Olive Garden Keto Menu: Best Low-Carb Options to Order

If you’re following a low-carb lifestyle and craving Italian-American comfort food, the olive garden keto menu question comes up more than you’d think. Olive Garden doesn’t publish an official keto section, but that doesn’t mean the restaurant is off-limits.

With a few smart swaps and an understanding of which sauces and proteins keep net carbs low, there are genuinely solid olive garden keto options on offer. This guide walks through exactly what to order, what to skip, and how to build a meal that fits comfortably within your daily keto macros.

Olive Garden Keto Men

Does Olive Garden Have a Keto Menu?

No, Olive Garden does not have a dedicated keto menu. What it does have is a well-documented gluten-free menu, and while gluten-free and keto aren’t the same thing, there’s useful overlap. Gluten-free entrées often swap traditional pasta for zucchini noodles or skip breaded coatings altogether, which naturally lowers the carb count.

It’s worth checking the Olive Garden gluten-free menu before you order, since several of those substitutions double up as keto friendly food choices.

That said, gluten-free isn’t automatically low-carb. Rice, potatoes, and certain sauces are gluten-free but still carry a fair amount of sugar or starch. The key to keto-friendly restaurants with olive garden-style dining is learning to separate “no gluten” from “no carbs” and ordering with that distinction in mind.

How to Eat Keto at Olive Garden: Simple Swaps That Work

Low carb swaps at Olive Garden aren’t complicated once you know the pattern. Here’s what consistently works when figuring out what to order at Olive Garden on keto:

  • Skip the breadsticks entirely. A single Olive Garden breadstick runs close to 28 grams of carbs, which can eat up most of a keto day’s allowance in one bite.
  • Ask for zucchini noodles (zoodles) in place of regular pasta on any Create Your Own Pasta order. This single swap turns a high-carb dish into a genuinely low-carb Italian food option.
  • Request sauce on the side so you control the portion rather than getting it ladled generously over your plate.
  • Choose grilled or roasted proteins over anything breaded or fried.
  • Swap starchy sides (potatoes, rice) for steamed broccoli or an extra portion of vegetables.

None of these requests are unusual. Servers deal with allergy and diet modifications constantly, so don’t feel awkward asking twice.

Best Keto Meals at Olive Garden: Top Entrées

When it comes to the best keto meals at Olive Garden, a handful of dishes stand out as genuinely low in net carbs:

Herb-grilled salmon: Is one of the cleanest options on the menu. It’s simply seasoned, grilled, and typically served with vegetables, making it one of the best low-carb entrees Olive Garden offers.

Grilled Chicken Margherita: pairs chicken breast with fresh tomato, basil, and melted mozzarella. It’s flavourful without relying on a carb-heavy sauce, and it’s one of the easiest dishes to keep under 10 grams of net carbs when paired with a vegetable side instead of pasta.

Tuscan Sirloin Steak: (the 6oz sirloin) is about as keto as it gets on any restaurant menu. Ask for it grilled with a vegetable side rather than potatoes, and you’ve got a meal with almost negligible carbs.

Create Your Own Pasta with zucchini noodles: Lets you pick a protein (chicken, shrimp, or a combination) and a keto-friendly sauce (more on that below) while swapping out the pasta base entirely.

Olive Garden Low Carb Options: Salads, Sides and Starters

The house salad with no croutons is the obvious starting point. Olive Garden’s famous house salad is lettuce, tomato, olives, onion, and pepperoncini tossed in the signature Italian dressing. Ask for no croutons and easy on the dressing, and you’re left with a genuinely light, low-carb starter.

The signature Italian dressing carbs are moderate, so requesting it on the side lets you control exactly how much goes on.

For olive garden keto-friendly appetizers, options are limited but not nonexistent. Steamed broccoli as a side dish is a straightforward, low-carb filler.

Most of the fried appetizers (fried mozzarella, toasted ravioli, calamari) are breaded and therefore carry far too many carbs to fit a strict keto approach, so it’s best to treat those as an occasional exception rather than a regular order.

