I ordered fried calamari, a shrimp Alfredo pasta, and a chocolate-cake dessert at Olive Garden and Red Lobster to compare.
PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images; Bloomberg/Getty Images
I ordered and compared the same appetizer, entrée, and dessert at Olive Garden and Red Lobster.
The desserts were passably good, but the shrimp Alfredo dishes felt overpriced and underwhelming.
The best part of both meals was the freebies, and Olive Garden's salad gave the chain a leg up.
Like many things, dining out feels more expensive than ever. So, when I choose to do it, I want to be sure I'm getting my money's worth.
In search of good value and tasty dishes, I decided to compare similar meals at chain restaurants near my home in Long Island, New York.
First up: Olive Garden and Red Lobster. Both American casual-dining chains have several hundred locations, mostly in the US and some outside it, and feature complimentary bread alongside their extensive menus.
At each, I tried to order the same meal: fried calamari as an appetizer, a shrimp Alfredo pasta as my entrée, and chocolate cake for dessert.
I figured these choices would level the playing field and give both the seafood and Italian-American chain a fair chance: Fried calamari is a popular squid dish in Italy, my entrée choice combines both pasta and shrimp, and chocolate cake is pretty standard fare at chain restaurants.
Here's how my meals at the chains compared.
Olive Garden's complimentary breadsticks didn't wow me, but the salad was a high point of the meal.A photo of a typical salad from Olive Garden.
Sarah Schmalbruch
At Olive Garden, diners are famously served "never-ending" breadsticks and salad (or soup) with the purchase of an adult entrée.
Given their reputation for being buttery and freshly baked, the breadsticks were pretty underwhelming. I found them a bit too salty for my liking and forgettable.
After a few bites, I turned to the Olive Garden's signature salad, which was surprisingly good.
It tasted fresh and flavorful with the crisp lettuce, tomatoes, red onion, olives, croutons, and pepperoncini. I also enjoyed the Italian dressing, which was creamy with a bit of a kick.
I happily ate several (small) platefuls of salad before and after my entrée.
Red Lobster's complimentary starter also really impressed me.
Steven John
At Red Lobster, I was taken with the complimentary Cheddar Bay Biscuits right from the start.
They were warm, flaky, and moist, with a notable but not overwhelming cheese tang and a pleasant herbal profile provided by garlic and visible flakes of parsley.
I'd go back to Red Lobster just to get more of these biscuits.
Olive Garden's calamari felt like something I could make at home.og
Steven John
At Olive Garden, my calamari appetizer cost $13.79 and was served with a lemon wedge, marinara sauce, and spicy ranch.
There was plenty of calamari on the plate, easily 20 pieces. It was easy to share with someone else — my son, in this case, who joined me at the restaurant. (My daughter did, too, but she's a staunch vegetarian.)
The rings were pretty uniformly small, with a crunchy breading that was even but rather thin. I felt this gave the dish a mass-produced quality.
To me, the main flavor profile of the calamari was salt. I also found this to be true with the marinara and the spicy ranch sauces, though the latter had a rich, creamy texture with a slight tang and herbal profile.
Overall, this appetizer tasted like something I could make at home if I purchased some frozen fried calamari and tossed it in oil on the stovetop.
Red Lobster's calamari truly seemed to have been prepared by a chef.r
Steven John
At Red Lobster, I ordered the hand-breaded calamari, which came with jalapeño ranch and marinara for dipping.
There were chunks of richly-browned breading of all sizes hanging from the calamari rings, with bits of meat showing through in some spots.
I was surprised by how varied the rings were in shape and size, which immediately made the appetizer feel less premade and far from mass-produced.
It really did look as though someone had coated each piece of squid by hand, and the breading was pleasantly crisp and decidedly not uniform, either.
Some of the two dozen or so rings were bigger than the calamari from Olive Garden, some were smaller, and all tasted better to me.
The squid meat was more tender, and my appetizer tasted less salty at Red Lobster than at Olive Garden, though the dips were essentially analogs.
That said, I did appreciate the wedge of lemon served with the calamari at Olive Garden and felt its absence here.
As much as I enjoyed this dish, though, the $16.99 price tag felt a bit steep.
