An Olive Garden Chef's Menu Hack For Creamy, Meaty Pasta Sauce

Sometimes, the best part of eating at a restaurant is figuring out what's off-menu. There's something invigorating (and, of course, delicious) about finding In-N-Out's secret "wish burger," for example — some secrets only travel through word of mouth, and in order to truly enjoy them, you simply have to be in-the-know. At Olive Garden, the menu is designed to take you on a tour through some tasty Italian classics (even if it's sauce-on-top serving style is a no-no in Italy). Still, there's some wiggle room you may not have discovered yet. Terrence Tookes, executive chef for Olive Garden, recommends taking advantage of two never-ending sections on the menu: Create Your Own Pasta (which also happens to be never-ending if you're eating at the restaurant) and unlimited dipping sauce options.

You can create the bowl of your choice by selecting a pasta (rigatoni, cavatappi, angel hair, spaghetti, or gluten-free rotini), a freshly prepared sauce (traditional marinara, five cheese marinara, meat sauce, or creamy mushroom), and toppings (meatballs, Italian sausage, grilled chicken, crispy chicken fritta, or sautéed shrimp). Here's where the hack comes in for that creamy, meaty sauce. Order a side of unlimited creamy Alfredo dipping sauce and add it to your pasta bowl.

"Keep ordering your dipping sauce, and use that as your pasta sauce," Tookes told Daily Meal. "You can take sauce from one item and put it with something else, and you've created a whole other menu item."

Chef Terrence Tookes has seen a lot of guest-generated creations during his tenure helming Olive Garden's kitchen and menu, and it's that user creativity that has inspired these kinds of menu "hacks." For example, the chicken and shrimp carbonara was created after guests kept asking for chicken to be added to their shrimp carbonara, and now, the dish sits pretty high in our ranking of Olive Garden's seafood offerings. This creativity also inspired Tookes to come up with his own pasta bowl, a dish he would continue to order in true Olive Garden never-ending fashion. "My [never ending pasta bowl] would be angel hair, five cheese sauce, and Italian sausage," he told us. "Spaghetti or fettuccine is easy, but the angel hair is soft and delicate. It absorbs the sauce differently and you get a little more flavor in it."

For Tookes and the rest of the Olive Garden culinary team, the menu is a reflection of all the best ingredients the restaurant has to offer, but rules be damned when it comes to the guest experience. "We explore every possibility," he said. "We're all about abundance and craveability. No ingredients are off the table."