Every Cocktail On The Olive Garden Menu, Ranked Worst To Best

When your plan for the evening is going out for drinks, Olive Garden probably isn’t the first place that comes to mind. After all, the Italian chain isn’t exactly known for its extensive wine, beer, or cocktail selection. But I was surprised to discover that Olive Garden actually offers a ton of different cocktails in addition to its wide selection of popular dishes — and the prices are likely super accessible compared to your favorite cocktail bar. Now, are you going to get the most creative, innovative cocktails at this chain? No, of course not. Rather, it’s a place you go to for the food and possibly add a cocktail on the side if the wine or beer selection just isn’t hitting the spot for you.

I had the pleasure of tasting 11 of the cocktails on Olive Garden’s menu to deliver this ranking of the drinks from worst to best, evaluating overall flavor, complexity, and creativity. Note that essentially every drink on this list is quite sweet, so if that’s not your thing, then you may want to order a different beverage entirely. That being said, if you do like sweet drinks, some of these may be just what you’re looking for. Get the scoop on which Olive Garden cocktails are the most delicious so you can plan to try them the next time you visit the chain.

There’s something about ordering an unnaturally colored drink that stokes a sense of nostalgia in me. Perhaps it was too many sugar-spiked, bright blue drinks I downed at my favorite college bar, or maybe it takes me back even further to the days when I’d consume artificially colored drinks that would leave my entire mouth stained after a long day at school. Either way, I felt a sense of excitement as Olive Garden’s Blue Capri arrived at my table. Its shockingly blue hue told me I was about to get something with a super bold flavor profile, and I wasn’t wrong.

The Blue Capri is made with Blue Chair Bay coconut rum, and that’s absolutely the first — and only — flavor I tasted in the cocktail. And no, you’re not actually tasting that much of the rum at all. Rather, it’s really the coconut flavoring that stood out to me. It’s tropical and cloying and completely overpowers all the other flavors going on in the drink. The Blue Curaçao seems to be there mostly for color, and the addition of pineapple juice has the potential to add some acidity to the drink but ultimately fails to do so. Plus, I suspect that if I had downed the whole thing, I would have indeed left my local Olive Garden with a blue-stained mouth. Despite its nostalgia-provoking appearance, I think I’m going to have to skip this one next time.

If you usually order a standard margarita at your favorite Mexican restaurant and assume you’re getting the same thing when you go to Olive Garden, you’re likely going to be sorely disappointed by the strawberry limoncello margarita. This thing barely tasted like a margarita at all, considering its offensive lack of acidity. This is an extremely sweet margarita. That’s not my thing, personally, but I think a sweet cocktail can work if it’s well-balanced by enough tartness — but you absolutely will not find that here.

The margarita is made with Mi Campo Blanco tequila along with Caravella limoncello, a sweet Italian liqueur that’s known for both its intense sweetness and acidity, along with its bold yellow hue. After just a few sips of this thing, you’ll feel your palate getting tired, begging you to take a sip of water or anything that’s not violently spiked with sugar. Unfortunately, the strawberry limoncello margarita is just not well-balanced enough to make it out of the bottom two in this ranking.

When you order a drink called a watermelon moscato sangria, you can probably guess that you’re going to be getting quite a sweet drink. Therefore, it makes sense for this cocktail to contain a fair amount of sugar — that’s probably what most people ordering this drink want, anyway. But what you may not expect is that this cocktail tastes exactly like candy — specifically, like a watermelon Jolly Rancher.

It all starts with a chilled moscato, which is then blended with watermelon along with a “splash” of ginger ale. But I’ll be honest: I would be genuinely shocked if Olive Garden is actually using fresh watermelon in this recipe since the cocktail tasted so much like artificial watermelon (which is quite distinct from the flavor of the fresh stuff). Perhaps, too, there is a bit more than a “splash” of ginger ale in the mix, because I’m not sure the intense sweetness in this cocktail comes from the moscato alone.

