Fazoli's Pasta Dishes Ranked From Worst To Best

There are times you want a meal packed with so many different flavor profiles your stomach might just get dizzy from the influx of different tastes. But there are other times that sticking to something super basic with just a few ingredients is what the doctor ordered. When it comes to pasta, you'd be hard-pressed to find a dish simpler than spaghetti with marinara sauce. Fazoli's offers customers its version of Spaghetti and Marinara, but let's be honest, if you're making the trip to the restaurant, you might as well order something with more depth of flavor.

The dish comes with a bowl of al dente spaghetti topped with marinara sauce and sprinkled in shaved Parmesan cheese. The marinara sauce is made using vine-ripened tomatoes, garlic, basil, and oregano, and although the flavor is decent, it's a bit thinner than it should be. You want a sauce to cling to the pasta as opposed to run off and pool up on the bottom of the bowl, and this dish does the latter. Sometimes the al dente spaghetti can feel a little too chewy, as well. It's a very basic bowl of pasta you won't regret not ordering.

When you think about your basic spaghetti and marinara sauce dish, there aren't many ways you can prepare those few ingredients differently to create a varied texture and flavor. However, Fazoli's seemed to figured something out by baking the dish in the oven to create a heartier dish with richer flavors. The Baked Spaghetti dish is a simple bowl of spaghetti noodles and marinara sauce covered in mozzarella cheese and baked until the cheese melts. It's tastier than the regular spaghetti and marinara sauce dish, but it still might leave you craving more.

The addition of the mozzarella here really takes the dish to another level. The cheese comes out super melty, glistening a great golden color thanks to the baking. However, the flavor of the cheese is really all you taste with each bite because it's so plentiful. The marinara sauce adds a slightly sweet flavor thanks to the vine-ripened tomatoes, but you're still left feeling like you're eating only baked cheese for a meal.

Before you order any dish that comes loaded, you better have a stern talking with your appetite to ensure you can handle the onslaught of food that's about to attack it with full force. This is exactly what you can expect if you order the Loaded Fettuccine at Fazoli's. It's a no-holds-barred barrage of ingredients testing your stomach capacity. However, that doesn't mean it's worth ordering. In fact, it might mean exactly the opposite for many customers.

To say this dish appears totally overwhelming is an understatement. You get fettuccine pasta tossed in alfredo sauce and filled with chunks of chicken, bacon, broccoli, and garlic-roasted mushrooms. It's a lot of food crammed into one bowl, and after only a few bites it's easy to throw in the white flag and admit defeat. Fettuccine alfredo on its own is super filling, so the addition of all these ingredients makes for a bowl of pasta almost too much to handle. Plus, there are so many flavors happening at once that they overwhelm each other instead of helping each other stand out.

Nobody really sets out to achieve the meat sweats after a meal. But sometimes it's unavoidable based on what entrée hits the table in front of you. Some proteins are really rich on their own, but pair them up with a few other kinds of meat and you have a roundhouse kick of heartiness sure to activate those sweat glands post meal. At Fazoli's, one meal that's basically the meat sweats in a bowl is the Loaded Baked Spaghetti.

This bowl is teeming with rich flavors. The spaghetti is topped with a heaping amount of meat sauce, meatballs, chunks of Italian sausage, pieces of bacon, and mushrooms. If that doesn't get your cholesterol rising, the whole bowl is also covered in a layer of mozzarella and provolone cheese before being baked in the oven. This is another dish that's too filling, too quickly. All the proteins are super juicy and tender, but each bite is an overwhelming amount of them. The earthy flavor of the mushrooms hardly comes through, too. The cheese only adds to the staggering amount of richness in each bite.

Ziti pasta is one variety that does a great job of holding onto a rich sauce so you get a hearty forkful of flavor with every bite. The ridged tubes can hold whatever sauce you're using in the center like little pasta cannoli. That's why a heavier sauce is preferable when cooking with ziti. At Fazoli's, you can order up the Baked Ziti dish for a hearty meal of penne pasta (yes, it's made with very similar-looking penne even though the name indicates otherwise) covered in both marinara and meat sauce, and two kinds of cheese, mozzarella and provolone.

The doubling down of sauces and cheeses works out really well. Both the mozzarella and provolone lend a gooey saltiness and complement each other nicely. The addition of the meat sauce adds a rich punch of protein paired with the slightly sweet marinara sauce. One of the downsides is that the penne pasta along the edges of the bowl can toughen up to an almost inedible consistency, which definitely detracts from the rest of the flavors. However, most of the pasta is cooked well and holds onto the sauce and cheese tightly.

All too often when a dish's name has the word spicy in it, the level of spice included isn't enough to really hit home for those who truly like heat dancing across their palate and leaving that tingly sensation afterward. Fazoli's offers a dish to entice those craving spice in the form of the Spicy Baked Ziti with Chicken or Sausage. While you might expect the spice level to come across as subpar, it actually does pack enough heat to warrant the spicy title.

The pasta used here is penne even though the name implies you'll be getting ziti, but that's fine. The penne is ladled with a spicy pepper tomato sauce and topped with chunks of either chicken or sausage and then both mozzarella and provolone cheese. The pepper sauce really has a hit of spice in every bite, and it adds an additional welcome layer of flavor to every other ingredient. Both the chicken and sausage are super juicy and full of great seasoning, so whatever option you choose only gets better with the sauce. The cheeses add a salty bite that's only enhanced with the spice the sauce offers.

When someone who loves pasta hears the words "gluten-free" so often, they may start to make the judgment call that whatever gluten-free version of noodles being served to them won't ever live up to the authentic starchy stuff. However, gluten enthusiasts shouldn't instantly write off the Gluten Friendly Chicken Pesto Rotini at Fazoli's. It's actually an option that's packed with really good flavor that might just make you completely forget you're avoiding gluten.

The gluten-friendly rotini pasta used here is tossed with roasted chicken and covered in alfredo sauce, mozzarella cheese, and basil pesto before a trip into the oven for baking. The result is a grand slam concoction of flavors. The spiraled rotini pasta does an awesome job of trapping the alfredo sauce and melted mozzarella cheese into every nook and cranny so your palate is walloped by awesome tastes with each bite. The chicken is really juicy and packed with flavor, but it's the pesto sauce and takes everything to new heights. It's a bright burst of basil-forward flavors and aromas that shine through every bite.

It's one of the most famous pasta dishes in the world, and when it's made with the love and care it deserves, almost nothing rivals a bowl of Fettuccine alfredo. This is exactly why this item sits in the number one spot in the Fazoli's pasta ranking. It's far from the most intricate dish on the menu, but that's absolutely okay because all the amazing flavors you want are present and envelope your palate with a torrent of creamy robust tastes and textures.

The fettuccine is perfectly cooked, and the thick noodle works wonders when it comes to clinging to the alfredo sauce. You never end up with a pool of thin sauce on the bottom of the bowl. The sauce itself is packed full of garlic and Parmesan flavors, so you get this perfectly salty punch from the cheese and the zesty bite of the garlic. The shaved Parmesan cheese grated over the top just makes everything here better. You get even more of those nutty flavors that are already super present in the pasta and sauce. If you want a pasta dish that'll knock your socks off, this is the menu item to order.