Olive Garden Italian Restaurant — Restaurant in Bridgeton

I am torn between a 2 and a 3star on this review. Sequence of events. We got on the list and waited in the bar area, there was no one there tending the bar area. Food, plates, and other used items were left on the bar counter as well as one of the bar tables. A father/daughter couple came and sat at the bar as well to wait. Several moments later, a hostess (Sarah) and what looked like her manager walked into the bar area both mid conversation. Neither of them acknowledged us sitting at the bar. They walked up to a computer, Sarah removed her apron and the father/daughter couple said excuse me a few times and were ignored. So the father raised his voice a bit and said excuse me can you change the channel to the game please. Sarah and the manager looking guy both rolled their eyes as they began to change to the requested channel. The father then followed by asking for a drink and Sarah rolled her eyes again and went to make the drink. The manager looking guy walked off. Sarah picked up several blenders that had been left behind uncleaned and tried to sort out the mess to find a blender she could make his frozen drinks in. I choose not to order anything because of the bad vibes. I wanted to leave but I was there with the whole family and they wanted Olive Garden.

Once we got buzzed to our table, our hostess and waitress was very polite and kind so that's why I felt I could bump to a 3 star...but...the mess continued. Our hostess and waitress were perfect. However, the rest of what I experienced wasn't.

You will see photos of a cheese left up against a wall. I was served a drink with a rotten strawberry on the glass. There is also a photo of what looked like half chewed sugar packets.

There were also a group of girls standing around gossiping and covertly having a fight in plain site. Once they noticed I was watching them, they ran off to the back to continue with what they were doing.

The icing on the cake...our waitress felt she needed to collect her tip from us directly as, she expressed people steel tips from the table there. All of this is a reflection in management. Staff treat each other well when Management sets the tone. Messy, unprofessional behavior comes from messy unprofessional Management. I am surprised I didn't get sick after eating here.

Outside of that, I eat because I was really hungry (like the kind where your blood pressure is low and you feel like passing out because you waited a long time to get your food) and did not want to ruin anyone's day. The food ended up tasting really good and we were all very full and had to take the rest to go.

However, my family and I don't want to eat here again. And I highly recommend getting all new and improved management to clean up the good name Olive Garden has created...

It's been a few years since I had been to this location, and in the past it was always top notch in food and service. This last visit wasn't thr best. We got in with plenty of open tables, but was seated right next to a large family. Odd, but ok. We had three people start us off with drinks and menus. I believe this is where things went south.

Our primary server was great! The others were as well but added confusion to our service. Once we ordered, we had one in our party who just wanted two appetizers and two of us ordered meals. We asked for salad. The one who ordered appetizers made a statement like "oh, their salads are good, maybe I'll get one" she didn't actually order a salad.

The appetizers came and about five minutes later our meals... where's the salad? This was a Friday night so they were getting busy, however the two table that were seated long after us had their salad and breadsticks, but not us.

After we got our meals, another server appears with the table sized bowl of salad. There was not offer of parmasean cheese for our food or salad. Another oddity.

By the time we were finished, I had eaten about half of my meal as it wasn't really that great. The Chicken parmasean was chewy, like it was microwaves, and the lasagna was dry. It wasn't terrible, but definitely not up to standard.

I got the cheque and was ready to leave as it was getting crowded and I know they needed the table. I paid, we left. After looking over the receipt, they charged extra for the salad that came so late no one ate it!

I do have to be extremely clear here, our server was awesome. She was very attentive but under 21, so I believe our total service and experience went downhill due to someone ordering an alcoholic beverage. We will go back, but for now, I just can't give a higher that a three star (just average) review. Upon another visit, this...

The worst Olive Garden experience ever. Initially, it wasn’t bad. The wait was a little bit less than the 15 minutes they told us. Sat in a table in the bar area to get seated earlier. The waitress was super cute and very nice. Ordered the Chicken margarita pasta and the chicken parmigiana. Beverages were only water. She brought out our water and then the salad and breadsticks were soon after that. The breadsticks were cold and hard. The salad had way too much dressing on it. It was full of it at the bottom of the bowl and also on our plates. The salad and ingredients were fresh enough so that part was good. We asked if we could have some fresh breadsticks and she did bring those to us after a bit. They were OK. Fazoli’s breadsticks are way way better! Anyway, then we continued to wait for our food. And water refills, which never came. And then we waited more. Finally, after 38 minutes, we knew we needed to leave soon to make it to our ticketed show, so we asked her about our order. She was away quite a while and then came back and said the chicken parmigiana was still not ready, but soon. We told her we need to leave within five minutes, so she offered to put it as a to go order or cancel the order. We chose to cancel. So, we were charged $16 for our one round of salad soaked with dressing. Had the breadsticks and the salad been great, we may have been tempted to take the order to go, and then eat it hours later, after our show was finished. But we passed and glad that we did. Again, our server was very pleasant and kind, and apologized, saying had she known that we were under the gun she would’ve put a rush on it. We never considered that expecting food to be delivered within 30 minutes after we ordered is out of the ordinary. 45 minutes is way out of the ordinary as far as we’re concerned. At least a refill of water would...