The Most Overpriced Italian Restaurant Chains, According To Customers

We've all been there. You're looking for a restaurant for a family get-together, but need to find an option acceptable for everyone — from your picky 3 year-old nephew to your picky 87 year-old aunt. As opposed to signs you're at a bad Italian restaurant, the food at a good one needs to taste delicious, provide plenty of options, and, most importantly, not cost an arm and a leg. For years, your local Italian chain provided the perfect solution to this multi-faceted problem. Dinner solved, everyone's happy.

Yet, in recent years, America's favorite go-to solution has proved more challenging to find. First, it was Bidenomics. Now it's Trump's Tariffs. Whatever the cause, restaurant prices are up across the board. While higher prices might be found across the economy, it seems these popular Italian chain restaurants are pushing their loyal customers to the edge. We scoured the internet, from Reddit to Yelp to TripAdvisor, to find the chains whose prices are causing the most shock and awe.

Turns out there's a limit to how far unlimited breadsticks will take you these days. On a June 2024 earnings call, executives from Darden Restaurants, the company who own Olive Garden and other chains, predicted a 2% – 3% price increase for 2025. In response, loyal Olive Garden customers have expressed their frustration since the quality of the food hasn't matched the increase in cost. (Don't get us started on Olive Garden's fried calamari appetizer.)

One customer on Reddit let loose with this volley: "Easily $40/person if you get a glass of wine, entree, desert + tax + tips. All for mediocre service and soul-sucking ambiance." A superfan who said they love the chain still felt compelled to complain on Reddit, writing that its "... across-the-board price increases make it impossible for me to go there anymore." The response on this thread makes it clear the frustration is widespread and directed at Olive Garden's corporate owners.

Olive Garden once used the tagline, "When you're here, you're family." Darden seems intent on finding out how much you can charge your family and still have them show up for dinner.

Maggiano's started in Chicago in 1991 with the goal of cooking food reminiscent of something an Italian nonna might make. Recently it seems your grandma is jacking up her prices.

One diner wrote a Facebook post summarizing his three visits to the local Maggiano's this way: "[I] wanted to really like this place, but it continues to disappoint ... Very expensive, average quality." A customer on Yelp wrote a similar review: "Way too expensive of a meal for this experience."

This frustration seems indifferent to geographic location. In Richmond, Virginia, a patron recommended avoiding Maggiano's. They described it on Yelp as "... an expensive, really basic 'Italian' place meant to lure people in with the exclusive looking venue and decor." Meanwhile in St. Louis, we found a customer who asked, "What happened to [M]aggiano's? Very disappointed in my meal and the quality ... Watered down sauce, small amounts and high prices." Reports didn't change on the West Coast much either with customers complaining of a decline in quality of food but uptick in menu prices. Regarding the lasagna, one California customer said, "Very small portion, no thick layers, very few ingredients like the original recipe. The cost was $54.00 – outrageous price for such horrific food." 

The Maggiano's faithful seem to agree that the restaurant's quality is declining while the prices rise. Perhaps nonna needs to rethink her current pricing.

Buca di Beppo filed for bankruptcy in August 2024, which may account for the recent uptick in prices and disgruntlement amongst its patrons. A Reddit thread about the Buca di Beppo in Columbus, Ohio, captured the sense of frustration. One person wrote that "you're not getting what you pay for imo." In the same thread, one response described the restaurant as "overpriced dumpster trash." Burn.

Searching further on Reddit doesn't do the owners of Buca di Beppo any favors. A 2025 thread in the r/PizzaCrime subreddit focused on the restaurant's $30 pizza. The most common sentiments expressed outrage at both the quality and price. Yelp doesn't offer much respite either. A customer in San Diego flagged "the wait for our food and the price to portion" as problematic. Even stronger was the customer who declared that "[w]ay better Italian food can be had elsewhere for a fraction of the price." If you ask us, it's more like Buca di uh-oh.

Sbarro has long served as a punchline amongst pizza eaters, including ranking as the worst value among major chains. Recent price increases haven't helped its standing. We took a virtual trip down I-95, the spiritual home of Sbarro, to find a number of customers frustrated by the recent negative dip in the price-to-quality ratio.

One Maryland-based Yelp reviewer wrote Sbarro is "usually decent, but ridiculously overpriced." This was a downright glowing review when compared to the resident who confessed: "Every time I disrespect myself and eat this overpriced drivel, I think to myself, 'I would have rather gone hungry.'"

Heading north on I-95, our journey takes us to Delaware where one diner pointed out Sbarro's steady prices for years before lamenting the $6.00 price tag on their pizza in a post-pandemic world. Jersey and New York residents didn't pull any punches calling out the chain for being too expensive and price gouging when it came to the quality of the food. 

No one enters a Sbarro expecting a recreation of a pizza in Napoli. Yet a reasonable expectation by anyone waiting on a train in Penn Station or making a quick pit stop on the Jersey Turnpike is for the price of a pizza to match the quality. Unfortunately it seems in recent years customers feel this delicate balance has become distorted. Whether Sbarro's can rediscover its rightful place in the pizza constellation is anyone's guess.

