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Since switching to a whole food, plant-based (WFPB) diet, it can be a little tricky going out to dinner with family or friends. I absolutely hate making everyone go to a certain spot on my account, so I have gotten pretty decent at looking over any menu and finding SOMETHING that works.
Brian’s mom wanted Italian for her birthday, so we decided on Olive Garden. We have been there a few times since making the switch to WFPB, so we knew we’d be able to find something to enjoy. We decided to bring you along, so check out the video above to see what we ordered!
I always do my research and luckily, Olive Garden has a nice guide on their website that highlights their vegan options. I printed this out, along with some nutrition information, and brought it along on my SUPER cool clipboard 😂
In the past, we have ordered the unlimited soup and salad, but we decided to go a different route this time. The salad is vegan as long as you order it without croutons or dressing – and of course, avoid the cheese! Unfortunately, their only vegan salad dressing option is oil and vinegar. Since we avoid oil as much as possible, we would have been stuck with just vinegar. You could also bring your own dressing, but I hate having to bring extra stuff along.
We started out our meal with some of their Minestrone soup. It is a nice combination of vegetables, beans and pasta in a light tomato broth. We normally avoid refined grains and this does have some pasta in it, but there usually is not a ton of the pasta so we weren’t super worried about it. I guess you could pick those out if you wanted… 🙂
The Minestrone definitely has way too much sodium and a little bit of oil, but it is a nice hearty vegan option. It is nearly impossible to find a perfectly “compliant” dish at a regular restaurant, so we just try to come as close as possible.
For our entrées, we decided to get the “Create Your Own Pasta Bowl” and swap in zoodles for the pasta. In case you’ve never heard of zoodles, they are basically just zucchini that has been shredded or spiralized into a noodle shape. From what we can tell on the nutrition facts, their zoodles don’t have anything added to them.
We chose the traditional marinara sauce, which is vegan but does have some oil added. I also discovered that you can add a topping of garden veggies to your pasta dish. This ended up being a combination of peas, broccoli, carrots, zucchini and tomatoes. It definitely bulked up the dish and rounded out the flavors. Overall, it was a really tasty meal!
In case you are wondering about the cost – it was $11.99 for the “Create Your Own Pasta Bowl.” They charged us each an extra $2.00 to swap in the zoodles. I am not sure why zucchini noodles cost more than regular pasta… but they do. It was an extra $1.49 to add the garden veggies. The grand total for each of our meals (before tax) was $15.48, which isn’t too bad for a nice meal out!
Do you want to see what we order at another restaurant? Let us know in the comments below and we might try it out in a future video!
Yes, please more restaurants.
TheOlive Garden review was great!!
Thanks Glinda! We will definitely do more of these!
I’d love to see more restaurants. You can always use just the balsamic vinegar plain without the oil or ask for some fresh lemon. Both are great on salads (not as good as hummus, but still good).
Lemon is a great idea! We will have to try that next time! Thanks!