the classic pasta dishes at Olive Garden, all the Calabrian chili pasta orders also come with unlimited breadsticks and soup or salad.

This one is pretty much the same pasta as the chicken version above, except that it's made using sausage instead. Both dishes are tossed with the spicy and creamy Calabrian chili sauce with a blend of Italian cheeses and served with red and green bell peppers. Personally, I enjoy this better than the chicken version, as I like Italian sausages. 

The Italian sausage itself already has a bit of a kick, so this pasta is a little spicier than the version made using chicken. I don't think it's overly hot, unless you're very sensitive to spice (if you are, just wash it down with some frozen margarita). Because the sausage is fairly soft, the bell peppers end up adding a nice textural contrast to the dish with their crunch. The spicy sausage rigatoni was quite a bit cheaper than the spicy chicken rigatoni at $15.99. 

As of June 1, the Calabrian chili specials are available at all Olive Garden locations. The dishes are available for a limited time only — until July 19, to be exact — so plan your visit soon. Then again, limited-time specials that do well have been known to reappear on the menu, so don't lose hope on your favorite. 

The nutritional information on each of the dishes is as follows: Calabrian Hot Honey Chicken Bites: 980 calories (+290 for the ranch dressing); Calabrian Steak & Shrimp Bucatini: 1,229 calories; Spicy Sausage & Peppers Rigatoni: 1,630 calories; and Spicy Chicken & Peppers Rigatoni: 1,420 calories.