Olive Garden Italian Restaurant — Restaurant in Albuquerque

This particular Olive Garden location has suffered a serious downturn in every way — so abysmal was the whole situation that my husband and I walked out after waiting 20 minutes for a table. The restaurant was just plain dirty — shockingly dirty, and the the staff was also shockingly unprofessional and seemingly completely untrained as far as the Host Station and Bussers go. Just abysmal.

Upon receiving notification that our table was ready we went to the host desk where a very young lady (teenager) grumpily said "this way" without ever once so much as looking at us, let alone speaking to us or welcoming us. "At Olive Garden we treat you like family!" Isn't that the motto? Some family. No greeting, no eye contact, no speaking. The table we were led to turned out to have been only sort half cleaned, with crumbs still on. I went to sit down on the bench seat only to see it was literally COVERED with food debris. So I sat on the edge of the bench, waiting for a waiter to show up so I could ask for it to be wiped clean. Ten minutes passed and no one came. I finally went back to the host station and the same surly young (seemingly very unhappy to be there) lady again kept her head down and refused to look at me while I spoke to her and asked for someone to come clean the bench. She finally spoke: "where are you seated?" I was surprised, but shouldn't have been, because although she seated us, she never once looked at us and had no idea where she had put us. I had to lead her back to the table and she said she'd get a busser. Several more minutes pass and a waiter finally shows up and I also ask her if the table and bench can be actually CLEANED. When I said I had already asked for someone to do this, she then decided it wasn't worth her time and took our drink order. Then a teenage boy shows up with the surly hostess and he has in his hands a stack of bone dry brown paper towels. I ask, where is the damp cloth to actually clean the seat? He ignores me and brushes off PART, and only PART, of the bench seat. Like a portion he thinks I may be allowed to sit in and occupy. Simply brushes the food debris and crumbs onto the floor. Then I look down and to my horror see the entire floor under our table is a trash pit! The floor is littered with food remains, broken crayons (!), crayon wrappers (a destruction child had been there) and other dirt and debris. NO ONE HAD SWEPT UNDER THE TABLE. Probably not for several customers. I was horrified at the dirtiness of the restaurant and the fact they could actually seat customers at a table like this and keep a straight face. And if the Front of House is this dirty, and this careless and the staff is this untrained, then what on earth is going on in the kitchen? I don't want to know.

At this point my husband asked, "Do you want to leave?". I said "Yes, absolutely.". I am not sitting in this pile of trash, in this dirty seat, and among these completely careless and untrained and unwelcoming staffers.

As we walked out, I stopped at the Host Desk to inform them that we were leaving and WHY. There were at that time no less than four teenagers occupying the Host Station — two young ladies, and two young men. The surly-young hostess refused to look at us, as did the others. While I tried to address someone amongst them, they put up a collective resistance to anything we had to say, and literally refused to make eye contact, refused to listen to our complaint. I should also mention that at no time during this whole awful scenario did we ever see anyone who appeared to be a manager on duty. There was no adult to speak with. None. We did not see our waitress again either. While the two young ladies actively turned their backs on us, the. two young men, standing to the side of the host desk, glanced at each other and snickered and smirked. Imagine how infuriating this display of teenage bad behavior is to paying customers! Are dirty tables and seats and floors funny? Inexcusable behavior. If there is Mgr., they should be fired. Terrible, and we won't...

I’ve had two pretty horrible customer service experiences here in a short span so I will not be returning.

TL;DR: The customer service here is pretty abysmal lately, some of the worst I can recall eating at restaurants. You will have to wait a really long time for your food even on slower nights like a Monday. If you have food sensitivities or are a vegetarian, they will not care.

First experience: the synopsis of the first experience is it took a really long time to get our food and for our server to come to our table after we were seated. When the server finally came to our table with our food, he put the plates down harshly (enough to make the table shake and the plates rattle), said nothing, and walked away.