If there's one item everyone can agree on — even in the broadly acceptable world of Italian — it's pizza. Read through the message boards, however, and you'll find two complaints about Marco's Pizza: the high variance of quality and the cost. 

In the highly competitive landscape of takeout pizza, your offerings need to be either of exceptional quality or exceptionally cheap. Marco's seems to be dropping the ball on both sides of the equation. There are a number of customers whose experience reflects uneven or poor quality pizza with higher than necessary prices. We found a review on Yelp that reflected this tension. "The pizza was very expensive. It was almost twice the price of other famous chains in the neighborhood." The review goes on to describe the use of "old" and "sour" mushrooms, as well as frustration with the portion sizes given the price.

A Texas-based customer wrote that Marco's "toppings felt cheap and the dough was tasteless and stale, not enough sauce and I paid $50 for all that just to be disappointed with the end result." Look through enough Yelp reviews and you'll see similar complaints across their locations. Customers across the board seem to think the chain is just overly priced for the pizza offered. 

For a lot of Marco's customers, the company would do well to return to their roots by improving the quality and figuring out a way to keep prices competitive with other chains ... and maybe ditch the AI ordering.

Since opening in 1981 in Massachusetts, Bertucci's peaked with more than 100 locations across the country. As of May 2025, however, there are now only 15 locations left in operation. What happened to this once beloved brick over pizzeria?

One explanation might be found in a recent reviews where the customers have complained the food is high in price but low in taste. Read enough reviews and you'll notice "overpriced" and its variations as a recurring theme. A diner in Washington, D.C., suggested visiting Bertucci's during its weekly "buy one, get one" deal which "is the only way this place and price makes sense." Another customer took to Yelp to complain about the price-to-portion ratio, warning others that the $14 spinach dip was of poor quality and to be avoided. 

Olive Garden caught a stray during one epic takedown of the Bertucci experience. "If Olive Garden is a poor man's version of an Italian restaurant, then Bertucci's is its bastard cousin living in the basement. At least at Olive garden you get all the salad you can eat included in the price; that's another eight bucks at Bertucci's." With reviews like this, what are the odds Bertucci's survives until the end of 2025?

Based upon the online comments, it appears the only thing Bravo! Italian Kitchen isn't charging customers for is the exclamation point in the company's name. Just how overpriced is Bravo! these days?

One customer cited the restaurant's $3 surcharge for red sauce on an eggplant parmesan order. For a company that boasts about an authentic Italian menu full of variety, it's an unusual decision to forego a traditional ragu on the eggplant parm. For those interested, the first modern recipe for eggplant parm, including a tomato ragu, appears in Ippolito Cavalcanti's 1839 cookbook. Bravo! clearly disagrees with what constitutes traditional or Italian, and the complaints continue. 

A Knoxville, Tennessee customer said Bravo! is "fake fine dining" with the "only thing above expectation are the insane prices." A similar theme is found on Yelp where a New Mexico-based customer commented, "This used to be one of our favorite places to eat but now it's definitely not worth the price you pay for the quality of food." The customer consensus appears to be that the quality of the food needs to be elevated to match the price the brand is charging. As is, very few customers are cheering Bravo! when they see their bill.

What's the best way to qualify for the list of most overpriced Italian chains? Just follow the lead of Romano's Macaroni Grill. Small servings + horrible service + below mediocre food for the price is the winning recipe. To illustrate just how overpriced Macaroni Grill is, look no further than the "$17 for a Caesar salad" paid by a diner in North Carolina.

Sadly, the exorbitant prices at Macaroni Grill stretch from sea to shining sea. Customers in Hawaii complain "the food was not worth the price" and the "salad portions are very small for the price" of an entree. Ah, again with the salad prices!

The mood in the Rust Belt isn't much better. Numerous customers in Ohio have lamented the chain on Yelp for its high prices and lackluster food quality. Customers next door in Pennsylvania found common ground. More than one review cited the high prices when compared with the iffy quality of food. The poet laureate of complaints, however, left this gem on Yelp: "I've seen toddlers cook up some more fire meals in the Fisher Price kitchen set... pathetic." No notes.

Mellow Mushroom promises to bring customers back to a simpler, more carefree era. If you were driving back from Woodstock, this would be the pizza you'd eat. But for too many Mellow Mushroom customers, it's the prices that are trippy and there's a growing sense of outrage when viewing the bill.

Even the fans of Mellow Mushroom pies see a problem. "Pizza is good ... but ridiculously highly priced," said a recent review on Trip Advisor. If that review is too simple, try this recent expose from a resident mathematician complaining about the portions in an Atlanta location that stopped serving large pizzas. "A Mellow Mushroom large specialty pizza is 16 inches wide and about $29, and a medium is 14 inches and $24. So if you take 1 square inch bites, the cost-per-bite of a large pizza is $0.14 cents, whereas the cost-per-bite from a medium is $0.16. So by eliminating the large pizza from the menu, they're charging you 14% more without ever changing the sticker price. This is shrinkflation 101"

It seems sticker shock is a common occurrence at this beloved restaurant. People still genuinely love the pizza, but the new prices are producing a bad trip.