Does Ina Garten Love Olive Garden Copycats as Much as We Do?

Fans were shocked by the Barefoot Contessa's recent Facebook post.

Normally when you scroll through Ina Garten’s Facebook page, you’re greeted with dozens of posts featuring her favorite seasonal recipes and adorable videos of the beloved cookbook author and host making positively fabulous meals. However, last week, Facebook users noticed some unconventional content on the “Barefoot Contessa” host’s page.

Instead of the usual curated content, Garten’s Facebook was filled with re-shared recipes from third-party pages. Not only was it strange because Garten doesn’t share recipes that aren’t available on her Barefoot Contessa website—but also because they were far from the recipes you see on her Facebook page.

Fans finally sounded the alarm that something was up when they saw a copycat Olive Garden recipe come through.

Now, we know what you’re thinking, “Which recipe? I want to make that!” Because that's exactly what we thought when we heard the news.

However, Garten—with her simple, yet luxurious dishes like lobster BLT and gorgonzola sauce-topped beef—apparently doesn’t find herself frequenting the Garden too often, nor is she making its copycat recipes. Fans accused her account of being hacked, stating that it was more likely than Ina's sudden change of heart towards the Italian chain.

“How you know Ina Garten's Facebook account has been hacked: Instead of being her Hamptons-dwelling, Cosmo-sipping, "good olive oil" using self, she's suddenly become your Jell-o salad-making great-aunt from Iowa who's always posting Olive Garden copycat recipes,” Twitter user Emily Pressman wrote.

Despite the fact that we’d love to see an Ina Garten x Olive Garden collaboration, her skeptical fans proved to be correct: Garten’s Facebook page was indeed hacked. She was able to get it worked out and return her page to normal, posting, “Thank you to everyone who alerted me that my Facebook page was hacked, and to Meta for helping us get our page back! I will continue to post my favorite recipes here and read all of your wonderful comments! xx Ina.”

That does mean Garten and her team deleted the Olive Garden copycat recipe (we know, it’s a shame), but the good news is that we have quite a few Olive Garden copycats on our site we think even Ina would approve of. What's more, we even have a Chicken Scampi recipe similar to the one that Garten’s hacker posted, so you're not missing out at all.

We guess it’s safe to say that our beloved Ina Garten does not love Olive Garden copycat recipes as much as we do. However, we are ready and willing to help change that because Ina, if you're reading this, have you seen our top-rated Zuppa Toscana recipe?