Olive Garden Employees Swear These Are The Only 2 Microwaved Dishes On The Menu

Microwaves often get a bad rap and are considered the antithesis of fine dining. So while microwaves are highly useful, that doesn't stop restaurant patrons from getting rather cranky if their meal touched a microwave before it hit their table. Fortunately, if you eat at Olive Garden, most of your food will remain microwave-free. Redditors claiming to be or have been Olive Garden staff insist that while some OG kitchens are equipped with microwaves, they're only used to nuke two menu items: broccoli and mac and cheese.

According to one Redditor with considerable experience in restaurant kitchens, the reason for microwaving broccoli is because most restaurants don't want to invest in a steamer unless it is something they can use a lot. Instead, cooks will stick broccoli in the microwave with a little butter or oil to soften the vegetable and get that steamed-like effect. So don't be surprised if the "steamed broccoli" you see on your favorite restaurant menu is really made with steam from a microwave.

As for the mac and cheese, the rationale behind the choice to microwave it is less clear. One Olive Garden worker alleged that it gets microwaved rather than cooked on the stove, where most pasta is prepared in the same water, to protect gluten-free diners from possible cross-contamination (which, frankly, makes no sense. Mac and cheese isn't gluten-free either). Or maybe it's due to the fact that mac and cheese is a kids' menu item — and kids are less fussy about where their food is cooked?

This whole debate on Reddit about what Olive Garden does or doesn't microwave started with a less-than-favorable review, in which the diner accused the chain of serving "reheated pasta sauce" and "underwhelming microwaved fare." But Olive Garden employees on Reddit pushed back. "I worked at two places that had an open kitchen. You could literally watch the food being cooked," one Redditor said. 

Multiple staffers explained that Olive Garden prepares its food fresh in batches, then refrigerates it until it's needed for orders. And at that point, it gets reheated. But again, reheated doesn't necessarily mean microwaved. "I am a line cook at OG, yes, the sauce is sometimes reheated. However, it is not microwaved," a user wrote on Reddit. "They warm it up in a cooking bag submerged in boiling water or in a kettle until at temp." Certain Olive Garden employees went so far as to say that their particular location doesn't even have a microwave at all, while others said that theirs does, and sometimes even several microwaves. 

Microwaved or not, it's worth mentioning that Olive Garden does not make all its dishes from scratch — fresh and un-microwaved, perhaps, but not always from scratch. For example, workers there say that the restaurant cooks up pasta from a box. "It's Barilla for most of the pasta. Colavita for the bucatini and angel hair, and some brand I can't remember for the ziti," one Reddit user said. "But it is cooked fresh every day. You're never eating old pasta." Soups, however, are always scratch-made in-house, then reheated for serving.