Every Olive Garden Soup, Ranked Worst To Best

Is there any Italian-American restaurant chain more beloved in the U.S. than Olive Garden? The company has been serving Americanized takes on Italian dishes to happy customers since 1982 and is particularly known for its endless supply of breadsticks (which, in case you didn't know, are vegan-friendly). Given that the well-known chain is continually growing and enjoying increasing profits, it could prompt one who has never been to wonder what the hype is all about. I dined at Olive Garden fairly regularly during my suburban childhood, but I haven't visited the chain in a while and I figured it was high time to get reacquainted with it by trying its selection of soups, rather than just opting for my standard pasta order.

Perhaps I caught the branch I visited on a bad day. It was a rainy Monday, the restaurant had just opened, and hungry customers were arriving in droves; having served ample time in the service industry I can imagine the overwhelm. Nevertheless, my experience with each soup I tried was beyond disappointing. All of the soups failed to deliver on at least one of its promised elements, and I found myself wanting to finish none of them. I'd like to give the restaurant the benefit of the doubt, because surely its soups can't regularly be this bad, and some of my friends have had good experiences with the soups — unfortunately, I was not among the lucky ones. 

Last and definitely least, my first bite of Olive Garden's Chicken and Gnocchi soup was so bad that I forgot to take notes and had to force myself to go in for another one. I like gnocchi (especially Trader Joe's sweet potato gnocchi), so I don't think this was a matter of personal preference. Glancing at the soup had me dubious of trying it in the first place — the gnocchi looked undercooked, the chicken was pale, and the broth seemed to have an oily, almost slimy quality that didn't render me wanting to try a bite. Nevertheless, I persisted. 

I'll get the soup's sole good quality out of the way first: The broth had a good, creamy flavor and was well-seasoned. Had I been just presented the broth, I would have been disappointed to not see the other elements of the dish, but it probably still would have scored higher than it did. The chicken was incredibly dry and chewy, and tasted like it was prepared with no flavor — merely boiled, cut, and tossed into the soup. The gnocchi was nightmarish. Its texture was gummy, mealy and rubbery, and there's no way it was prepared fresh. I can only assume the dish is generally prepared better than the one I had; otherwise, there's no way it would still be on the menu. Unless you've had positive experiences with this soup before, this is an Olive Garden dish you should avoid.

If you're looking at the above picture and thinking, "That's minestrone?" then we had the same reaction upon first glance of this bowl. The difference between minestrone and vegetable soup lies in the pasta and beans present in minestrone; mine had hardly any of either, making it basically a chunky vegetable soup. On the plus side, though, at least this dish is vegan; and had I gotten a decent amount of beans and pasta in it, I probably would have been more pleased.

As you can see, the soup had a scant amount of noodles. I found myself moving my spoon around in the bowl to see if they were just sitting at the bottom, but they were simply barely there. I forgot this was even supposed to have beans until I read the description of the soup on the company's website — I don't think my dish had a single bean in it. I can get past the wateriness of the broth given that this soup was meant to have more substance, but it was slightly over-salted. On the plus side, the celery retained some crunch and the huge chunks of zucchini added a good, earthy flavor. On the whole, though, this dish simply wasn't balanced in its elements, and I probably won't find myself ordering it again.

Finally, a soup that I found palatable — Olive Garden's Pasta e Fagioli. Though this soup was better than the previous two on this list, I still didn't enjoy it. It tasted like the pasta e fagioli was prepared way ahead of time (which you should never do with this soup), as the textures of its elements were slightly off. However, I'd call the flavor fine, though the broth tasted more like a Chef Boyardee tomato sauce than a thick, savory broth. 

Overall, the flavors of this dish were a bit bland, and I needed to sprinkle some parmesan cheese on it to liven up its palate a little — it called for slightly more umami. The pasta was chewy, but not in a good, al dente way — rather, it tasted like the noodles had been prepared al dente and then lost some of their life by sitting in the soup for too long. The vegetables retained some crunch which helped in adding some textural variety to this soup. I had been given scant amounts of beans and ground beef, though, and found myself missing out on some of the protein that was supposed to be present in this dish. All in all, I've made better soups at home, and again, I can only hope the severely unbalanced elements in this dish was a fluke on Olive Garden's part.

I ate about a quarter of Olive Garden's Zuppa Toscana, and was incredibly relieved to be chowing down on a soup I relatively enjoyed. Like the other soups, though, this was missing several key elements; it also boasted a fairly oily broth, which you can clearly see in the photo above. Nevertheless, this was at least a step in the right direction, and if prepared well at other branches, would likely make a good gluten-free soup to order the next time you visit the chain. 

Unfortunately, I can't write a glowing review of this soup, because it was missing its main element: spicy Italian sausage. I found a grand total of three small chunks of sausage in my soup, and while they were tasty, I was quite disappointed not to find more. The potatoes were slightly on the dry side, but they did boast some good flavor — however, they had been cut into huge chunks, none of which were able to be picked up by a spoon before being cut first. I appreciated the crunch of the kale and the broth's flavor was deliciously creamy. I got the occasional long strip of potato skin in my mouth when taking bites of this one, which wasn't very pleasant, but also wasn't the worst thing in the world. It's easy for me to believe that this soup is generally good; again, I think I drew the short straw here. 

To rank these dishes, I tried each of them on their own and then (of course) using a breadstick as a spoon. I compared each dish to the restaurant's description, and unfortunately, none of them fully delivered on all of the elements promised. I analyzed the flavor profile (most of which I found lacking — only the broths stuck out here) and the dish's textures, all of which were deficient because the dish was missing one or more of its components.

It was difficult to judge these dishes given that I really don't think I got the restaurant on a good day. I've had friends who have called one or more of these soups the best dishes at Olive Garden; my experience would leave me reluctant to ever order one again. It didn't help that I've had at least one version of all of these soups before, so I have at least some baseline of comparison for each. Unfortunately, they all missed the mark.