Olive Garden Italian Restaurant — Restaurant in Danvers

Came back to this location (153 Andover Street, Danvers, MA) after previous bad experience vowing I’d never come back here again. Big mistake.

2 years ago, I used the reservation option in the app and when I got there I was told by the woman at the desk it would be an hour wait. When I told her I had used the app and it said a 10 minute wait, I was told they don’t really use that at this location. I thanked her and left and swore I’d never come back. Why would you offer that option to potential paying customers and then not honor it?

On 07/04/2023, 2:30p, for some insane reason, I decided to give this location another try. Got there, and no one on the desk. When someone did finally appear, she looked either high or comatose. Not a smile or a “Welcome to Olive Garden”, nothing, just how many? Someone else came over and took over for her and asked her if she wanted us and we were seated at a table in her section.

Once she finally came to take our order, again, no smile, my name is, and I’ll be your server just, do you want appetizers? We said no and placed our order. Had to ask if the salad came with the meal.

In the meantime I used the lavatory. No paper towels and had to ask another staff member for some. He reluctantly gave me 2 paper towels and I guess that’s all I was getting. Mind you, this was July 4th, the restaurant was dead. There were maybe 20 - 30 customers; most of the tables were empty.

Once the food came, it tasted horrible. I ordered chicken Alfredo which tasted like it had been soaking in salt for the few days and both pasta and chicken were dry. Horrible. My guest ordered salmon, which was dry and overcooked. Neither of us finished our meal.

Another thing is Olive Garden’s prices used to be fairly reasonable. I think, for the portions received, $50 is a little unreasonable for salad, chicken and fish, especially since they were inedible.

Over the last couple of months I’ve gone back and fourth as to whether I should post this review or not. I finally decided today that I would. Ive had it with mediocre restaurants offering bad service, bad food and overpriced dishes and not being called out.

Patronize at your own risk.

I usually go to Petrillo’s in Peabody. MUCH better food and always...

My family and I went to your restaurant last nigh at the Andover street location in Danvers. Receipt attached.

We are a family of 5. When we walked in we were excited because no one else was waiting. There were two people at the front. The female (tall not manager) quickly left. The young man that was there didn’t greet us and only asked how many of us. When I responded table for 5 before checking his response was “your going to have to wait”. We looked around and there were plenty of staff and plenty of tables open but none the less we waited. A couple minutes go by and he says to please take a seat and wait so we sat down.

Two more families walk in at this point. Both with a party of 4 or 5. Both families were greeted warmly the host told them their name and both the families were seated before us.

I approached the host desk and asked why were people being seated before us and the young lady with glasses said she didn’t know. When the young man came back his respond was “jeez I’m gonna sit them now I asked them to wait”

So we were sat and were greeted by one waitress . Young with dark hair I can’t remember her name. She introduced herself and said she was our server. Took our drink order and it was the last time we saw her.

Then Wislene came over and she was super amazing. She was our only reason why we stayed to eat was because of her. When she took our appetizer order we were confused because we thought we had a different server… so we asked her and she said that she will be helping us the rest of the night.

Wislene was excellent, attentive, knowledgeable and welcoming. Our food came out on time all was amazing service with her.

Our food was just short of ok. Lacked flavor but that’s to no fault of Wislene.

We were highly disappointed because of how we were treated by everyone else there.

We use to love coming there but no longer will we attend and risk being sized up by staff that don’t look like us and be made wait to be seated while other families get treated different with better service than us upon entering.

I hope the establishment is not treating servers like Wislene with such manner.

We will not...

We Love Olive Garden, and just recently reviewed the Foxboro location 2 weeks ago. However this location in Danvers is horrible. Very slow. The restaurant wasnt even half full, but it still took the waiter abput 15 minutes after we were seated to come to our table to take our drink order. At this point we also placed our food order. After we placed our order, it took another 20 minutes for him to bring our drinks, breadsticks, salad and soup and appetizer all at the time....so I thought. At this point he informed me that they were out of the Chicken Gnocci Soup( which is awesome at most locations ) that I ordered. It was still very early in the evening on a weeknight and the place WASN'T EVEN HALF FULL. I was told that if I was willing to wait another 15 minutes they could make some. Well I had place the order 20 minutes earlier, what were they doing during all that time?? And why did it take 20 minutes to tell me?? I told the waiter that we were under a time restraint so I would just have the salad. Well, the salad he had brought with him to our table was only enough for one...KNOWING THEY WERE OUT OF SOUP AND WE WERE A TABLE OF 3! And the entire time he was explaining this to me he was wiping some ( what looked like black burnt toast ) off one whole side of the plate that had our appetizer sampler. Using his finger.

Luckily our meals came very shortly after, but there's more. You can tell that they had been sitting under the heat lamp for too long. My wife's Chicken Picatta noodles had been dried out and there was barely any sauce, and my Alfredo sauce staryed to separate.

Very bad experience. It wouldnt have been as bad if the waiter had a personality, but you could tell he was just there for the check and didnt care. Avoid this location, if I could give negative stars I would. Dont believe me, check out some of the other reviews for...