What Most People Don't Realize About Olive Garden's Salad

Olive Garden may be known for its various pasta dishes, but one of the restaurant's most popular offerings is the salad. The menu item is included in the soup, salad, and breadsticks combo, but it also comes with every entree. The fact that servers will refill your salad bowl as many times as you want is a major plus, but the reason many customers enjoy it so much is most likely the dressing Olive Garden uses. However contrary to popular belief, Signature Italian isn't the only dressing served in-house.

Olive Garden's salad dressing is so beloved by customers that since at least 2010, the chain was quietly selling bottles of it at its restaurants. Two years later, the dressing made it to Sam's Club stores for a year-long test run. Evidently, it proved to be successful, because today you can find Olive Garden brand dressing at practically any grocery store. Olive Garden now even sells flavors like Parmesan Ranch and Classic Caesar, which you can't get at the restaurant. Meanwhile, dine-in customers may not realize that they have options when it comes to dressing their greens.

Anyone who goes to Olive Garden often enough probably doesn't have to look at the menu before ordering the salad, though even if you did, you still wouldn't see anything about being able to customize it. The description under "Our Famous House Salad" only reads "tossed with our signature Italian dressing," but it fails to mention the bespoke options that are available. On the restaurant's website, however, it appears you can swap the signature Italian dressing with a low-fat version of it or simply oil and vinegar.

Besides being able to top your salad with as much freshly grated cheese as you want, Olive Garden also allows you to leave out the tomato, olives, onions, and pepperoncini. You can order extra toppings at the table — and not just simple items like sides of shrimp or sliced grilled chicken to put on top. Premium proteins including breaded and fried shrimp fritto and even chicken parmigiana are available. There's a reason why Helen Rosner, writing for Eater, said, "The only thing at Olive Garden that comes close to the greatness of the toasted ravioli is the salad."

Italian dressing — an American creation, interestingly enough — is a type of vinaigrette made with oil, vinegar, and a seasoning blend usually consisting of onion powder, garlic powder, and Italian herbs like basil and oregano. Olive Garden's signature Italian dressing is made somewhat differently than this. While it does contain oil, vinegar, herbs, and spices, it also has eggs, Romano cheese, and sugar.

The low-fat version of it is also unlike traditional Italian dressing. Similar to Olive Garden's signature dressing, the light Italian is made with oil, vinegar, Romano cheese, and sugar. The difference is it also has buttermilk solids, red bell pepper, lemon juice, and corn syrup. And though it does contain eggs like the original, only the yolks are used. This combination of ingredients makes Olive Garden's light Italian less than half the calories and fat. Just be aware that it won't taste the same if you decide to customize your salad the next time you order from the restaurant.