America’s preeminent Italian chain, Olive Garden is best known for its legendary breadsticks, over-the-top desserts, and a wide array of pasta dishes. However, any true fan knows that soup is also a huge part of the experience when dining at the family-friendly red sauce institution.
Every Olive Garden entrée comes with a choice of either salad or soup. Plus, customers can enjoy bottomless soup at a set price when they opt for the chain’s never-ending soup, salad, and breadsticks deal. To summarize, there’s a high chance that you’ll order or have the opportunity to order soup during every Olive Garden visit.
Olive Garden currently offers four different soups that showcase a nice array of ingredients and flavors: Chicken & Gnocchi, Minestrone, Zuppa Toscana, and Pasta e Fagioli. But are these soups actually tasty? And is one option superior to all of the others? I recently set out to answer these questions by sampling all four varieties and judging them on flavor, appearance, and texture.
Read on for my review of each soup, starting with my least favorite and ending with the one I enjoyed the most. (Spoiler alert: there’s only one I’d consider ordering again).
Minestrone
Nutrition: (Per Serving)
Calories: 110
Fat: 1 g
Sodium: 810 mg
Carbs: 17 g (Fiber: 4 g, Sugar: 4 g)
Protein: 9 g
Olive Garden’s Minestrone, the one and only vegan soup on the menu, features fresh vegetables, beans, and pasta in a light tomato broth. This and every other Olive Garden soup cost me $8.49, and each order came with two breadsticks.
The look: Between the nearly translucent broth and all of the chopped veggies, this was the lightest Olive Garden soup option of the bunch. It was loaded with tomatoes, zucchini, and pasta, and appeared to be spotted with bits of herbs.
The taste: I appreciated that the Minestrone wasn’t too rich or decadent, which probably makes it easier to down a bowl without completely sapping your appetite before the pasta course at Olive Garden. However, that’s all the praise that I have to bestow on this soup. The flavor of the broth was watery, desperately in need of salt, and weirdly sweet, while the vegetables and noodles had been cooked until they lacked any semblance of texture.
I understand that some Olive Garden customers have no other choice but to opt for the Minestrone as it’s the only vegan soup option. But for those whose diets aren’t limited to vegan fare, all of the other soups brought at least a little something more to the table.
Chicken & Gnocchi
Nutrition: (Per Serving)
Calories: 230
Fat: 12 g (Saturated Fat: 4.5 g)
Sodium: 1,290 mg
Carbs: 22 g (Fiber: 1 g, Sugar: 4 g)
Protein: 11 g
Olive Garden’s Chicken & Gnocchi is a creamy soup with roasted chicken, traditional Italian dumplings, and spinach.
The look: Ultra rich and filling. This soup was the thickest and creamiest by far, with bits of spinach and carrots adding pops of green and orange color throughout the broth. However, while stirring the soup to distribute the ingredients, I noticed there were just a couple of pieces of chicken and only a handful of gnocchi. I would have preferred much bigger portions of the soup’s two star ingredients.
The taste: The Chicken & Gnocchi was a favorite of mine when I was younger and the only soup I would order from Olive Garden as I was growing up. However, I realized that my fond memories of this soup were far from reality when I revisited it for this tasting experiment. The broth tasted more like hot, thick dairy with a hint of poultry flavor rather than a real deal chicken soup. The fact that there were barely any pieces of actual chicken in the soup didn’t help matters either.
The one element that I truly enjoyed in this dish was the gnocchi, which were plump, soft, and just as delicious as I remembered. However, I was largely disappointed by my former favorite Olive Garden soup, and I don’t see myself ordering it again.
Pasta e Fagioli
Nutrition: (Per Serving)
Calories: 150
Fat: 5 g (Saturated Fat: 2 g)
Sodium: 710 mg
Carbs: 16 g (Fiber: 3 g, Sugar: 4 g)
Protein: 8 g
Olive Garden’s Pasta e Fagioli features a savory broth with ground beef, fresh tomatoes, tubetti pasta, and white and red beans.
The look: If the broth was a little thicker, I might have mistaken this soup for a classic bowl of chili. It came with a good mix of beans, veggies, and noodles. However, the portion of beef in the Pasta e Fagioli was meager, and the meat I did get was ground up so fine that it practically disappeared into the broth.
The taste: Savory, tomatoe-y, and surprisingly beefy for the amount of meat that came in my bowl. This soup actually had some decent flavor, which immediately put it ahead of the two lower-ranking options in this taste test. That being said, I had some big issues with the Pasta e Fagioli that would deter me from choosing it again in the future. The particle-sized bits of ground beef made for an unpleasant appearance and texture, and the flavor was slightly boring. It would have benefitted greatly from more salt and, dare I say, some spice.
Zuppa Toscana
Nutrition: (Per Serving)
Calories: 220
Fat: 17 g (Saturated Fat: 7 g)
Sodium: 790 mg
Carbs: 15 g (Fiber: 2 g, Sugar: 2 g)
Protein: 7 g
Olive Garden’s Zuppa Toscana features spicy Italian sausage, fresh kale, and russet potatoes in a creamy broth.
The look: While the Zuppa Toscana, like the Chicken & Gnocchi, is a creamy soup, the broth in this option was much thinner and lighter. There was a great balance of ingredients dispersed throughout, including wedges of potato, good-sized clumps of sausage, and kale that added a burst of green color to what’s otherwise a very beige soup.
The taste: Of the four Olive Garden soup varieties, this is the only one that really delivered what I wanted in terms of taste and texture. The broth was deep, rich, and well seasoned, with a delicious, subtle hint of heat from the spicy sausage. Meanwhile, the kale added a lovely fresh note to the soup and the potatoes were miraculously not overcooked.
I don’t eat at Olive Garden often, and whenever I do nowadays, I always opt for the chain’s salad over soup. But after this taste test, I can see the Zuppa Toscana tempting me away from my tried-and-true salads in the future.
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