Olive Garden's Calabrian Chili Menu Is Tasty Enough To Make Your Italian Nonna A Fan

In the summer of 2025, I visited Olive Garden to sample the newest dish that combined steak, shrimp, and bucatini noodles, all wrapped up in a Calabrian sauce. The dish offered a little bit of spice without being overwhelming, and it quickly became a family favorite. At the time, I thought the dish was so tasty, it might just stick around the menu, and the visit also offered something of a gateway back to one of my favorite childhood restaurants, one of the all-star chains of the '90s. Now, in the summer of 2026, I've been invited back to try the newest additions to the Calabrian spice menu. This time, the selections included rigatoni pasta and a surprising addition to the appetizer menu.

Calabrian sauce, though a little bit zesty, is far from what I would consider spicy. It has a little bit of heat, but it's easily tempered with a few sips of your beverage of choice. Unless you are completely unable to handle spicy foods, the Calabrian sauce shouldn't put up much of a tussle. Simply put, this Italian alternative is a tasty substitute for chile flakes. Find out if my taste test reveals these newest menu additions warrant a visit to the Italian chain.

To determine if the Calabrian spice additions to the menu are worth your time, my family and I visited Olive Garden the day before the official release of these new items. Our Sunday dinner included both new rigatoni variations of a Calabrian spicy dish and the chicken bites. I determined whether these are worth your time based on the taste of the dishes as well as the texture. If the flavors worked together in a way that was enjoyable without being overly spicy and the textures were complementary, then I would consider the dishes worthy of a try.

Recommendations are based on firsthand impressions of promotional materials and products provided by the manufacturer.

We started our meal with the Calabrian Hot Honey Chicken Bites. This appetizer had bite-size chicken pieces that are crispy on the outside and tender on the inside. The dish comes with a dipping cup of ranch. Our waitress, Francesca, compared the texture of the bites to something like you might find at Chick-fil-A. At my location, the appetizer cost $11.49.

The appetizer arrived in a decent portion, and was more than enough for our table to share. The chicken was very tender with a nice amount of crisp on the outside. In fact, those little crispy bits allowed the sauce to cling better to the chicken. On its own, the ranch dip wasn't very exciting, but paired with the chicken doused in a semi-spicy sauce, it was the perfect complement, easily tempering any spice from the hot honey and the Calabrian flavors. At the bottom of the dish, the sauce pooled just enough to drag drier chicken pieces through it to mop up some sauce. While this made a great appetizer, I can also imagine getting it as a main course, especially paired with the chain's soup, salad, and breadsticks.

For main courses, my husband and I both tried one of the iterations of the new Calabrian rigatoni pasta. You get your choice of either grilled chicken or sausage, and the rigatoni is all mixed up with bell peppers and a Calabrian creamy sauce and cheese. My husband opted for the sausage version, and I went with chicken, though we both grabbed a bite or two of each other's pasta. You also get a choice of soup or salad (my husband opted for one of the Olive Garden soups, Zuppa Toscana, because he loves sausage) and breadsticks, an Olive Garden signature dish.

The Italian sausage was a nice complement to the spicy sauce, and made it feel a little more rustic. The sausage definitely amped the spice up, but not to an uncomfortable degree. Between the two pastas, the sausage was surprisingly less at $12.99. The dish had 1,630 calories, 111 grams of fat, and 3,080 milligrams of sodium.

My Spicy Chicken and Peppers Rigatoni had a similar flavor to the sausage option, but the chicken didn't add additional spice the way the sausage did. The chicken was mixed right in with the pasta with tender noodles, peppers, and sauce. The chicken had a soft bite and held the sauce well. Still, my favorite part of the dish was the tender pepper pieces. The rigatoni was a nice complement to the flavors, holding that saucy goodness in the tubular shape.

If you're concerned at all about this being overly spicy, I recommend choosing the chicken over the sausage. Most people should be able to handle the zest unless you're cursed with an overly sensitive spice sensitivity. For the more mellow flavor, you'll shell out a little more, with my location pricing it at $17.99. Nutritionally, this dish had 1,420 calories, 77 grams of fat, and 3,020 milligrams of sodium.

Just as the Olive Garden's Calabrian Steak and Shrimp Bucatini was worth a try, so are these newest menu items. If you're someone who likes a little bit of zest with your pasta, these are going to be an absolute hit. The standout dish between the three was easily the Calabrian Hot Honey Chicken Bites, and they should definitely be among the menu items you should start ordering at Olive Garden. Still, the pasta made for an enjoyable meal, too. Although I really liked the large, tubular rigatoni, it made me wonder how the dishes might change if made with the doughy, delicious bucatini noodles rather than the rigatoni. I imagine Olive Garden didn't want to do too many bucatini dishes with the same flavor profile, so choosing a rigatoni noodle makes sense here.

Between the salad I enjoyed before my pasta, chicken bites, and rigatoni, I had plenty of leftovers to take home and enjoy for lunch the next day. Since the rigatoni was on the saucer side, I was reasonably confident it would microwave up well and provide a delicious lunch.

As of June 1, 2026, the new rigatoni and chicken bites join Olive Garden's menu for a limited time. According to our waitress, Francesca, they'll be sticking around through July 19, so the limited time run is rather on the short side. Still, with how tasty the Calabrian Hot Honey Chicken Bites were, I can definitely see them joining the permanent appetizer menu.

Both Francesca and the manager on duty commented that the chicken bites were so enjoyable, they would most definitely sell out, leading me to believe that, although these are limited time offerings, there's always a chance that restaurants will run out of supply before the end of the month-and-a-half run. Therefore, if these chicken bites are calling you, I recommend making it over to your favorite Olive Garden location soon since these items will surely become popular (perhaps even sell out) menu items at Olive Garden.