Second experience: this is the truly horrible experience and why I’m writing this review. We ate on a Monday night and our server was Diego. He took 10 minutes to come to our table after we were seated. After taking our drink and food orders, he brought our drinks. He forgot straws and had to go back and get some. So far not bad.

We ordered fettuccine Alfredo with broccoli but we said we’d like “Alfredo with broccoli”. He interpreted that as we just wanted Alfredo sauce with broccoli so instead of clarifying with us, he brought out our appetizer with a bowl of Alfredo and just broccoli. I’m sure there are people out there who would order something insane like that but how about clarifying with us first? I asked him to take the side of broccoli and Alfredo off the ticket. I had to ask him to do it twice because the first time it was not taken off.

It took over 15 minutes for us to get breadsticks and salad, still no entree at this point either. We got a refill on our drinks before the breadsticks and salad were brought out because it was taking so long. We could see him talking to coworkers and doing nothing while we were waiting for the breadsticks and salad. The breadsticks were pretty cold when they got to us. The table across from us was sat 5 minutes after us and ordered 10 minutes after us, they received their breadsticks and salad within a few minutes because they had a different server.

When the entree finally came out, it had chicken on it. We are vegetarian, which is why we said we just wanted fettuccine Alfredo with broccoli. He made up a story that he got the wrong one and there was another one with just broccoli waiting. He brought the Alfredo out again and it clearly had chicken pieces and residue still in it because they just picked out the chicken and brought out the same dish. We called this out and explained that we’re vegetarians and he said no, the kitchen made a fresh one. Which one is it then? Did the kitchen make a fresh one or did you get the other just broccoli dish that was waiting? Clearly a lie and it was easy to tell. The Alfredo was cold at this point and not great.

The manager came over and asked how things went, we told her about the Alfredo having chicken picked off. She said they would never just pick it off because of food allergies. We pointed out the obvious chicken pieces and residue. She said the Alfredo sauce sometimes can get chunks of chicken in it. Okay, do you care a lot about food allergies or do you not? Just more contradictory statements so another lie.

Just eat somewhere else, it’s not worth it. Even when we’ve had better servers, it can take a really long time to get your food, even on a slower Monday night. If you have any kind of food sensitivities, they...

This was by far the worst experience we have had in awhile. We went there family of 6 to eat with my not well dad, server came and took our drinks and also handed us a cold thing of bread that was sitting on the counter by her, she proceeded to get our drinks and came back in the process of waiting for our appetizers my daughter split her drink and the glass had broke, well our server didn’t come for like 6 min I was already in the process of cleaning up the drink and pick up the glass shards off the table, when the server arrived back she didn’t even notice what I was doing ( there was ice,glass and soda on the table) she proceeded to try and take our order I said ma’am can I please get some more napkins? She said oh no and grab the broken glass and walked off. When she arrived she brought back a soda but nothing else to help clean it with I asked again for napkins she didn’t bring them. So moving forward we got our appetizers, artichoke dip and calamari… The artichoke dip was fine but bread was burnt the calamari breading was still raw and not cooked completely. Tried to bring it up to our server but she would drop what she needed to off and walk away.. now our salad comes out that’s fine. Don’t see her until our food comes out ( she still hasn’t brought napkins or a wet towel to clean the soda up so the table is sticky the whole time. Here comes our food. I got the tour of Italy and you could tell it had been sitting under the heat lamp like it was the first dish ready. She also tried to hand my 2 year old his plate and I had to stop her because Obviously it was hot. I asked again for napkins and she finally brought them. We ate our food she came back we decided to get boxes because we just wanted to leave after she bright the boxes we never saw her again she disappeared. So when we processed to leave nobody said a word on the way out we got a snark look from the guy up front and not a “ have a good night “ or nothing not a single word. I’m not one to leave reviews I just let it go but this was a special dinner with my dad and it was ruined. His night was ruined and we...