Olive Garden Italian Restaurant — Restaurant in Calgary

Today at around 2pm we arrived for lunch, and received some of the worst service I’ve ever experienced. Drinks started off without a hitch, other than the server telling us a pint of beer was 44oz and they don’t have that, so maybe some better training on how many oz a pint of beer is, which is normally covered in ProServe. Things went downhill after we ordered and the soup and salad came. There were three of us dining, one ordered soup and two of us ordered salad. When the food came, our salad plates were put in front of us and they were so dirty we were shocked the server didn’t notice but put them in front of us anyways. They still had food chunks, that’s right CHUNKS, caked on them. We asked for clean plates as soon as they were put in front of us and our server seemed annoyed but said he would be back out with clean plates. We waited. And waited. And waited. The one of us having soup was done their soup and still no plates, so we dug in with just our forks into the shared salad. Another few minutes goes by and finally our server came back, but without plates still. We told him we didn’t need the plates anymore, and he didn’t seem bothered just took our salad away. We were seated right by the computer where servers were putting in orders, and our server was having a loud conversation with another server about how he had four tables, and that was too many, so she took a table from him. It definitely wasn’t a conversation that should have been shared in front of paying customers. Another server brought our entrees out on a tray, and put it on the tray stand and we heard her say “this is for (our servers) table”, he was standing in earshot at the computer and we sat and watched our food sit on that tray and get cold what felt like 10 minutes, but was more like five, but it was enough that the pasta was cold when it got to us. We asked for more breadsticks at the beginning of our meal and we didn’t receive them until we were done eating, we honestly thought he forgot. Then, we needed boxes for our food. Another 10 minutes. Then the bill. 10 minutes more. It was painful. We saw his other tables also very frustrated, and the other servers clearly running around after him trying to keep up. Our table didn’t get cleared of any plates, empty cups, anything. We left with a table full of dishes. It was an unpleasant experience to say the least.

I would like to add, we have been to this location previously several months ago and we had a very different experience. Our waitress was a lovely woman with short, curly black hair who was one of the best servers we’ve had. She happened to be the server alongside ours in the same section we were seated in, and she was doing everything trying to pick up the slack but you could tell there was only so much she could do looking after her tables and trying to help him.

So in short, please give that lady a raise. And please, invest in better (or longer) training for your other servers! I want to give our server the benefit of the doubt that maybe he was released into the wild a...

Well looks like shrinkflation has hit my (former) favorite restaurant. It had been quite some time since I have visited OG. But a friend offered to take me for my birthday this afternoon. Whenever I visit I always get the same thing; Italian Feast with Pasta Faggioli, 2x pieces of lasagna and a chicken parm. The waitress was pleasant as always and she brought our starters quick. Everything up to this point was enjoyable. Less than 10 minutes after she brought the starter she was there with the mains! Normally there's enough time to at least finish my soup, maybe even start a second, but this was fast food speed and there was no way our food was made fresh at that kind of pace, and the results reflected this. I wish I had thought to take a picture to show but it was rough. The cheese on the chicken parm was dried on and the edges were equally as dry as if it had been stored under a head lamp or over microwaved. Both pieces of lasagna showed this same dryness and what was even more surprising was the portion sizes! As I said it had been awhile since my last visit, probably pre-covid, so I expected the prices to have risen which they did, but the lasagna pieces were HALF the size of what I used to receive. They were about the size of pad of yellow sticky notes! I commented to the waitress that these were drastically smaller than what OG used to serve but she apparently was only working there a short while and wasn't aware in any changes in size.

So to sum up, our meal was rushed (perhaps to avoid customers getting refills on salads, soups or breadsticks), prices have increased, portions have shrank, and the overall quality was absent.

Needless to say we left disappointed. Olive Garden had always been my favorite spot since I was in my teens. Now that I've entered my 40's I guess it's time to find a new favorite :(

(I've attached a photo I took from the leftovers this evening, you can see it's actually a bit smaller than the length of a...

Olive Garden

I haven’t been to Olive Garden in 10 years! I was so excited to go back and try an old family favourite, I used to go all of the time with my family as a kid and thought it would still be the same. I brought a friend yesterday, and boy was I disappointed. We had our breadsticks come around, a little stale, very greasy and dry on the inside, salad was delicious actually… about the only part of the meal I enjoyed, we ordered the calamari as an appetizer which came out in 2 minutes, suspiciously fast. Taste was cold and salty. We ordered entrees, my friends ordered the Shrimp and Chicken carbonara which was watered down, soggy red peppers inside, and my other friend got the chicken alfredo, her chicken inside was breaded grissel…I got the seafood alfredo, shrimp was ok, scallops had a foul fish smell, tasted the scallop and spit it out immediately. Something was off with the taste, I alerted the waiter of the off-smell… they then sent out a manager, they replaced the scallops instead of the entire plate, and said they were FROZEN! All Olive Garden food is frozen, mind you Olive Garden prices have not changed… I was so disappointed with the experience I will never come back. It’s not the same that it was in the 2000’s. I had to post this here, as they are serving expired and spoiled seafood which is dangerous.

My friend sitting at the table across from me couldn’t even get through the dinner with the smell. We paid our bill for the horrible food, and service. They offered us a free salad, as if that was doing something when salad and breadsticks were free regardless.

Do not go here it’s changed a lot and poses a health risk. We all started to feel unwell shortly after eating here. It should...