Olive Garden Lunch Menu With Prices (2026)

What is on the Olive Garden lunch menu?

Olive Garden's lunch menu, which it calls Lunch-Sized Favorites, has 11 items: the soup, salad and breadsticks meal plus ten smaller pasta plates. The lineup was identical at all 15 restaurants we checked:

• Fettuccine Alfredo and the limited-time Spicy Alfredo Fettuccine
• Chicken Parmigiana and Eggplant Parmigiana, each with a side of spaghetti
• Lasagna Classico
• Five Cheese Ziti al Forno
• Cheese Ravioli with marinara or meat sauce
• Spaghetti with marinara or meat sauce
• Spaghetti and Meatballs
• Shrimp Scampi over angel hair
• Soup, salad and breadsticks

Not every dinner favorite gets a lunch version. Tour of Italy, the steak and salmon plates, Chicken Alfredo and the carbonaras are dinner-size only. Lunch runs Monday to Friday until 3 p.m.; our Olive Garden lunch hours guide covers the timing and weekend rules.

How much is lunch at Olive Garden?

Most Olive Garden lunch plates cost $11.49 or $12.49 at restaurants in average-priced markets, and the soup, salad and breadsticks meal costs $9.99 everywhere during its current limited-time run. Prices step up in pricier cities: the same lunch Fettuccine Alfredo was $10.99 in Charlotte and Nashville, $13.99 in Los Angeles and $14.99 in Times Square.

The savings over dinner are real. Comparing the most common prices, lunch Shrimp Scampi costs about $8.30 less than the dinner plate, Chicken Parmigiana $8 less and Lasagna Classico $6 less. The smallest gap is on spaghetti, about $2.50, because dinner spaghetti is already one of the cheapest plates on the menu. The table below shows each lunch item next to its dinner price. Drinks are extra; a soft drink was $3.79 in Grove City, Ohio.

Are Olive Garden lunch portions smaller?

Yes. Olive Garden's own nutrition guide lists separate lunch and dinner versions, and most lunch plates have 25 to 50 percent fewer calories. Lunch Lasagna Classico is 500 calories against 940 at dinner, Five Cheese Ziti al Forno is 630 against 1,170, and Chicken Parmigiana is 630 against 1,020.

Shrimp Scampi is the exception: 460 calories at lunch and 490 at dinner. Carbohydrates are identical at 52 grams, but protein drops from 29 grams to 20, which points to less shrimp rather than less pasta. If you want a lot of food, the dinner scampi is the better deal; if you want a light lunch, the lunch version is already one of the lightest plates on the menu.

What comes with an Olive Garden lunch entrée?

Every lunch entrée comes with your choice of the house salad or one of four soups, plus breadsticks. When you eat in, the soup or salad and breadsticks are never-ending, just as they are at dinner. Ordered To Go, you get one serving, and the online menu charges $4.49 to add a salad or $5.29 to add a soup on top of the included one, based on the Grove City, Ohio prices.

You can also add protein. At that restaurant a grilled chicken breast or nine Crispy Shrimp Fritta cost $4.49 extra and three meatballs $4.29. That is how you build a lunch-size Chicken Alfredo: lunch Fettuccine Alfredo plus grilled chicken came to $15.98 there. Our Olive Garden alfredo prices page compares it with the dinner version.

Can you get lunch-size portions after 3 p.m.?

Yes, through the Lighter Portions menu. It carries eight of the lunch dishes in the same sizes, with the same calories in Olive Garden's nutrition guide, from 3 p.m. on weekdays and all day on Saturday and Sunday. The catch is price: every Lighter Portions plate cost exactly $2 more than its lunch twin at all 15 restaurants we checked, so lunch Fettuccine Alfredo at $11.49 becomes $13.49 at night.

Shrimp Scampi, plain spaghetti and the lunch soup, salad and breadsticks are not on the Lighter Portions list. For the evening version of the soup and salad meal, see our Olive Garden soup, salad and breadsticks guide. The rest of the Olive Garden menu has full dinner prices.