The sweetness here is a bit cloying, although it’s certainly not as bad as the strawberry limoncello margarita. The real reason the watermelon moscato sangria is ranked so low is simply the fact that it tastes so artificial. If you love watermelon Jolly Ranchers, though, then this may just be your ideal cocktail.

Did I find Olive Garden’s Sicilian Sunset particularly delicious? No. But I have to admit that it’s one of the more complex drinks on the cocktail menu at the chain. The first thing you’ll notice about this drink is its bold pink color. Admittedly, it may be worth ordering just for its appearance alone. But if you actually are buying it for its flavor, you might be disappointed, depending on what you normally enjoy in a cocktail.

This drink is based on New Amsterdam vodka, which is almost entirely covered up by the other ingredients. That makes it a good pick for those who don’t generally like alcohol that much but not so ideal for those who are looking for a cocktail that actually highlights a spirit’s flavor profile. Pineapple juice and prickly pear lemonade play backup, creating an interesting mix of flavors you won’t find in just any cocktail. You can mostly taste the pineapple, but the prickly pear lends a floral note to the mix, which makes the drink more interesting. There’s also a small hint of bitterness that offers further complexity.

Although, yes, this drink is still quite sweet, those extra floral and bitter notes make the Sicilian Sunset significantly more interesting than a lot of the cocktails on this list, which is why it’s not at the bottom of the ranking. However, I personally wouldn’t order it again.

It’s nice to have an easy and approachable drink on a cocktail menu, and that’s just what Olive Garden’s peach bellini is. If you’ve had a peach bellini before and enjoyed it, then this cocktail is probably right up your alley. It’s about as simple as you can get: peach puree paired with prosecco. It’s a combo that’s not terribly exciting, which is why it’s not ranked higher on this list, but is nonetheless enjoyable if you tend to enjoy sweet, fruity drinks.

The peach puree Olive Garden uses is quite flavorful and tastes fresh. It has a thickness to it that’s evident in the glass — the drink is kind of a dirty yellow color, which indicates that this drink is focused on the puree, not the prosecco. However, as it’s served, there’s enough room in the glass for you to pour more prosecco into the drink since you’ll also get half of a small bottle of prosecco with the actual cocktail. If you’re just looking for a boozy accompaniment to your meal, the prosecco all on its own might be a better option. However, if you love that sweet, fruity note in your cocktails, then this peach bellini is a solid choice.

Here’s another moscato sangria for you to try: It’s Olive Garden’s green apple moscato sangria, and like the watermelon version, it tastes just like candy. This is a seriously sweet drink, but the flavors are a bit more balanced despite the fact that the green apple flavoring tastes relatively artificial (albeit less so than the watermelon variety). It’s made with chilled moscato, granny smith green apple, and pineapple juice, which come together in a lightly boozy concoction that even the most alcohol-hesitant should enjoy. It seems like a good option for those who don’t drink often or who simply don’t tend to enjoy the taste of alcohol.

I don’t know if these drinks are, in fact, based on hard candy flavors, but just like the watermelon variety, the green apple moscato sangria tastes uncannily like green apple Jolly Ranchers. Although I don’t particularly want my cocktail to taste like it came out of an elementary school teacher’s candy jar, I can’t discount the nostalgia that this drink evokes. When you’re looking for something super sweet and easy to drink, it might be worth checking out.

There aren’t a lot of rum-based drinks on Olive Garden’s menu, so if you think of yourself as a rum person specifically, you’ll probably gravitate toward Olive Garden’s Italian rum punch. It kind of tastes like the jungle juice my particularly heavy-handed bartender friends would whip up in college, and although it may not be the most innovative drink in the world, I’m here for it. Bacardi Silver rum provides the backbone for this drink, accompanied by amaretto and strawberry passion fruit flavoring.

The amaretto here is a nice touch. Yes, it’s aggressively sweet, which isn’t ideal if you’re looking for more of a balanced cocktail, but it also offers a lovely nutty flavor to the drink, which adds to its complexity and makes it more interesting after the first few sips. Despite that sweetness, the flavors are well-balanced here, with the passion fruit offering just the right amount of acidity to keep the sugar from overpowering the other flavors.

