Olive Garden Italian Restaurant — Restaurant in Charlotte

Can’t complain about the food. As good as you could expect from any Olive Garden. Tasted fresh and was prepared fairly quick. The service however, was not as great. My server only had two other tables he was tending to and it still took around 5 minutes to order my drink. When I ordered my food he came back a few minutes later and had forgotten what I ordered. He then proceeded to bring me my soup and quickly left the table (I assumed to get cheese). I stared blankly at the seat in front of me for about 10 minutes before he came back around with no cheese. I’ve never once been to an Olive Garden where I have to ask for cheese. I finished my soup and was offered no more. I wrote this entire review while waiting to order desert. I likely will not be back to this location. Despite the review I was very patient and was in no manner rude. So I’m not sure if it’s a lack of training or just a lack of care. But, I certainly wouldn’t come here if you expect any nominal standard of service.

Update: Management reached out to me and insisted I give it another chance and gave me a $30 gift card. Came back and here’s the synopsis.

The host kicked things off bitterly. He had two broken arms to which I asked “both arms huh?”. Hoping to kick off a friendly conversation. “Yeah” he said, as he kept walking. No big deal, he probably is just sick of telling the story. We got to the table where he more or less tossed the menu and silverware in the middle of the table. You may think I’m nit-picking. But, I’m paying $20 a plate and expected to pay a 20% minimum tip. Every other location sets the tables, menu, silverware and all. So naturally that’s my standard expectation. I noticed this was standard practice for him at each table he seated. The server was polite and concise. Did his job perfectly, the food was again what I expected. Made to order and properly cooked/seasoned. Cheese was offered with all of my dishes this time and soup was offered as necessary. It seems apparent to me when a restaurant has staff who is trained to do their jobs right, as apposed to restaurants who have a handful of naturally good employees. This seems to be the latter. Though management reached out to me after the first review. There was a noticeable lack of management checking on guests. I’ve been here more than 3 times now and I’ve never been greeted by management. It makes me wonder how many customers they lose who simply don’t come back because they were never accommodated for by management. I change my review from a 2 star to a 3.5. One star for service and another .5 for management reaching out post visit. Likewise, they lost half of a star for lack of management in house and one star for starting my dining experience off with undertrained employees. That put a really bad taste...

Terrible!!! I mean terrible this has to easily have been the absolute worst dinning experiences I have ever had!!! We walked in between 8:35pm-8:40pm host said it would be a few minutes for a table of 2… weird being the entire restaurant was empty but okay. Went to bar to get a drink and the bartender basically could care less with only two guests so ended up not getting a chance to order as she took 10+ mins to put in a 2-too entree. Didn’t even acknowledge us for a quick drink… odd being you are a bartender but we ignored that as host got us for our table. It took our server at least 15-20 mins to even get us started as we watched another lady (the host maybe a manager?) help another table after us… well our server finally came and at that point we just ordered everything and thought maybe things would turn around. Wrong. My friend got his drink like 10 minutes later(I had ordered a bottle of wine for us)… still no waters but got the bread and salad… asked for the wine she said she had to wait for a manager to get it… at this point it’s almost 10pm meaning we got all our apps and it’s been an hour of me waiting just for a drink!!! I had nothing. Steps of service was all over the place. At this point I told my friend let’s go, let’s box these apps cancel the wine and entrees since it was now after 10pm and we were still waiting for this mysterious bottle of wine that never came. As we made our mind up and told the server she said she would get a manager and we had the other two tables (mind you it was just the three tables) agree with us saying the service everything just was not it and they kept having to ask or go to bar for drinks! And THE DINNING ROOM WAS FILTY. My friend took a video and I’ll attach some screenshot videos but for it been that slow and seating guests at dirty tables is just mind blowing to me.

Lastly, our entrees were coming out after we decided we wanted to cancel it and the wine bottle that was missing in action. It appeared to be a food runner and the manager who was MIA the entire night and we explained everything and she just seemed clueless. We explained how ridiculous it was and how awful the dinning experience was she was nice to at least cover the apps (which we never expected) but such a shame that all of this could have been avoided if the staff just cared.

We will never be back. Our server was the only one who seemed to care and we still tipped her but wow such a shame and we both are from the industry so we really try to be understanding but this was just ridiculous.

Attached are some of the screenshots of the video he took of how filthy the entire...

You would think that after dining in for a hour and 15 minutes i would AT LEAST be leaving a review about food but NOPE …. Because we didn’t even get our meals. Me and my friend had a hour or 2 to spare before work so why not go to one of our childhood FAVORITE places ?! When we arrived the host was VERY welcoming . (The best part of the whole experience… promote this girl to server !! lol) however whenever we sat down it didn’t take long for everything to go left . After we sat down for about 5 minutes we were then greeted by our server “Salem” . She appeared to be stressed out already by having another big party which is understandable! We are pretty easy going people and servers ourselves so we understood 100% . However what i don’t understand is how i was basically told i couldn’t order the donuts with my meal and if i did order them i was told that they would be cold. Bummer ): that’s one of my favorite things ! But whatever … on to the next best thing … THE BREAD . After asking for bread while we decide on entrees she came back out to us with our soup and said “we don’t have any bread” like ummmm ok ? Cool scratch that too i guess . I always eat my soup with bread so this was disappointing. After about 10 minutes of forcing myself to eat the lukewarm soup our 3 pieces of bread finally came . You would think we could get more since now our soup is cold AND it took forever to come but okay whatever . We finally order our food with our drinks basically empty . She never once came and refilled our drinks … ACTUALLY the host walked by and noticed we had empty sitting cups and a empty bread tray and brought us both more bread and refills . (Thanks again to her !) after about 15 more minutes our server finally came back and asked if we needed anything we said no that the host had already brought us drinks and bread and i don’t know if she misheard us or something but after that she came back with a whole big tray of bread … like what ???? Idk at this point we were just confused . So we wait and wait and waited on our entrees . After about 30 minutes she came back and said “it’s gon be a minute for the food “ me and my friend immediately looked at each other in pure dissatisfaction. We then agreed that if the food didn’t come out in 20 minutes that we would leave and just pay for the drinks . Well 20 minutes passed and we were looking for Salem and she never came back . We gave her a extra 10 minutes only to see her standing in the area by the front talking with co workers . Me and my friend tipped the host and left . i will probably never...