What is Olive Garden?
Olive Garden is an Italian-style restaurant known for their pasta, soup, breadsticks, and salad. The restaurant is most well-known in the United States, and there are 900 restaurants nationwide. While Olive Garden isn’t known for serving authentic Italian cuisine (it’s often called “Italian-American”), it is a popular restaurant for many families.
At the end of 2025, Olive Garden went viral on social media platforms (like TikTok) for their Never Ending Pasta Bowl promotion, which offered a relatively affordable way to try a variety of their pasta types and sauces. (Check out Taryn Pire’s report on the best combinations.) Paired with their never-ending soup/salad and breadsticks, it was a great way to get a good amount of tasty food!
Olive Garden in Canada
According to Yahoo Finance, Olive Garden had more Canadian locations in the 1990s and early 2000s. However, by the late 1990s, poor sales led to the Ontario Olive Gardens closing.
In the summer of 2025, Recipe Unlimited announced that they had acquired the eight Olive Garden locations in Canada (Alberta, Manitoba, British Columbia, and Saskatchewan). Recipe Unlimited oversees many popular restaurants in Canada, such as Harvey’s, Montana’s, New York Fries, Kelseys, etc. They plan to “expand the Olive Garden brand” within Canada. This expansion means that Olive Garden will be returning to Ontario. As of March 2026, the Olive Garden Canada website lists the upcoming Ontario locations as follows: Ajax, Ottawa, and Vaughan. See here for specific location details.
The Vaughan Location
For students at the University of Toronto, the nearest Olive Garden will be the location opening in Vaughan. The restaurant will be located in Vaughan Mills (1 Bass Pro Mills Dr, Vaughan, ON, L4K 5W4). While the exact opening date is still unclear, most sources are reporting for an opening sometime in the summer of 2026. Currently, the location seems to be hiring servers, hosts, and cooks.
My Experience + What to order
I have been to Olive Garden a few times in the United States while visiting family. My mother and I find the food quite delicious! So, we’re excited to have a location opening in Ontario. For those who have not been to Olive Garden before, I would recommend the Create Your Own Pasta. There are a ton of options, but my favourite is the Angel Hair pasta and the Five Cheese Marinara. It tastes very similar to a meat-free lasagna in my opinion! My mother loves the Fettuccine Alfredo (sub for spaghetti noodles) with added broccoli. We both get the salad and breadsticks as well. The salad is nice and light with a variety of vegetables and a tangy dressing (that I’m pretty sure is sold in some grocery stores). The breadsticks are also very popular among customers for good reason! They have a garlicky coating and are perfect for dipping in the pasta sauce. While prices have not been announced for the Vaughan location, my pasta dish cost about $12.99 + tax USD. On the Olive Garden website, the same dish for pick up at the Manitoba location seems to be about $20.29 CAD.
However, since I am a vegetarian, and I do not have the whole menu to choose from, I have reached out to some anonymous sources to give their menu suggestions as well:
- College-aged male in New Jersey: Chicken Alfredo + salad
- College-aged female in Michigan: Five Cheese Ziti al Forno
Both sources noted enjoying the breadsticks as well!
Final Thoughts
Overall, I’m excited to see Olive Garden back in Ontario, and I will certainly be giving the Vaughan location a try when it opens. While Olive Garden is by no means serving the best restaurant food I’ve ever had–and there are already a multitude of restaurants serving pasta, bread, and salad in the GTA (including authentic Italian restaurants)–it’s still a nice experience. I’d recommend giving it a try if you’re interested, especially if they’re running some of their popular promotions.