Red Lobster sure seems to keep making lots of changes.
In addition to closing about 100 stores last year, they keep changing their menu too!
(Although admittedly, some of the new dishes look amazing.)
That certainly lessens the sting of lost items…but it doesn’t eliminate it entirely!
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So I thought I’d round up some of the big ones we’ve lost over the years.
These are, of course, in no particular order…there’s so much good stuff here that I’m not even going to attempt to rank them.
But first out the gate is an old favorite:
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Do you like shrimp?
Do you like cheese?
Do you like chips?
If you answered yes to all three, Red Lobster’s old shrimp nachos were a slam-dunk.
Sadly, they’ve gone the way of the dinosaur, with no indication they’re returning anytime soon. Just like…
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I feel liked Red Lobster did a lot of these great crossover dishes before crossovers were “cool” – another great example was their lobster pizza, with a generous portion of lobster, cheese, diced tomatoes, and basil.
Unfortunately it last went off-menu in October of 2023 and hasn’t returned since.
Their lobster flatbread is a pretty good consolation prize, but it’s just not the same!
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This one’s a throwback all the way to the 1970s, when Red Lobster had shrimp stuffed with crab meat, paired with a steak done how you like it.
Of course, Red Lobster still has plenty of steak and shrimp options – just none where the shrimp are stuffed!
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This was a pretty simple dish. Maximum crab, maximum cheese, maximum cream – let’s go.
Apparently sourcing crab for the dish became increasingly difficult, which is why Red Lobster let it go – but still offers a shrimp linguini alfredo.
(You can add crab legs for like $13, but that jacks up the price all the way to the stratosphere.)
As consolation prizes go, it’s not bad at all.
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Ribeyes are prized for their beautiful marbling and big, beefy taste.
And it used to be you could get one at Red Lobster – they called it the “Commodore’s steak” – but no longer.
Today Red Lobster limits itself to sirloin, NY strip, and filet mignon.
The NY strip is definitely the closest to the ribeye, so if you’re missing this old dish, go for the strip (even with how expensive it is…).
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A spicy tortilla soup was always kind of a weird addition for Red Lobster, so it’s not a total shocker that this one disappeared.
That said, I know a lot of people loved it as a nice counterpoint to its seafood dishes, so no criticism here.
It disappeared back in 2014.
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This is another crab meat dish that has unfortunately disappeared – a flounder fillet that was stuffed with a spicy crab meat filling.
(But admittedly, this one went off-menu a long time ago – if you don’t remember it, that’s ok.)
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I’ve always felt that seafood and cheese made for the most decadent combinations, and Red Lobster’s old crab au gratin was perhaps the purest distillation of that.
After all, it was essentially a cheese casserole with crab in it.
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Picture this: Take a pretty standard seafood bisque.
Add cheese. Like, a lot more cheese.
Ladle it into a bread bowl.
Serve it. Watch as people eat it and fall into a food coma.
Now you’re getting a sense of what the ultimate fondue at Red Lobster was like.
It was just about as crazy as you can imagine.
And sadly, it’s all gone.
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So there you have it – nine discontinued Red Lobster dishes we’ll unfortunately probably never see again.
I understand why they’re gone – but that doesn’t mean I don’t miss them.
And of course, that brings us to the big question:
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What do YOU miss most from Red Lobster’s old menus?
Is it something I mentioned?
Something else?
What should they bring back?
Let us know in the comments!
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