The Shady Side Of Olive Garden’s Menu

The breadsticks and pasta bowls aren’t the only things that are unlimited and never ending at Olive Garden. When you’re here, shady business practices are part of the family.

#OliveGarden #Restaurants #Menu

No salt in the water | 0:00
Still plenty of salt | 1:05
Secrets of the breadsticks | 2:08
So-so Italian | 2:54
Pre-prepped pasta | 3:52
Microwave management | 4:48
Carefully managed salad | 5:38
Cheese lies | 6:18
Not so fresh | 7:20
Secret ingredients | 8:26
Sneaky gluten | 9:28
Allergy ambivalence | 10:21
More allergens | 11:36

Voiceover by: Chrissy Baker

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the bread sticks imposta aren’t the only
things that are unlimited and never
ending at Olive Garden when you’re here
Shady business practices are part of the
family in 2016 the Investment Group
starboard value LP seized control of D
and restaurants the parent company of
Olive Garden to improve the quality of
the restaurant’s products and increase
profitability starboard values Financial
experts recommended that the change
should Institute an easy inexpensive and
traditional prep pration tip to make its
pasta taste better add salt to the water
at the beginning of the cooking process
even though Olive Garden purports to
offer a homemade style dining experience
they reportedly never did this before
the starboard value takeover and they
didn’t do it afterwards either salt can
rust and corrode kitchen equipment over
time and cause pitting so internal
research at Olive Garden suggested that
using salt in its pricey pots and pans
would Avid the warranties the board of
director ultimately decided that Olive
gardens’s dishes tasted just fine
without adding salt chain restaurant
food is widely understood to not be
particularly healthy Olive Garden is
especially guilty of including too much
salt in its sprawling menu despite not
including it in their pasta water
several popular favorites at the chain
contain more sodium than the United
States Department of Agriculture
recommends a person should consume over
an entire day the usda’s official
guideline on sodium intake is to limit
consumption to under 2,300 mg daily a
few Olive Garden options that exceed
this number all on their own include the
chicken parmesana the tour of Italy the
chicken marsala fetuccini and the
chicken tortillini alfredo and some
appetizers also provide more than enough
sodium for a day like the meatballs
parmesana and the spinach artichoke dip
with flatbread crisps the single
saltiest dish at Olive Garden is the
shrimp Frito misto appetizer Which packs
in two whole days worth of sodium with
5,10 milligrams if you don’t know
anything about sodium now I don’t know
what else we can do for it Olive
Garden’s widely beloved bread sticks are
easily their most famous contribution to
American Cuisine it certainly doesn’t
hurt that they come with free refills
and even though they taste magical
they’re also extremely simple to make
it’s just white bread dough shaped into
a cigar and brushed with a garlic butter
sauce that consists mostly of margarine
and garlic salt but all Garden doesn’t
actually make its most notable
concoction in house instead partnering
with commercial bakeries to prepare and
partially bake all those sticks they
arrive in semi-cooked form at each
location daily and then the staff Heats
them just before serving this is hardly
an iner of practice in the restaurant
industry but it’s still a little
disappointing when you consider how
synonymous bread sticks are with Olive
Garden Olive Garden proclaims itself to
be an Italian restaurant but it would
probably be more accurate to call it a
Americanized Italian or Italian inspired
it’s fair to say that some of its most
popular dishes aren’t exactly
authentically Mediterranean although to
be fair Olive Garden doesn’t really
claim that they are in the 2010s though
the chain attempted to position itself
as the real deal with the introduction
of several new menu items marketed as
bouret Italian dishes including the
sofat and
pachetti the former was a series of
Entre consisting of a puff pastry shell
loaded with a blend of cheese and herbs
and topped with chicken and a creamy
garlic sauce or brazed beef and a
balsamic sauce while the pasta cheddy
was an elaborate multi-layer take on
lasagna but neither of these concoctions
actually come from Italy instead both
were invented in allive Garden kitchens
and just given Italian sounding names
that food was all very salty the pasta
and noodles that form the foundations of
most Entre at Olive Garden may arrive
hot and steaming but that doesn’t mean
that they’re fresh chances are that they
were actually cooked many hours before
the average Olive Garden location
handles so many customers daily that
food prep must occur on a massive scale
we’re going to make a big spaghetti
dinner for all our friends it would take
too much time and kitchen space to boil
water for every single one of those
countless pasta orders so instead the
staff pre-cook all the pasta for the day
first thing in the morning it’s then
placed in an ice bath and transferred
into portioned bags or a massive vat
when customers order the staff then gets
to work reheating the pasta pots of
water are kept boiling all the time and
Cooks can just throw a measured portion
of pre-made noodles into the water
getting it ready for serving in just a
couple of minutes or less then it’s all
strained plated and topped with the
appropriate sauce the average Olive
Garden needs to utilize time-saving
measures to ensure that diners aren’t
kept waiting unreasonably long for their
meals the kitchens are accordingly
equipped with at least three microwaves
that can heat or cook most Foods in a
much shorter time than an oven or range
top that’s obviously not quite providing
a top level restaurant experience or one
that will make food as tasty as possible
but it is the reality to get into
specifics Olive Garden uses the
microwave to speed up cooking times for
potato items hot vegetables and some
saluces and meat portions despite
depending on the microwave the chain
attests that many of its items are
freshly prepared the same day on the
premises in including their soups and
pasta sauces the meat used in various
Entre arrives Frozen at each restaurant
and is cooked on the premises as needed
just as the complimentary bread sticks
at Olive Garden are unlimited but within
reason and subject to a strict set of
rules the pre-meal salad is also doled
out within certain parameters while it
may appear without fail that a server
plops down that giant bowl of salad it’s
