Olive Gardens House Salad & Dressing

One of my favorite restaurants to eat at is Olive Garden. Although I don't get to eat there as often as I like, when I do I love just about anything they serve. My favorite thing to order is their soup, salad and bread sticks. Last weekend when we were out of town visiting family we got to pop in for a quick lunch.

I knew immediately what I was going to order, Chicken & Gnocchi Soup, salad and bread sticks. Zuppa Toscana is the soup I usually order, but the chicken and Gnocchi seems to be my new favorite. I love Olive Gardens House Salad, so I was excited to see the copy cat version all over the Internet.

I can honestly say that the copy cat salad was really close to the original. I did add more black olives to the salad than called for. I just don't think Olive Garden adds enough for my taste. We always seem to fight over them at the restaurant.

The dressing on the other hand was a different story. The Copy Cat dressing recipe was a creamy dressing and I don't recall the dressing being creamy at Olive Garden. It was still good, but a bit on the thin side for my taste. I did some searching to see if I could find a dressing that was similar to the real thing.

I think I found one, but just haven't had the chance to try it yet. I included both recipes so you can choose which one you would like to use. I remember the dressing at Olive Garden to be more like a Italian Dressing rather than a creamy one, so I will try the new dressing recipe the next time. In the end I loved the salad so more than likely this salad will be a regular in our house. Since posting this recipe there is now a bottled version of Olive Gardens house dressing, so that can be used instead of the dressing recipe. 

If you decide to go with the creamy house dressing, I recommend making it a day ahead and refrigerating. This will give the dressing some time to thicken up a bit as well as letting the flavors blend together. Also if you're looking for a good bread stick recipe to go with your salad you can try the pizza hut style bread sticks. These are so soft and favorite in our house.

Source: Copy Cat Recipes