Whatever Happened To Olive Garden's Discontinued Breadstick Sandwich?

Chain restaurant menus often cycle through various dishes to get a feel for what customers are into. Occasionally, brands run across a hit but are later forced to remove it from the menu due to logistical issues, such as McDonald's discontinued Snack Wrap. Other times, the culinary creation is simply a bust. No one truly knows which one of these categories Olive Garden's Spicy Calabrian Chicken Breadstick Sandwich fell into, because the once beloved-by-some menu item was discontinued without much explanation.

In 2016, Olive Garden capitalized on patrons' adoration for its tasty endless breadsticks by utilizing them as the draw for unique Italian fare. The same breadsticks that have kept customers returning to the restaurant for years were made larger and cut in half to create a bun for thin fried chicken. Although one could argue the hero of the dish was the carbs holding it together, many were impressed with how the spicy Calabrian sauce on the protein harmonized with the gorgonzola sauce drizzled over it.

It is unclear when exactly this sandwich was discontinued, but it certainly left a hole in the menu that some desperately want back. Today, several websites have pages dedicated to copycat recipes so that folks can re-create the dish at home. However, if you want to get the recipe as close as possible to the original, you will have to find the Italian peppers used to make the dish's signature sauce.

As Darden Foods' flagship Italian restaurant, Olive Garden's breadstick sandwich needed something from the old country to make it authentic. Calabrian chiles come from Italy's Calabria region, so they fit the bill. These chile peppers are considered a fundamental way to bring heat to a dish in Italy, although they aren't so hot that they will make you wince and pucker after tasting them.

Much milder than the hottest pepper in the world, Calabrian peppers range from 25,000 to 40,000 Scoville heat units. That puts them squarely in the medium-hot range, similar to a cayenne pepper. One thing diners appreciated about Olive Garden's spicy sandwich was that the tartness of the gorgonzola sauce mellowed the heat some and balanced the overall profile. Combine that with the chain's iconic breadsticks holding the sub-style dish together, and it seemed to be a match made in heaven.

If you attempt to recreate this fare at home, be prepared to shell out some extra dough for the ingredients. Calabrian chiles can be found in many grocery stores in paste or powder form, but because they come imported from Italy, they can be expensive. The protein is simple enough, although a little vodka can make your fried chicken even crunchier. As for making the breadsticks just like the ones that Olive Garden used on its discontinued sandwich, there are a plethora of copycat recipes online that might lead you in the right direction.