all been measured and assembled based on
the number of people in the dining party
Olive Garden is stingy with the more
expensive ingredients specifically
olives tomatoes and peppers the more
people sitting at one table the more
croutons and Specialty vegetables and
toppings they’ll get in their salad they
can certainly order as many more bowls
as they want but the exact combination
of ingredients will likely always be the
same Olive Garden operates under an all
you can handle parmesan cheese policy
servers wielding white plastic shredders
will grind on a hunk to provide
customers with as little or as much salt
Tangy garnish as they want well that
remains one of the most generous and
tasty practices at the chain it’s also
something of a lie as it turns out
customers don’t really get unlimited
parmesan cheese because the cheese isn’t
actually parmesan you sit on a throne of
Lies chain wide Olive Garden uses Lotito
Romano an Italian cheese with a taste
and texture similar to parmesan what’s
the most important difference as far as
Olive Garden is concerned the lolito
Romano is much cheaper but the Lolo
Romano will do the trick in a pinch and
only someone with a sophisticated cheesy
palette would notice the difference
regardless it’s still a questionable
cost cutting measure similarly the
chicken parmesana recipe doesn’t employ
parmesan at all as it’s made with
American style
mozzarella as a signature menu item
Olive gardens’s fetuccini Alfredo is
certainly a crowd pleaser consisting
almost entirely of thick noodles a
creamy and cheesy sauce and Grilled
Chicken on top for an extra charge it’s
an extremely simple dish it’s even more
basic and easy to prepare than some
customers might realize according to
Olive Garden kitchen workers it takes
less than a minute to put together
making it an even faster dish than most
fast food but at a significantly higher
cost than a cheap Burger and Fries the
entree begins with pasta and since Olive
Garden Cooks all of its most frequently
used noodles in advance in large batches
all a cook has to do to get the
fetuccini ready is pull it out of a
holding vessel and give the right
portion a quick bath in boiling water
then it’s topped with pre-cooked alfredo
sauce altogether the total amount of
time required to make the fetuccini
Alfredo is about 20 seconds with that in
mind servers often wait to put in orders
to the kitchen to give Cooks a head
start on prepping other dishes and
ensure that everything is ready at the
same time I’m ready I’m ready I’m ready
genuine Italian food is very reliant on
flavorful sauces as is the Americanized
Italian Fair served at Olive Garden but
some of the ways that the chains
kitchens have devise those sauces are a
little disappointingly mundane across
its menu Olive Garden offers four sauces
with most options built around a
marinara or Alfredo base and then
there’s the proprietary five cheese
blend if it seems like the ladder is
part red sauce and part cream sauce
that’s because it is as it’s just the
chains Two Chief sauces mixed together
to to create something seemingly new
then there are Olive Garden’s meatballs
despite the strong Taste of pork none of
the meatball based items actually
contain it the menu mentions that the
meat sauces contain Italian sausage
which is categorically made with pork
but the meatballs instead utilize the
spices that create the Italian sausage
flavor profile while emitting actual
pork that Familiar Taste is achieved
through a mixture of Italian seasonings
mostly margarum sage and Thyme many
people avoid gluten in their diets for a
variety of reasons as pasta is primarily
made with wheat flour there aren’t a lot
of choices on the Olive Garden menu that
truly exclude gluten but the chain does
make its nutritional information
available with an online guide that
offers warnings for its customers on a
Gluten Sensitive diet the guide confirms
that the gluten-free pasta option is
made from brown rice flour and cooked in
different pots than the wheat heavy
pastas but Olive Garden also suggests
that gluten intolerant customers should
proceed at their own risk as the fine
print reads the menu items we call
Gluten Sensitive are our menu items that
are made without gluten containing
ingredients we do not claim these items
are gluten-free because we have not
chemically analyzed them to confirm if
they meet the Food and Drug
administration’s definition of
gluten-free read the small print Olive
Garden has an allergen guide available
for its customers that lists which items
contain potentially problematic elements
like Dairy eggs fish shellfish tree nuts
and peanuts only one item at the chain
contains nuts of any kind the almond
biscotti a small cookie given out with
the specialty coffees on the dessert
menu nevertheless Olive Garden may still
not be a safe place to dine for people
with nut allergies the chain once sent a
letter to a customer that ended up being
published on allergy eats the customer
service department admitted that it
couldn’t ever guarantee that its
kitchens were free of nuts while also
absolving itself of responsib ility as
an Olive Garden representative wrote
identifying allergens is a complex
process for restaurants as there may be
minuscule amounts of ingredients our
vendors may not list as you know peanuts
have been hidden in pie crusts gravies
chili spaghetti soups and cheesecakes
while none of our recipes include nuts
or peanuts we cannot say with complete
accuracy that there are no nuts or
possible cross introduction of nuts in
our restaurants stemming from our
vendors so because it can’t control and
doesn’t test everything that its vendors
provide Olive Garden doesn’t Proclaim
itself to be entirely
nutree for a while Olive Garden bread
sticks didn’t contain Sesame but to be
compliant with the faster act that went
into effect on January 1st 2023 the
restaurant altered its bread stick
recipe by adding Sesame to the flower
one stipulation of the new allergen
labeling law is that food manufacturers
have to clearly inform customers if a
product contains Sesame so rather than
run the risk of Sesame and other items
contaminating its bread sticks Olive
Garden deliberately added Sesame into
the mix that way they could definitively
lead allergic customers away after
customers noticed the recipe for one of
the Chain’s most popular items had
changed Olive Garden ended up switching
its flower suppliers by the end of 2023
Sesame free bread sticks had returned
although the Chain’s allergen guide
warns the cross-contamination could
still be possible at supplier facilities
School
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