Olive Garden's Best Soup On The Menu Is A Comforting Classic

Although the Olive Garden is a chain of Italian restaurants, the company isn't exactly known for the authenticity of its Italian food. In other words, the restaurant serves up Americanized versions of Italian food. Despite this, it is a long-running company that continues to delight us with the experience of familiar dishes, a casual atmosphere, relatively low prices, and signature "endless" options, including its signature soups. which are all made fresh in-house. We recently ranked all four of Olive Garden's soups from worst to best and found a clear winner in Zuppa Toscana, a creamy and hearty soup that instantly comforts.

Over the decades, many customers were introduced to Zuppa Toscana through the company's popular never-ending soup, salad, and breadsticks option, which gives diners unceasing amounts of each item. Whereas Olive Garden's minestrone soup is brothy and loaded with vegetables, Zuppa Toscana is a creamy, filling soup made with mildly spicy Italian sausage, kale, and chunks of potatoes. It's suitable as a first course, but only if you keep the portion small; however, It's also the perfect kind of soup to be eaten as an entree, especially if your appetite isn't as big as required by the restaurant's endless bowls of pasta. Zuppa Toscana is surprisingly flavorful and just right for dipping those warm, soft garlic breadsticks that abound at every Olive Garden table.

The soup is loosely based on a traditional Tuscan dish

Now, if you happen to be in Italy and go looking for a soup that looks and tastes like Olive Garden's Zuppa Toscana, you're just not going to find it (not even in its namesake, Tuscany). Like most of the chain's menu offerings, the soup is only very loosely based on authentic Italian cuisine. When it comes to the inspiration for Zuppa Toscana, let's start with the name, which when translated into English, means Tuscan soup.

Tuscan cuisine is largely based in "cucina povera," or peasant cooking; ingredients are cheap but plentiful — think beans for bulk, bread for thickening, and lots of vegetables rather than an abundance of meat. Among the many soups that come from this region, minestra di pane and ribollita are both commonly made with potatoes and kale. And that's about where the similarities stop. Neither is based in cream and rarely contain any meat.

While the Olive Garden may have seriously stretched the "Tuscan" in its Zuppa Toscana, it still made a delicious soup that customers love and keep coming back for time and time again.

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