Keto-Friendly Sauces at Olive Garden

Sauce choice makes or breaks an olive garden keto meal under 20 carbs. Here’s how the main options compare:

Alfredo sauce net carbs sit relatively low because the sauce is built on cream, butter and parmesan rather than sugar or flour. This makes Alfredo one of the better keto-friendly sauces on the menu when poured over zoodles or a protein rather than pasta.

Marinara and five-cheese marinara, by contrast, are tomato-based and typically contain more natural sugar, pushing the net carb count higher per serving. They’re not off-limits, but portion control matters more here than with alfredo.

Olive Garden Soups on a Keto Diet

This is where Olive Garden soup keto hopes tend to hit a wall. Of the four rotating soups, none are particularly low-carb:

The Zuppa Toscana is potato-based, so despite the sausage and kale, the potato content keeps net carbs relatively high per bowl. Minestrone leans on beans, pasta and root vegetables, making it one of the higher-carb choices. Pasta e Fagioli combines pasta and beans, which again works against a low-carb goal.

If soup is a must, a small cup rather than a full bowl, eaten alongside a low-carb entrée, is the more realistic approach than trying to make any Olive Garden soup a keto centerpiece.

Keto Drinks, Desserts and a Sample Meal Plan

For drinks, dry wines a dry Pinot Grigio or Cabernet, for instance carry the fewest carbs among the wine list, and spirits mixed with soda water are essentially carb-free. Beer, by comparison, adds up quickly and is best avoided on a strict keto diet restaurant guide approach.

Unsweetened iced tea, sparkling water and espresso are all safe, carb-free choices if you’re skipping alcohol altogether, and there’s no obvious olive garden keto bread alternative on the menu, so it’s simplest to just skip the bread course rather than look for a substitute.

Desserts are genuinely the weak point. Nearly everything on the dessert menu (tiramisu, chocolate lasagna, cheesecake) is high in sugar and flour.

If you want something sweet, a cappuccino or espresso is the more sensible olive garden keto dessert options substitute rather than trying to find a low-carb version of cake.

A sample keto meal under 20 net carbs: start with a small house salad (no croutons, dressing on the side), follow with Herb-Grilled Salmon or Tuscan Sirloin with a side of steamed broccoli, and finish with an espresso.

That combination comfortably keeps net carbs in the mid-teens while still feeling like a full restaurant meal.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Olive Garden have a keto menu?

No, there’s no official keto menu at Olive Garden. However, several entrées and sauces are naturally low in carbs, and staff can accommodate substitutions like zucchini noodles on request.

What can I eat at Olive Garden on keto?

Grilled proteins like salmon, chicken and sirloin steak are the safest bets. Pair them with a house salad (no croutons) or steamed broccoli instead of pasta or bread.

Is Olive Garden Alfredo sauce keto friendly?

Alfredo sauce is one of the lower-carb sauce options since it’s cream and cheese based rather than tomato based. It works well poured over zucchini noodles or grilled protein in moderate portions.

Can you get zucchini noodles at Olive Garden?

Yes, zucchini noodles are available as a substitute in the Create Your Own Pasta section. This is the single most useful swap for anyone trying to eat low carb Italian food here.

What is the lowest carb item at Olive Garden?

The Tuscan Sirloin Steak and Herb-Grilled Salmon are generally the lowest-carb entrées on the menu, especially when ordered with a vegetable side instead of potatoes or pasta.

Which Olive Garden soup is keto friendly?

None of Olive Garden’s four soups are particularly keto friendly, since Zuppa Toscana, Minestrone and Pasta e Fagioli all contain potatoes, beans or pasta. A small portion alongside a low-carb entrée is the most practical approach if you want soup.

Final Thoughts

Eating keto at Olive Garden takes a bit of planning, but it’s far from impossible. Stick to grilled proteins, swap pasta for zoodles, choose alfredo over marinara, and skip the breadsticks and dessert menu, and you’ll walk away with a meal that fits your goals without feeling like a compromise.

For exact figures tailored to your order, it’s worth running your final plate through the Olive Garden nutrition calculator before you commit, since portion sizes and add-ons can shift the numbers more than you’d expect.

Maria Conti
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