Olive Garden Italian Restaurant — Restaurant in City of Niagara Falls

We dropped by The Olive Garden for a quick dinner. It was our anniversary and we were in town.

It was a Friday evening and the restaurant was not overly packed. We were seated right away which was a bonus and offered a choice of booth or table.

The host was very friendly as was our waiter. We got our drinks very quickly as well. The atmosphere was warm and inviting and very mellow as diners ate and staff bustled about.

We opted to skip appetizers as the salad and breadsticks would have been enough. The salad was absolutely delicious. The produce was fresh, crisp, ice cold. The way a salad should be enjoyed. The dressing was a lot but not enough to render the veggies "water" logged.

The breadsticks were underwhelming, the were warm but tasted stale. They had no character or flavour so we skipped those after two bites.

I ordered the chicken and shrimp Carbonara which is a dish I've never ordered before, I'm used to Alfredo. My husband ordered the chicken parm.

The portion sizes were substantial which is a plus and needles to say after sharing a bowl of salad 🥗 were were a bit full. We took our meals to go after a few bites.

I have to say the menu has changed tremendously since I last visited years ago. I had risotto and herb chicken and that was delicious back then. The menu now is all pasta. All variations on pasta, no rice or potato dishes of any kind. That was a bit disappointing as I'm not the biggest pasta lover and something different would've been great. That being said the food tasted good.

My chicken and shrimp Carbonara was a tad oily but you don't really pay attention. I took it home and what a huge difference. There was so much oil. After reheating the dish a day later I spent more time trying to soak up all the oil with paper towel. I gave up after a time because the more I soaked up, the more grease was there everytime you moved the food from one side of the container to the next.

This was not the case with the chicken parm. Needless to say I will never order that meal again.

Overall it was a good visit. The washrooms were clean, all supplies were filled. The only drawback to our experience (and this may be an American thing as we noted it in other dining rooms) was the excessive yelling between staff in the dining area as your eating.

I understand needing to know which sections are clean, dirty, busy etc. But walking around and speaking at the top of your voices as your customers are trying to enjoy their meal takes away from the ambiance and becomes obnoxious after awhile.

You visit to eat not listen to the staff back and forth over top of you as you're trying to enjoy your meal and the company...

Bring from Canada, I've always wanted to check out Olive Garden from the plentiful memes I used to see online, and I was so curious about the unlimited breadsticks.

My two friends and I weren't that hungry so we split two pasta dishes among us, and shared the breadsticks and soup/salad. I can't completely remember what we got but it was a shrimp/chicken linguine + the four cheese pasta bake (which was the waitress' recommendation if you like cheese). We were a table of three, and the waitress asked us if we wanted to split the dishes, since we were all sharing, so we said yeah, sure that would be great. But when the dishes came, they were split into twos, and I was a bit confused bc they knew we were a table of three. Why would they split each pasta into twos, when we were three people sharing? Might as well have not done anything then. But in terms of flavour, the pastas weren't bad, but definitely did not exceed my expectations. The sweetness of the red pepper really balanced out the saltiness of the shrimp/chicken linguine tho.

And for the breadsticks, for some reason they don't sprinkle cheese on top, but salt. They were SO SALTY and I could barely eat one stick. I don't know how anyone could enjoy those, and it was weird bc my friend who's been to an Olive Garden before said it used to be cheese. We also got the garden salad which was good, but had a bunch of toppings on it that I wish we could've asked for without, like banana peppers and olives, bc no one likes those and they were wasted on us. The gnocchi soup wasn't bad either but was also pretty salty. I think overall everything is just too salty lol

But for service, it was really great (we had Shirley if I remember correctly). She was super friendly and helpful for the recommendations, and was helpful when we accidentally bought that games pack on the table iPad and wanted...

Been wanting to try Olive Garden for a long time after family and friends have hyped it up.

Server asked us about drinks for table, i ordered a water, and a family friend ordered a water with lemon. Both waters came out, none with lemon. Our family friend asked, “sorry do you happen to have lemon?” and the server said “yeah would you like some?”. So communication just seemed off from the jump.

Appetizer was ordered and brought out fairly quickly. We ordered our mains with our soup/salads as well, which came out maybe 5 minutes after the appetizer. So at this point we are trying to finish our appetizer, and our soups/salads. We never did get the bread rolls that they claim are added with every meal.

When our food arrived, we were all still trying to finish our first part of the meal before we had to push them aside to eat our mains. My mom’s pasta was very cold and only noticed once her cheese was mixed in, and asked for it to be brought back into the kitchen to get headed up; and wasn’t brought back out for another 10 minutes or so. She told them they can even use a microwave, just needs to be a bit warmer for her to enjoy. Myself and our family friend waited for her food to arrive so we could eat together; however our food started to get cold. Once her new plate was brought out, our server said she would be right back with the cheese for the top; since they switched the entire plate out and once again, waited almost 10 minutes for her to return with the cheese , and her plate was cold again.

And the cherry on top, in the middle of our meal we were brought the bill; without requesting it and weren’t even offered the chance to have dessert.

First and last time at an Olive Garden. We didn’t even really get the chance to eat our main dishes, which is what we were most excited...