Olive Garden Italian Restaurant — Restaurant in Cartersville

Let me start out by saying that I’ve dined at the Kennesaw and Canton, GA locations and have always had a great experience so I was really expecting the same from the new Cartersville location. The restaurant parking lot was a little over half full at 2:30pm yesterday so we thought it would be a great time to try it out for lunch. We encountered a woman between the two sets of doors coming to the vestibule that asked if there were two of us. No welcome to Olive Garden, nothing. She looked at her tablet with the seating plan and kept talking to another woman at the hostess station inside. Again we were not allowed to enter the restaurant and were held between the two sets of doors. They kept calling for a third person to seat us which was over 5 minutes. No explanation, no apology just told to go with the third person. There was a busboy cleaning the table next to the one she pointed to for us to sit at. He had a large mobile cart blocking our table so we had to stand there and wait because he wouldn’t move it until he finished cleaning off the other table. Once seated, we waited 8 minutes for a server to come to the table to take our drink order. I ordered the lunch portion fettuccine alfredo and added crispy chicken $15. My friend ordered the eggplant parm. We both wanted salad. The server came back with 3 breadsticks and a bowl of salad. The salad had very little dressing on it which made it very dry and tough to get down. Not typical for Olive Garden. 10 minutes later the food arrived. Omg, she delivered a half full salad bowl of pasta with chicken on it maybe a half cup of pasta was in the bowl and the crispy chicken was dry on top for sitting too long under the heat lamps. The eggplant parm was the better of the two dishes both in terms of quantity and taste. My friend asked for a refill on his tea which she forgot to bring. The server asked if she could remove anything from the table and we said the salad bowl and plates. She said ok and walked away without removing anything. What the heck? I was paying for lunch which was over $40 not including the tip. I can’t believe how bad this experience was all the way around. Pasta is a cheap dish to make so the markup was huge for the quantity of food received. I won’t be back to this location until they get their act together. Very...

Yikes. My husband and I went for dinner on a Wednesday, so not even one of their busiest nights. We had gotten our drinks and apps and were waiting for our entrees. My husband ordered the Tour of Italy and I ordered spaghetti and meatballs (the simplest thing you can get at an Italian restaurant). There was a couple next to us that was talking to their waitress about their food taking a long time. They finally got their food, and then our waitress came up and said my husband’s Tour of Italy was ready, but they were waiting on the meatballs for my spaghetti. We said that was fine and continued to wait…and wait…and wait. Our waitress came back and said the manager told her to ask if I wanted my spaghetti without the meatballs so we could get our food faster. They need a new manager for several reasons, but one of them is that request because it’s absurd. We asked our waitress to bring everything out at the same time and continued to WAIT. By now the couple next to us had left, and the woman wished us good luck on the way out. Never a good sign. We eventually spoke to the guy that sat us at our table who seemed like he might be a manager and asked if he could give us an ETA on our entrees because at this point, we just wanted them to go. He came back and said “It will be another 20 minutes, they’re having an issue with the meatballs.” I quite literally can’t imagine any issue that could arise with meatballs that would take over an hour to resolve. We told him and our waitress we didn’t want the entrees at all, and asked them to please bring us the check for our appetizer. Our waitress said she would ask the manager if they could take the entrees off our check. What?! The entrees we never saw?! She proceeded to disappear and my husband had to walk to the KITCHEN to get someone to FINALLY help us pay for appetizers because we were REALLY trying to not just walk out. We went to the Fazoli’s down the street and had delicious entrees in less than 10 minutes. I know this location is new, so I hope they get their kitchen issues fixed. Our waitress mentioned we were not the only ones having problems getting food. They need training big time all the way around. Only giving two stars because our appetizer was delicious and we’ve gotten a to go order here before and...

I will start off with saying the lady at the host stand was kind and apologetic. We were going to dinner for my dad's 65th birthday. My mom called at 310pm and was told they had our party of 10 down for 5pm. My wife and I arrived 450pm and was told they don't do call ahead seating and now we were on the waiting list and it would be a 25 to 30 minutes. So we asked why the website said to call for parties of 7 or more? We were told that it was so the restaurant could prepare. So we said, "that doesn't make sense, because what were they preparing for if we weren't on the waiting list and why wasn't my mom told that we would still need to get on the waiting list once we arrived?" My wife was told by the manager that "someone new must've answered the phone" Okay, cool. So we waited 30 minutes, I went back in and the host, again she was very kind and apologetic, said it would be just another minute. After 5 minutes, I walked back in and the manager that had spoken with my wife was at the stand. I asked for clarification because I was unsure if they were going to text me or if I was supposed to come back in. The manager was dismissive with me, 'if your on the list we will call you' I tried to explain that I just wasn't sure. The manager cut me off and said, 'yeah we will reach out' and walked off.

After 45 minutes of being there, we left.

Did I meantion that the middle section of the dining room on the left side(facing the host stand) was empty both times I walked in? I get staffing stuff and shift changes, but being dismissive is definitely not the way to handle customers that were already feeling less than stellar because they were led to believe one thing that wasn't true and you didn't acknowledge or appeared to be bothered with that at all. All we were told was, "well we run our store like Barrett." Cool. How does that help with our situation? This was our first experience at this location since it open. Super...