Olive Garden Vs Carrabba's: Which Is The Better Italian Chain Restaurant?

Olive Garden and Carrabba's Italian Grill, two of the largest Italian chains in the United States, have a lot in common. Both restaurants are a great place to get a laid-back, budget-friendly dinner with family and friends; both will stuff you full of freshly baked bread before your meal even arrives at your table; both will gladly pack up an entire Italian meal and hand it to you through the driver's side window so you don't even have to get out of your car.

But, despite all their similarities, these two casual Italian eateries are also very different. If you're fortunate enough to have a choice between them, which should you go to? We've got everything you need to know to decide which is better, whether you're craving cocktails, appetizers, or a full three-course date night dinner for two, and the winning restaurant just might surprise you.

When you sit down at a restaurant for dinner, it's almost expected that you'll get something complimentary to stave off the hanger while you wait for your meal. Some restaurants, including Olive Garden and Carrabba's, get more recognition for their free bread selection than any of their signature dishes. Admittedly, choosing the better bread between these two restaurants is like choosing your favorite child. Both restaurants bake their bread fresh in-house and deliver it piping hot to your table, and both will keep it coming for as long as you keep asking for it. And if you happen to fill up on bread before your entree reaches the table, well, that's what doggie bags are for.

At Carrabba's, you get a sliced loaf of classic Italian bread — crispy on the outside, soft and squishy on the inside, while Olive Garden brings you a basket of golden, seasoned breadsticks. It's almost too close to call, but Olive Garden's breadsticks have set the standard for restaurants everywhere. That sensational seasoning on top — a simple mix of garlic and salt — is so addictive that we can't help but compare every other restaurant's bread offering to it.

One thing Carrabba's does have in its favor is the dipping oil, served with a blend of herbs and spices. It's so good you could dip any old bread into it, and it would blow your mind. But we're only talking about the bread here, and based on the bread alone, Olive Garden wins this one.

Dining out is great and all, but sometimes you need a delicious meal that doesn't make you change out of sweatpants or corral the kids. Both Carrabba's and Olive Garden have curbside carryout, so you can get almost anything on the menu to go without ever taking off your bunny slippers. But Carrabba's benefits from a broader selection of beverages that you can bring home.

Though the two chains' carryout menus include the usual suspects of iced tea, lemonade, and a variety of sodas, you can also get wine and beer at Olive Garden. The beer options include domestic and import varieties, but most of the wine is grocery store quality at twice the price. What tips the scales in Carrabba's favor is its broader (and better) selection of beverages, including blackberry, peach, and red sangria pitchers available for carryout. Note, however, that the availability of alcohol to go depends on location, as laws can vary by state and locality.

For some folks, no dining experience is complete without sipping a perfectly-paired cocktail. Both Carrabba's and Olive Garden offer Italian twists on classic cocktails. Carrabba's stand-out selections include the Sangria-Rita, with house-made red sangria, fresh lemon sour, and reposado tequila, and the sparkling Tuscan lemonade, with vodka, limoncello, basil syrup, and fresh lemon juice. But Olive Garden has equally delicious options, like the Italian rum punch made with rum, amaretto, strawberry, and passionfruit, and the strawberry limoncello margarita.

The choice between the cocktail collections at these two restaurants is almost a toss-up. The quality and originality of both restaurants' cocktails are about equal, but Olive Garden's menu has slightly more options than Carrabba's. That is, unless you count Carrabba's seasonal cocktail offerings, like the Sicilian bourbon sour, made with amaretto and blood orange sour, and the dessert-friendly Café Boom-Boom, made with coffee, Kahlúa, Irish creme, and orange liqueur. But since those are only available for a limited time, we have to give the point to Olive Garden.

Some dishes, like chicken Parmesan and lasagna, are expected to be on the menu at any Italian restaurant, and both Olive Garden and Carrabba's have those. But beyond that, the menus at these two restaurants are actually very different.

Olive Garden, which bills itself as an "Italian-inspired" restaurant, according to The Wall Street Journal, rather than an "authentic Italian" one, has a very pasta-centric menu, with only three pasta-less entrees — grilled chicken margherita, herb-grilled salmon, and a 6-ounce sirloin. Meanwhile, Carrabba's Italian Grill, as the name suggests, offers more grilled meat entrees, like chicken, veal, steak, and chops. That's because the menu inspiration at Carrabba's comes from the founders' family recipes, a fusion of flavors from their Sicilian ancestors and Texas traditions from where they settled on the Gulf Coast in the late 1800s.

As a result, Carrabba's has more meat and fish dishes combined than pasta dishes on its menu, unlike Olive Garden. But if pasta's what you're craving, you can get fettuccine Alfredo or penne pomodoro as a side dish with any of the meat and seafood entrees, too.