Of all the sangrias I tried at Olive Garden, the berry sangria was by far my favorite. It features chilled wine, but it doesn’t specify that it’s moscato specifically, so perhaps that’s why it’s a bit less sweet than the others on this list. It also comes with “fruit juices” along with some fresh fruit — in this case, a strawberry and an orange slice. The lack of specificity in this description had me wondering what, exactly, I was going to get, but I was pleasantly surprised at what I found in my glass.

This one also tastes like candy, but it’s more similar to other types of sangria I’ve had elsewhere. That candy note was milder, more muted, and there was less sweetness to carry the drink. Overall, it’s a pretty basic drink, and it’s still quite a bit sweeter than what you would find at a place that’s dedicated mostly to cocktails. But for an Olive Garden cocktail, it’s tasty.

I wasn’t a fan of the strawberry limoncello margarita, but that doesn’t mean I think Olive Garden can’t pull off a margarita at all. The chain’s Italian margarita is a huge step up from the other variety I tried, and it’s something I would actively look forward to if I were to order it with my meal. All you sour-loving margarita drinkers may not like the fact that this cocktail packs a lot of sugar, but I found that it was more well-balanced than most on the menu. There’s a marked acidity there, which means you won’t be overwhelmed with sweetness upon your first sip.

It starts with Jose Cuervo Especial Silver tequila, and unlike some of the other cocktails on this list, you can actually really taste the tequila here. Then, they add triple sec, as you’d expect from any other margarita, but what sets this cocktail apart from others like it is the addition of amaretto. That’s largely responsible for that pronounced sweetness, but it also lends the drink a nuttiness and subtle bitter note that helps round it out nicely. Don’t expect a typical Mexican margarita when you order this drink; chances are, you’ll enjoy it.

Sometimes, you need to keep things simple, and that’s exactly what this amaretto sour does. It’s just a combo of amaretto, that sweet Italian almond liqueur that appears in so many of Olive Garden’s cocktails, and sour mix. Amaretto is definitely a sweet ingredient, and you can totally taste that sweetness whenever you take a sip of this cocktail. But that sweetness is perfectly balanced with the sour mix. There’s also a really lovely tropical note that makes you feel like you should be sipping this stuff at the beach.

Does it taste like the freshest cocktail you’ve ever had? Not exactly. But this is Olive Garden — you shouldn’t expect anything too fancy. It’s just a solid cocktail that’ll fulfill your cravings for something that’s on the tarter side. Olive Garden doesn’t offer many low-sugar drinks, and although this one is still quite sweet, it may be one of the better options for you if you’re not too fond of the super-sugary cocktails that dominate most of the menu.

Who knew an alcoholic lemonade would earn the top spot in this Olive Garden cocktail ranking? Certainly not me before I tried all the drinks in the lineup. But it wasn’t even a competition: The spiked strawberry lemonade came far ahead of all the others. Oftentimes, lemonade can be quite sweet. And although there’s definitely a fair amount of sugar in this drink, that sweetness is really not at the forefront of this cocktail. Rather, when you first take a sip, you’ll be met with the welcoming acidity of a well-made lemonade.

There’s definitely a palpable strawberry note in this cocktail, but you’ll also be met with a passion fruit flavor as well. It’s made with New Amsterdam vodka, but honestly, you can’t really taste the alcohol at all. Again, that may not make for the most sophisticated cocktail you’ve ever had, but it does make for one that tastes good to drinkers and not-so-frequent drinkers alike. Add in some fresh mint and actual strawberries, and you have a cocktail that really stands out on Olive Garden’s menu.

I tried all of these cocktails at the same time at my local Olive Garden. The criteria for this ranking were flavor, balance, complexity, and creativity, with the most well-balanced, interesting, and sometimes nostalgic cocktails rising to the top. This ranking reflects my personal preference for less sweet, more complex cocktails, although I took other palates into consideration as well.