Are Olive Garden Desserts Made Fresh?

Olive Garden has become infamous for its delightful Zuppa Toscana soup, viral breadstick moments, and nifty cheese graters, which waitstaff employ table-side to give you as much parmesan as you can handle. While some of the hot dishes are made in-house, you might be wondering about the chain's six dessert items including two types of cake, tiramisu, a cheesecake, Italian doughnuts, and what's known as Chocolate Lasagna. Are they baked up fresh in the restaurant kitchens, or does the chain buy them in?

Sadly, Olive Garden's desserts are likely not made fresh in-house. Instead, they reportedly arrive frozen and are warmed up for serving (in the microwave, no less). But, the chain does source the cakes and other sweets from bakeries that prepare the desserts just for Olive Garden, which is great if you're looking for exclusivity (but disappointing if you were hoping to purchase them for your own freezer). In a statement, Olive Garden did mention that its "Say When" policy regarding freshly grated parmesan also applies to its white chocolate shavings, so you can go all-out with that if you fancy.

According to some Reddit users, Olive Garden also gets entree items delivered frozen including proteins like chicken, steaks, and seafood. These ingredients allegedly get thawed and then cooked to order (which isn't all bad when you consider how much more food waste there could be if it all arrived fresh). Stuffed pasta and all of the fried foods, like the mozzarella wedges and toasted ravioli, also reportedly arrive at the restaurants frozen. 

But, there is plenty that gets cooked up in-house, fresh every day, and that includes the Olive Garden soups. Yes, the soups get made from scratch every morning and are cooled off and portioned into gallon bags ready for service. They then get reheated to order throughout the day. The sauces also get made up each day, and the restaurant staff also uses fresh eggplant for the Eggplant Parmigiana according to the Olive Garden Reddit thread.