Olive Garden Italian Restaurant — Restaurant in Chesapeake

Walked into this OG last night with my wife, daughter, son-in-law, and our 7-month-old grandson in arms. The hostess took my name (John party of 4) and told us that it would be a 10-to-15-minute wait. Approximately 20 minutes later, after all the people ahead of us had been seated and several additional parties had arrived, the hostess turns around to the group of people waiting and says, "John party of 4!" We stood up, and another group of 4 who had just arrived stood up. The hostess looked very confused, and then said, "well who was the last to arrive?" I said, "we were the 'first' to arrive, and we have been waiting now for over 30 minutes." The other group said, "we were the last to arrive," but they looked confused as well. The hostess and two other young women absolutely could not handle the predicament, started loudly complaining to each other in front of all of us, then proceeded to lead the group that had just arrived to a table for 4, appearing very confused as they did so. I then asked as they were passing by, if she meant to seat our John party of 4, since we were the "first" to arrive and had been waiting much longer than the other John party of 4. The hostess and the other two young women turned away and led the other group to their seats. It's almost as if they knew that they had made a mistake, but they continued to push forward ... arguing with each other along the way. The other John party of 4 was as puzzled as we were. After the other party had been seated, I approached the hostess and asked why their John party of 4 was seated before us. She looked extremely confused and did not have an answer. The group of young ladies then started blaming each other and loudly talking back to each other in front of the multiple groups of people waiting to be seated. Still waiting now for over 30 minutes, with baby in arms, I asked to speak with the manager. The manager came out, listened to my story, never truly looked into my eyes, never once apologized, then said "well let me walk around and see what's going on." I just shook my head. It was obvious at that point that this was a manager and lack of training issue that was not going to be resolved. We waited another 10 minutes to see what the manager would do, and she never returned. We then left and drove to the Red Lobster next door for dinner. However, after we exited OG, I turned around, went back inside, and grabbed 4 business cards from the hostess desk, so that I could spend time accurately describing our experience. The three young ladies watched from the hostess stand as I grabbed the business cards. And after I turned away, my daughter who was watching from outside the door, told me that they shook their heads and laughed. Absolutely ridiculous. Names on the business cards for this OG were: Peaches Brown (Manager), Trey Perdue (Manager), Christine A. Hardy (General Manager), and R. C....

I have never complained about an olive garden in my life, but this was the worst experience ever. We decided to sit at the bar and eat after we got our drinks. Drinks we slow, but the Sangria Margarita was really good.

We should have realized we needed a table since the elderly couple beside us were complaining that the bartender wasn't coming over and they can't pay the check since she added meatballs to it and they didn't order meatballs.

Since it looked like things were slowing down in the bar we decided to stay. We got bread sticks with dipping sauce and the lasagna frittas which were over cooked, I was starving though and they were hot so we ate most of it.

I asked the bartender for a Sangria while she was cleaning off the dishes beside me. I did wait for a while, but since she wasn't coming back I got thirsty. She said sure and finished cleaning table. She came in front of us and said looks like you need more tea to the guy with me and she got his tea right away. Then after a few minutes 2 ladies sat down and she told them about half price wine. We didn't know anything about that and said too bad we didn't. We would have gotten that and then got a real table. She continued to stand there and tell them about the different ones they had on half price and what was kind of like what they really wanted to drink, because they wanted something different than wine. She finally talked them into trying to glasses of half-price wine and I asked her did you forget about my sangria. She clearly had and if she would have said oh I'm sorry I did I would have said okay no problem. She told me that she hadn't forgotten, but was waiting on them because they were there first. So I said no they weren't and one of the ladies said she was sorry and I said no problem, not your fault, but I asked her a while back for this drink. Now she's waiting on you and now she's fixing your drinks before mine. She then came and fixed my drink and put all this fruit in it and I said did I didn't want fruit in my drink. She did say she forgot about that one and poured the drink out and fixed me another one. Unfortunately it was the sweetest drink I have ever had and I drink a lot of sangria. It tasted like it didn't have any wine in it....it was disgusting. I only took one sip of it, but since she never came back to the table after that except to bring us our checks when we asked for it. Someone else brought us our food and I asked another waiter for cheese and to go containers.

It did save us some money since I usually have about 3-4 drinks. Also I so wanted to try their new smores cake. The guy I was with hates confortation, but he said he would have been fine if I actually talked with the manager. That service was terrible and how she treated us wasn't right.

We did laugh on the way home and he said it was nice not going home stuffed. He saved lots of calories not getting more salad...

Where to begin, lets begin with the fact that I am a big fan of Olive Garden and at first sight the location seems to be perfect! That is until we were sat down in the corner room with the big round table. Let's get this out of the way, the room was beautiful, great looking table but that is until you start looking around. Disgusting smudges on the windows were very distracting, who cares though right? You are there for the food and experience. Go ahead, eat next to 8-10 nasty, filthy windows with the sun beaming down on them and tell me it won't bother you.

In the middle of this beautiful big round table there is a lazy-susan style small table where people can share plates and whatnot at the spin of the stand. What you fail to notice at first is the amount of nasty, old and abundant amount of crud under there. It was not noticeable at first but once you sit down and start admiring the details of the table, at that point, that is when you start feeling bad for the lack of attention the establishment places on cleanliness.

Ok, ok ok enough about the location, after all I am very hungry and so are my fellow 6 family members. We were sat at 1230 and our orders were taken. We did not receive soup, salad, or any appetizers that we did order for 45 minutes. This is AFTER I had to ask for my drink and my parties drink 3 times. It was not until 1:40 that we received our food. The noodles were mediocre, and the quality was subpar.

You know what they say, when you are hungry then everything tastes good right? Yeah pretty much in this situation.

After everything that has happened so far, let me share with you the really bad part about the visit. The server, while greatly carried himself with manners, decided to hover over us while we provided payment AND when he came back with our receipts for us to sign. Literally, stood there until we signed them and admired the dirtiness of the windows behind us.

Mind you, I walked around and the restaurant was at 20% occupancy or so. There was literally no excuse for a dirty establishment, dirty table, prolonged waiting times for food, or rush to receive payments.

Will definitely not return. Thank you for your time in reading this. Experiences may vary and I am sharing my...