How to Make a Copycat Olive Garden Salad That Rivals the Restaurant Version

What is it about Olive Garden’s signature all-you-can-eat salad that is so irresistible—the combination of ingredients, the Italian dressing, or the simple fact you can “eat all you want” and they’ll never stop refilling the bowl? It’s a great deal, to be sure, but there’s something even better. Making that signature salad at home and eating it all night long…in your pajamas!

How to Customize Our Copycat Salad

If you’re still weighing out whether or not to battle the wait times at the Olive Garden, here’s another few “pro” points in favor of staying home. You can add or remove any ingredients to your copycat salad, you can upgrade your salad with higher quality ingredients, and you can even add extra cheese and croutons. To take it a step further, buy a bag of prepared breadsticks, slather them with garlic butter, and warm them up in the oven for your own warm breadstick side.

Copycat Olive Garden Salad Elements

Here’s a look at what you’ll need for our copycat salad recipe.

• The Base: Olive Garden relies heavily on iceberg lettuce. While this lettuce does provide some crunch, we opted for a blend of romaine because it stands up to dressings better than any lettuce variety. You can also get creative and try blends of spring greens mix, red or green leaf lettuce, or butterhead. Or if you’re on a healthy kick, add some kale, spinach, and/or arugula. We rounded out the base with some shredded red cabbage and carrot for color
• The Toppings: The OG’s signature salad has more add-ins than a typical restaurant side salad, which we love. The standard recipe includes chopped tomatoes, black olives, sliced onion, pepperoncini salad peppers, and croutons. The wait staff will follow up with some type of freshly grated cheese, but we 100% would only recommend Parmesan in this case. If olives or onion aren’t your thing, just leave them out or swap in something else you love (bacon, anyone?).
• Dressing: The signature dressing is essential for this salad. It’s a vinaigrette, but is more emulsified with the perfect consistency to coat the lettuce leaves. To get the right consistency, we add a spoonful of mayonnaise which creates the emulsification. Time to dig in!