The One Olive Garden Cocktail You Should Never Order, According To Our Taste Test

There's nothing like a glass of wine for washing down a platter of shrimp alfredo – that is, unless you're in the mood for a cocktail. Fortunately, Olive Garden offers an ample craft cocktail menu to keep foodies satisfied. However, to get the most out of your meal, we would recommend steering clear of one enticingly brightly-hued bevvy in the lineup: The Blue Capri (we'll just have a glass of water, thanks). In Tasting Table's ranking of every cocktail on Olive Garden's menu, from worst to best, the Blue Capri fell to last place.

The official website describes its Blue Capri drink as: "A refreshing blend of Blue Chair Bay coconut rum, blue curaçao, and pineapple juice, perfectly balanced with a hint of sweetness and citrus." It comes garnished with an orange wedge and maraschino cherry skewer. Alas, the dimensional interplay promised in the menu description never arrived. 

As our reviewer pointed out, "The Blue Capri is made with Blue Chair Bay coconut rum, and that's absolutely the first — and only — flavor I tasted in the cocktail. [...] Rather, it's really the coconut flavoring that stood out to me. It's tropical and cloying and completely overpowers all the other flavors going on in the drink." Olive Garden's Blue Capri intends to evoke the refreshing, turquoise waters of the Tyrrhenian Sea. But, in execution, the cocktail comes across as one note, and it plays that single note very, very loudly. 

If the Blue Capri sounds like it's reminiscent of a classic Blue Hawaiian, it's because the ingredients are nearly identical. The Blue Hawaiian cocktail is a neon-hued sipper evoking classic 1980s cocktail culture, which is comprised of blue curaçao, white rum, vodka, pineapple juice, and coconut milk. Olive Garden seems to have Italianized the geographic title, slapping a nod to the Bay of Naples on the longstanding drink and calling it good.

Indeed, the Blue Capri is a riff on their own similarly-named drink, the Blue Amalfi, which the Capri seems to have replaced. The Blue Amalfi doesn't currently appear on Olive Garden's online cocktail menu. But, in the seemingly retired drink, bitter orange blue curaçao met with vodka and lemonade or lime juice for a balanced, tart, tangy, and citrus-forward profile far less sweet than the domineering coconut tones of the new Blue Capri.

While it's a more complex, at least assemblage-wise, drink compared to its Amalfi predecessor, for all the Blue Capri's added sophistication, this reimagined cocktail unfortunately strays further from the mark. Also, calling a Blue Hawaaian by a slightly different regional moniker isn't fooling anyone — and it doesn't pair well with a rich, cheesy platter of pasta (odd for Olive Garden). By our count, foodies are better off ordering a glass of wine, or sticking to the Spiked Strawberry Lemonade or Amaretto Sour cocktails, which led the pack in our ranking in terms of flavor, presentation, balance, and complexity.