I wouldn't order the shrimp Alfredo from Olive Garden again.o
Steven John
My shrimp Alfredo at Olive Garden came out quickly, but at first glance, I wasn't too excited to dig into it.
The unevenly poured sauce looked almost like a solid sheet of cheese over my fettuccine, and the shrimp didn't seem very seasoned or cooked for as long as I'd prefer.
The noodles were pretty limp and quite mushy as though they'd been overcooked, and the sauce had an artificial, straight-from-the-jar flavor, in my opinion.
I wasn't able to mix the viscous sauce into the pasta as smoothly as I'd hoped, and it mostly just tasted like salt. There was a decent number of shrimp on my pasta — maybe about a dozen — but they didn't have much flavor.
Although the menu description listed the shrimp as sautéed, their light-pink color and lack of crispiness made them appear more like they'd been boiled.
For $22.79, I was really disappointed.
My pasta dish at Red Lobster also felt overpriced — and there wasn't as much shrimp.
Steven John
At Red Lobster, I got the shrimp linguini Alfredo. Right off the bat, I appreciated that the sauce was evenly distributed throughout the dish and not just poured on top.
This sauce seemed thinner and creamier than the one I had at Olive Garden, and it coated the pasta nicely. The linguini was not quite al dente, but it was cooked better.
Although I preferred the shrimp at Red Lobster, which had an authentic briny flavor, there were only about eight on my dish.
In the end, this meal felt like a decent Alfredo linguini with a handful of shrimp thrown in as an afterthought. I certainly can't say it was worth the $23.99 price tag.
Olive Garden's Chocolate Lasagna balanced richness and crunch.
Benjamin John
Our Olive Garden meal ended with the Chocolate Lasagna dessert for $10.49.
It consists of layers of chocolate cake and chocolate mousse, with a layer of crushed wafers at the bottom. Then, the whole thing is drizzled with chocolate sauce.
The "lasagna" had a pleasant crunch thanks to the wafer layer, which also helped keep this dessert from being too rich for my palate.
Simply put, this is a really dense and sweet dessert. My kids loved it, but I could only take a few bites before I was maxed out on sweetness.
Red Lobster's Chocolate Wave was also pretty intense, but not bad.rl
Steven John
At Red Lobster, I finished my meal with the Chocolate Wave for $10.99. It consists of a chocolate cake slice layered with a fudge frosting, served with vanilla ice cream topped with chocolate sauce.
I very much liked the à la mode plating of the Chocolate Wave, which helped break up the chocolaty richness a bit.
Between the dense chocolate cake, thick and fudgy frosting, and what appeared to be tiny chocolate chips coating the side of the dessert, it was all too much for me.
Although it wasn't bad, I could only handle a few bites. My kids liked this layered dessert, and we ended up bringing some home.
In the end, I wasn't thrilled with either chain — but Olive Garden just edged out the competition for me.
Bloomberg/Getty Images
Ultimately, I left both restaurants feeling frustrated by the prices, especially regarding the entrées.
My total after tax was $51.13 at Olive Garden and $56.45 at Red Lobster. After adding a 20% tip, each three-course meal was over $60.
I probably wouldn't order the calamari at either chain — Red Lobster's was tastier, but the price was hard to stomach. It cost as much as some entrées on the menu. However, if I were dining with someone who wanted to order it and share, I wouldn't object.
Even if my entrées were one-off flukes in terms of quality, I won't be getting the shrimp Alfredo linguini at either restaurant again. The prices feel especially hard to justify when pasta is such a cheap ingredient, and Alfredo is a fairly simple, low-cost sauce to make with butter, cream, and Parmesan.
The chocolate-heavy desserts at both restaurants were tasty, though quite dense. Although I'm not a huge dessert person, they felt fairly priced.
In the end, the most impressive thing at both chains is what I got for free with my meal. Red Lobster's biscuits were truly a delight — but that salad from Olive Garden that stood out to me more than anything else.
In the end, it's why Olive Garden would be my choice for which chain to return to first. It felt like a great value to be able to have as much of it as I wanted.
I'll plan to order a very different entrée, choose another appetizer, and probably skip dessert — but regardless of how the meal goes, at least I'll know I can enjoy plate after plate of that delicious, fresh-tasting salad.
Business Insider reached out to Red Lobster and Olive Garden for comment.