Since Olive Garden's menu is almost entirely made up of pasta dishes, you would think that they would be prepared well. Sadly, that's not the case. Olive Garden commits a number of sins with its pasta that are, for some people, unforgivable. For one thing, Olive Garden doesn't salt its pasta water because it makes its pasta boilers wear out too quickly. The pasta sauces contain plenty of salt to compensate, but salting the water is the only way to get flavor into the noodles. No matter what sauce you put on top of it, it's hard to ignore the bed of boring, bland noodles underneath. If that's not bad enough, Olive Garden's pasta is always cooked past al dente.

The pasta at Carrabba's, on the other hand, is prepared exactly as centuries of Italian tradition demand. The noodles are well-seasoned because the cooks salt the water, and they cook it al dente, just the way Italian chefs say it should be done. Instead of an overly salty sauce on top of a heap of flavorless noodles, Carrabba's pasta dishes are flavorful through and through.

At Olive Garden, you generally get your choice of three standard seating options — table, booth, or bar — and since that's how it is at most casual dine-in restaurants, you've probably never thought twice about it. But at Carrabba's, there's an extra special fourth seating option — the kitchen counter. There, you can watch the chefs in the kitchen while they prepare meals for the whole house from your perch on a comfortable bar stool.

Lots of restaurants have open kitchens, allowing guests to take a peek behind the curtain and see what goes on behind the scenes. But at Carrabba's, it's more than just an entertaining spectacle — the chefs will actually engage with you, bringing you samples of other dishes throughout your meal. A Harvard study has shown that this kind of interaction between the kitchen and guests actually makes the food tastier, and best of all, you can usually snag a seat at the Kitchen Counter even when there's a long wait for a table, so this is a win for Carrabba's in more ways than one.

When you're craving a rich, hearty Italian meal and don't want to cook it yourself, there are only so many places you can go without breaking the bank. With over 900 locations and still growing — including at least one in all 50 states, over 100 in Texas, and several around the world, according to Scrapehero – wherever you are, there's probably an Olive Garden within a short drive.

Even if you would rather go to a Carrabba's, you might have to drive quite a distance to get to one. Carrabba's has a little more than 200 locations, and there are a handful of states with none at all, including California, where Olive Garden has the second most locations. So you might have to visit a Carrabba's on your travels, and the best state for that is Florida, where there are almost as many Carrabba's restaurants as there are Olive Gardens.

Olive Garden and Carrabba's Italian Grill both offer diners excellent value with low-priced, satisfying entrees. Though these two restaurants have surprisingly little overlap on their menus, their comparable dishes are priced about the same. For example, Carrabba's lasagne and Olive Garden's lasagna are within the same price range, and Carrabba's chicken Parmesan is just a couple of dollars more than Olive Garden's chicken Parmigiana.

But what really makes a difference in the value of these two restaurants are the freebies and special offers. Olive Garden has unlimited breadsticks and salad every single day, whether you get one entree or order a three-course meal, and while Carrabba's will give you all the bread you want, if you want more than just a small side salad with your meal, you'll have to pay full price for it. On top of that, Olive Garden occasionally has limited-time events like the Never-Ending Pasta Bowl, where you can have all the pasta you can eat in a few dozen combinations for under $15 and $6 take-home entrees when you dine in. 

Carrabba's has special offers, too, like the Dinner and Dolce with soup or salad and an entree for two, plus a dessert to share for $45 on Friday and weekend nights. It's still a great deal for a date night dinner, but Carrabba's offer pales in comparison to Olive Garden's all-you-can-eat breadsticks, salad, and pasta for roughly half the price per person.

Going out to eat with kids in tow can be a challenge, to put it mildly. You need to know that the menu has food they'll eat without declaring it "too spicy" or "yucky," then try your best to keep them entertained so they don't run amok waiting for their food, and hope that the staff are forgiving when they do, inevitably, end up behaving like they were raised by wild animals. Olive Garden and Carrabba's are both great for dinner with the whole family, but Carrabba's goes the extra mile to make it a truly family-friendly experience.

Olive Garden's kids' menu looks bigger than Carrabba's, but that's just because of the way the dishes are classified — for example, there are several different types of pasta and sauces on Olive Garden's kids' menu. Both chains have ravioli, chicken fingers, and mac and cheese, but Carrabba's dishes are of much higher quality. Olive Garden does have pizza on the kids' menu, but Carrabba's has one more protein option — shrimp — and better side dish selections, including fettuccine Alfredo, penne pomodoro, and garlic mashed potatoes.

The entertainment is better at Carrabba's, too. At Olive Garden, you can expect to get the usual paper kids' menu and crayons. But at Carrabba's, kids get their very own ball of pizza dough to keep their little hands busy so you can relax and enjoy your night out. Plus, if you ask nicely, the workers will bring out dough for any grown-ups at the table who want it, too.

