I’ve never had Olive Garden.

Until now.

Seeing the advertisements showcasing the various bread and pasta dishes covered in fragrant Italian herbs and spices while tossed with olive oil pointed me towards one question: Was the food worth the hype?

Appetizers

Mozzarella Sticks 8/10

The mozzarella sticks were crispy and crunchy on the outside, and the stretch of the cheese pull on the inside contrasted them well. The mozzarella tasted just the right amount of salty flavor, and both the outside and the inside exuded a savory warmness.

A critique of mine would be to incorporate stronger seasoning to make the sticks taste more unique. However, Olive Garden isn’t a high-class restaurant, so doing this may be difficult.

After evaluating this appetizer, I would say the mozzarella sticks continued to be one of the better-tasting dishes throughout my whole experience. I would definitely order them next time I go to Olive Garden.

Calamari 6/10

The calamari exhibited a crisp outer layer, but not as much as the mozzarella. They also became soggy quickly, and the squid was weirdly soft. I’m pretty sure the squid was overcooked, and I’d rather eat firmer calamari.

However, I found the calamari better seasoned than the mozzarella sticks, and adding lemon, marinara sauce and Thousand Island dressing helped accentuate the flavor even more.

To compare both appetizers, flavor was exuded from both the crispy outside and cheesy inside in the mozzarella sticks, while the calamari’s outside exhibited stronger flavor with a meek inside.

Breadsticks 5/10

I feel like whenever I hear about or see Olive Garden on social media, the endless breadsticks are always mentioned and how revolutionary they are. However, I was rather disappointed when I took the first bite since they smelled so good.

The delightful buttery smell is definitely better than the taste and texture, which I found bland and hard respectively. The outside crust was salted nicely, but the dish became more bland as I bit deeper.

In general, this dish isn’t terrible. Maybe the lower-ranking quality is due to the fact that you can order as many breadsticks as you want.

House Salad 2/10

This salad looked dry right off the bat, even though it had dressing on it. The dressing was slightly sour and the lettuce had a bitter taste. This flavor combination was highly unappealing.

There were a lot of ingredients inside the salad like crouton, onions, carrots and peppers, so the dish does have a good variety of things. However, all of these items didn’t really mesh well together and made for an overall awkward taste.

Something I know that would have allowed me to like this dish better is the addition of cheese. Yes, the waitress grated cheese on top, but there wasn’t enough to my liking. I feel like salad can often be easily saved by the flavor of the dairy product.

Main Dishes

Spaghetti and Meatballs 6/10

This pasta is pretty bland. It kind of just tastes like tomatoes and meat. The meatballs taste like they have no added spices; it just tastes like cooked beef. The noodles are cooked slightly al dente. There’s nothing special about this dish. It literally just tastes like homemade spaghetti. I would say my tastebuds were definitely not lighting up eating this.

This doesn’t insinuate that the dish tastes bad, it’s simply “meh.” However, I did like this more than some of the other dishes.

Five Cheese Ziti al Forno 5/10

At first bite, I could really taste that there were five cheeses based on the strength of the flavor. However, there’s a heavily prevalent cheddar taste, which makes the pasta taste cheap. I don’t necessarily prefer this taste, but I still love cheese making this dish more bearable.

Perhaps I should have considered this pasta a six-cheese pasta because we sprinkled parmesan on top when we were served. By the time I took a bite of this dish, the noodles became overcooked because I waited too long. I’m unsure if the noodles were al dente before I ate some, like rigatoni is supposed to feel.

Shrimp Fettuccine Alfredo 7.5/10

So far, I like this pasta the best. I liked the flavor more than the last two I tried because the Alfredo flavor is better in my personal opinion. The flavor was also richer than the five-cheese pasta.

The shrimp tasted like regular shrimp, nothing special. However, they were a little soft; too soft for my liking. This is what made me rate this dish just a seven because I feel like the shrimp just didn’t go with the pasta well.

Ravioli Carbonara 2.5/10

I was expecting to like this pasta the most, but I actually don’t like it at all. The taste quality is so low and it only really tastes like bacon.
Ravioli filling usually has a granulated texture, but the contents inside this ravioli was way too grainy. The filling was also very liquid and the outside noodle was very stiff. This is what made this dish the hardest to eat. The inside also had no flavor other than a slight creamy taste.

It almost tasted like salt is added to make up for the lack of flavor throughout the whole dish. The dish was too salty which was elevated by the bacon.

Dessert

Chocolate Lasagna 9/10

After tasting some decent and disgusting dishes, this dessert made a comeback for the restaurant. At first, I thought this dish was going to be a lot weirder because the word “lasagna” is in it, but it was just a regular tuxedo cake.

What makes me like this cake is that it’s not too sweet. Oftentimes, chocolate cakes, cupcakes and other things of the sort are too rich for me and I end up feeling sweet-sick. However with this cake, I didn’t experience that.

The texture was actually decently moist and the flavor of the mousse tasted delightful. If I go to Olive Garden again, I will most definitely order this again.

Conclusion

To be completely honest, Olive Garden was not as unappetizing as I thought it would be. I think this restaurant is a solid choice when you want to pay less but still leave with a full stomach. There are definitely different Italian places I would rather eat, but if someone asked to go to Olive Garden for a quick bite, I wouldn’t say no.