It's a nice gesture meant to welcome you into the restaurant, while the following baskets are more of a professional courtesy. From a business standpoint, this makes sense. After all, Olive Garden can't exactly be giving out overflowing baskets full of breadsticks away for free.

While origin stories about the original breadstick differ, the Olive Garden breadstick can trace its lineage through two Italian foods: grissini and taralli.

Choose Soup

• Minestrone.
• Zuppa Toscana.
• Pasta e Fagioli.
• Chicken & Gnocchi.

Olive garden is famous for their house salad and breadsticks. Paired with minestrone soup, it's a healthier meal, although the sodium content is high. Omit the breadstick to reduce the sodium, fat, and calories. Note that this includes one serving of each; extra salad, soup or breadsticks adds up.

It's believed that it originated in 1643, when a Florentine abbot described a long-shaped and "bone-thin" bread being made in a town outside of Turin. Tradition states, however, that it originated in the region of Piedmont in the 17th century, invented by a baker called Antonio Brunero, from Turin.

In 1982, Olive Garden opened its first restaurant in Orlando, Florida, as a part of the General Mills empire, and since day one, the chain has been serving unlimited breadsticks.

Ingredients. INGREDIENTS: Wheat Flour, Olive Oil (7%), Yeast, Barley Malt Extract, Salt.

There are four main categories of soup: Thin, Thick, Cold and National. These types of soup are widely recognised in today's modern kitchen.

Zuppa Toscana Zuppa Toscana is Olive Garden's most popular soup. This one-pot, homemade Zuppa Toscana recipe is hearty and loaded with Italian sausage, kale, bacon and potatoes.

For one, soups and salads tend to generally have ingredients that are rich in important nutrients, including antioxidants, protein, vitamins and low on carbs, they are also quite hydrating. A balance of nutrients and ample water intake are keys to good weight loss.

That's not to say you can't enjoy bread - just keep count of those breadsticks. At 140 calories a pop they can add up quick (and that's not even including any dipping sauce). When dining at Olive Garden, soup or salad and a shrimp entree are going to be your best bets.

Breadsticks, also known as grissini, grissino or dipping sticks, (ghërsin in Piedmontese: [gəɾˈsiŋ]) are generally pencil-sized sticks of crisp, dry baked bread that originated in Piedmont, a region of Italy. There is also a soft-baked breadstick version popular in North America.

Breadstick is one type of yeast-leavened dry bread characterized by a crispy and crunchy texture resembling that of pretzels, crisp flatbreads and crackers.

The Italian-American chain is known for their unlimited salads, endless pasta offerings and those famously warm, soft breadsticks that make customer feel like family.