Review: Olive Garden's Calabrian Steak And Shrimp Bucatini Is Pure Saucy And Meaty Goodness

Nearly everything is better between bread, but in the case of Olive Garden, everything only gets better with unlimited breadsticks. These dippable, perfectly garlicked breadsticks will draw me in time and time again, but it's only recently that I've also fallen in love with Olive Garden's pasta. Full of saucy, carby goodness, the summer of 2025 brought several new offerings to the menu for a limited time, amplifying a selection already curated for pasta lovers.

Olive Garden's Calabrian Steak and Shrimp Bucatini is the newest pasta entrée to hit menus, and I got a chance to try it out. My goal was to determine whether this meaty bucatini dish should make you seriously consider Olive Garden for dinner tonight or whether you're better off skipping it altogether. I based my determination on a few factors: The overall taste of the dish, its texture, and whether the ingredients all work together. Between the beef, shrimp, pasta, and cream sauce, you really can't ask for much more in a pasta dish — but how would this decadent-sounding meal ultimately fare?

When Olive Garden came out with its spicy three-meat sauce, it also added a new type of noodle in the create-your-own pasta meal offering. Enter bucatini, a thick spaghetti with a hole running through the middle to soak up all of that gooey, saucy goodness. Now, this noodle plays a starring role in this limited-time offering from the Italian chain.

Calabrian Steak and Shrimp Bucatini is a bed of bucatini that is positively drenched in a slurp-worthy cream sauce full of Calabrian spice. This spicy flavor boost is a favorite of Giada De Laurentiis, and in this dish, the creaminess of the sauce helps tame that fire a little. The noodles also get a hefty helping of spinach and tomatoes. On top, you get generous bites of sirloin tip and shrimp, all covered in Romano (which is definitely not the same thing as Parmesan-Reggiano cheese) from Olive Garden's iconic cheese graters – 'til you say "when," of course!

If this saucy, spicy mix seems like something just up your alley, you better head to an Olive Garden soon because it's only around for the summer. According to Olive Garden, the thick noodles and this dish are only available until August 25.

Thankfully, you can now order your pasta from afar since Olive Garden will finally deliver straight to your door. To make it even better, the chain is offering a great incentive to get dishes out the door with free delivery for the first one million orders placed with code OGDELIVERS. While we've all fallen victim to the price gouging that can happen with delivery services, Olive Garden has no mark-up, so that Calabrian Steak and Shrimp Bucatini dish will be $24.29, just like it is in the restaurant. That price, of course, also gets you breadsticks and an option for soup or salad on the side.

Olive Garden's newest pasta dish is an impressively sized portion of food. Between the thick noodles, rich sauce, and the steak, there's a lot going on here, so I wasn't terribly surprised to see the calorie count at 1220 for the whole plate. There are 65 grams of fat, 360 milligrams of cholesterol, 2960 milligrams of sodium, 82 grams of carbohydrates, and 78 grams of protein.

Those numbers are awfully high, and perhaps the most notable is the amount of protein. Of the dinner entrees offered at Olive Garden, only two pasta dishes have more protein: the Chicken Alfredo with grilled chicken and Chicken Tortellini Alfredo. In both instances, the Calabrian Steak and Shrimp Bucatini has fewer calories, so if you're looking for the most protein impact with the least calories among the hard hitters, this bucatini will do it.

When I'm trying a new dish like this one, I always like to ask for a drink pairing to enjoy with it. My server, Will, recommended the Berry Sangria. Always a fan of sangria, this sounded just great. Will said that the slight spiciness of the sangria would complement the dish's characteristics, and the placard advertisement on the table advised that it would also cool some spice.

I really enjoyed this sangria and would gladly have it again on my next visit. This was a red wine sweetened with juices, oranges, and strawberries. I chose to get a glass, but you can also ask for it in pitcher size. A single glass costs $8 and the price for a pitcher (which serves four people) to share is $25.50. With four servings of the drink, this option will save you $6.50, so if others would be interested in some sangria, it's an ideal money-saving option.

Having tried the bucatini noodles before, I recognized the soft bite of the thick pasta. The Calabrian spicy sauce thoroughly coated each noodle, even pooling a little at the bottom of the dish, and the tomatoes and spinach were mixed in well throughout. Though spinach can get soggy if mixed too quickly ahead of time, that wasn't an issue here — the spinach wilted nicely into the noodle mixture, preserving some bite in the leaf. The tomatoes were present, too, but seemed to be there for moisture and didn't offer a whole lot in terms of flavor.

The sirloin steak had a tender bite and the shrimp were well cooked, easy to eat on their own or as part of a larger pasta forkful. In many ways, the flavor reminded me of the slight bite I get from a spicy vodka pasta I've made on several occasions. That said, I found the spice tamer than the three-meat spicy pasta sauce Olive Garden also released in summer 2025.

This is an easy yes. My husband and I both savored the dish. While I tend to enjoy dinners that are mostly without meat, I still liked the steak and shrimp here. The difference between the tender bite of meat and the squish of the noodle provided a nice contrast that I appreciated. Otherwise, it may have just been a bowl of tasty, slurpy noodles. While I would never complain about such a thing, the meat helped break up those bites with some heft and flavor.

The sauce benefited from the addition of cream and the thickness of the bucatini, making the dish easy to eat without going too far into spicy territory. I also liked the way the sauce tasted on Olive Garden's iconic breadsticks, so be sure to keep those coming to mop up that tasty sauce. In fact, I enjoyed it all so much that I eagerly took my leftovers home for a hearty lunch the following afternoon. If you have a willing date, you might find you can share this main course and order an extra soup or salad with an appetizer.

To decide if the Calabrian Steak and Shrimp Bucatini is worth a try, Olive Garden hosted my family for dinner. I enjoyed this main course, a salad as my starter, and that berry sangria. Though my husband ordered his own meal, he tried a few bites of mine, and between us, we reached a verdict based on the overall flavor and texture of the dish. I wanted a taste that was spicy without being overwhelming and had that rich, savory taste I long for in pasta dishes. For texture, I hoped to find a dish with variance and substance that didn't feel overly cooked or boring — in other words, everything should play nicely together for it to work well.