Olive Garden and Carrabba's Italian Grill are both great choices for a satisfying mid-day lunch. Olive Garden is famous for its unlimited soup, salad, and breadsticks for lunch at a wallet-friendly price of around $10 (depending on your location), but beyond that, its lunch menu is, more or less, downsized versions of its most popular dinner entrees. For example, the lunchtime lasagna is roughly half the size of the dinner entree, the chicken Parmigiana comes with one chicken breast instead of two, and the spaghetti has two meatballs instead of three.

Carrabba's also has lunch-sized portions of your dinnertime favorites, and some locations have a special comparable to Olive Garden's with unlimited soup, salad, and bread. But what sets Carrabba's apart from Olive Garden is its selection of unique lunchtime dishes, including hot and cold sandwiches, like the bruschette chicken with burrata and pesto or steak Marsala with mushrooms and mozzarella, plus entree with soup or salad combinations that let you enjoy a little bit of a lot of food.

Sometimes, it's fun to go out with friends for drinks and a bunch of shared appetizers rather than a full meal, and for that, Carrabba's is the way to go. Olive Garden and Carrabba's have roughly the same number of appetizers on their menus, so you might think it would be a toss-up between these two casual Italian giants, but one of Olive Garden's is literally just bowls of sauce to dip your free breadsticks in, which seems more like an "extra" than an appetizer. As for the rest, most of them are some variation of deep-fried pasta — stuffed ziti, lasagna, and ravioli. Even the fried mozzarella is disappointing; you should probably avoid it.

Carrabba's, on the other hand, has the appetizers you'd expect, like delicious, gooey mozzarella sticks, crispy calamari, and shrimp scampi, plus fresher options like steamed mussels in a white wine sauce, Caprese salad with burrata, and stuffed mushrooms with tomato cream sauce. If you can't decide what to order, try Carrabba's appetizer trio of calamari, stuffed mushrooms, and fried mozzarella.

Dining out can be exhausting when you've got dietary restrictions to contend with, and while an Italian restaurant might not be the first place you'd expect to have a gluten-free meal, Olive Garden and Carrabba's both have a surprising number of dishes available for gluten-sensitive diners. Olive Garden has a gluten-free menu, which is surprising given how much of the menu focuses on pasta. But before you get too excited, you should know that it only has a handful (or two) dishes on there, one of which is the standard house salad without croutons. There's also a limited menu of vegetarian and vegan dishes, including the breadsticks, but even the salad isn't vegan unless you get it without dressing.

For a casual Italian meal that you know is safe for your restrictions, Carrabba's has your back. Its online menu has filters to show you all the gluten-free, vegetarian, and vegan options, plus information on how to order your dishes to guarantee they're safe. Though the exact number of gluten-free, vegetarian, and vegan dishes may vary with the availability of seasonal specials, there is a good amount of dishes that are either gluten-free, vegan, or both. 

Between the unlimited bread, delicious appetizers, and giant entrees at both restaurants, it's almost unimaginable that anyone could even think of dessert, but some things are worth saving room for. If you like to finish off your meal with something sweet, Carrabba's is a better bet than Olive Garden. The standard dessert menu at both restaurants has more or less the same amount of options, but the desserts at Carrabba's are more original and of higher quality.

For example, Olive Garden's Chocolate Lasagna is just a chocolate layer cake with chocolate sauce on top. The comparable dessert at Carrabba's is the Sogno Di Cioccolata, and it bears a surprising resemblance to a discontinued Olive Garden menu item that was replaced by the Chocolate Lasagna. The Sogno Di Cioccolata is layered with brownies, chocolate mousse, fresh whipped cream, and house-made chocolate sauce. Both restaurants also feature tiramisu, but Carrabba's is double-layered and features chocolate shavings on top rather than a dusting of cocoa powder. This unique twist gives Carrabba a leg up when compared to Olive Garden's relatively classic tiramisu offering. So, if you've got a sweet tooth, Carrabba's Italian Grill is the way to go.

Overall, in a head-to-head battle between Olive Garden and Carrabba's Italian Grill, there's one clear winner — Carrabba's. Yes, Olive Gardens are plentiful, easy on the budget, and the breadsticks are so good, they almost defy description. But in just about every other category, Carrabba's wins hands-down. From appetizers and entrees to desserts, the food at Carrabba's is higher quality and better prepared, whether you're a die-hard carnivore or a pasta fanatic.

Carrabba's is also kid-friendly, gluten-friendly, and vegan-friendly, with dishes to satisfy everyone in the family, plus plenty of entertainment to go along with your meal, thanks to the pizza dough for the kids (and kids-at-heart) and the bird's eye view from the kitchen counter. If there are no Carrabba's in your neighborhood, you might have to wait until your next vacation and find one at your destination. But if there's an Olive Garden nearby and a Carrabba's a little further, we think it's worth the extra drive.