Olive Garden Italian Restaurant — Restaurant in Eugene

I’m pretty sure Olive Garden played a prank on us today, because we have never experienced service so TERRIBLE!

Let’s start off to say that we went in at 9pm (a late dinner) after my husband was done with classes at the college as we have hardly seen each other all week with him working full time in construction and doing school at night. We also didn’t have our kids.

First when we were seated, they tried to seat us at a dirty table they were apologetic and everything was okay.

Got our drinks in good time and our order taken also in good time.

Got brought our salad, soup and bread. Well the brought the soup with no spoon. Again no big deal it happens. Our waiter went to get one and said he’d be right back. Fast forward 10 minutes (and this is not an exaggeration) and no spoon or waiter in sight. Finally, he comes back to “check in” to be asked to get a spoon again. Fast forward 5 minutes still no spoon and the waiter comes back by, again without a spoon. He leaves for another few minutes and I can hear him loudly talking with a fellow employee about how it’s not funny that they haven’t brought us a spoon yet completely ripping this person a you know what. He comes to the table with new soup and spoon since the one my husband has is obviously cold after waiting 20 minutes. All seems to be well again.

Eat the soup/salad, no one has came back to check in or see if we have our food. More time goes by (we were being patient as we saw them seating a large party). I joke and tell my husband they probably forgot our food. By the time the waiter comes back to us we’ve been in the restaurant for an hour, asks if anyone has brought us food knowing they haven’t as all that’s on the table is salad and soup china. He goes to “check” our order and comes back to RETAKE our order! It’s now 10:15, we decided to just leave instead of sit there not being taken care of. I have never walked out of a restaurant before, but today I did.

I could have understood if the restaurant was busy but it wasn’t, there were 3 people standing doing nothing when we left and two servers helping one table while we just sat there. Very disappointed in...

I imagine that in an alternate universe, Olive Garden changed it's name to something more fitting, like Eat Your Feelings or Carb City. I mean, we all know what we're gonna get. A childhood and young adult era in our lives where Olive Garden is the fanciest place in the world, followed by a realization that, it's a good place to go to internalize your sadness and cover it up with Alfredo sauce. Some really like the food, and in no way should this be construed as a shot at those people. I just have to write of what I know. What I know is that the breadsticks are salt sponges, the food is almost certainly from frozen, the pasta is not what I would call authentic Italian. And I am almost positive that the "bottomless" offerings are those situations where someone says "hey do you want to eat this, cause if not, I'm throwing it away." But, does anyone really think that the point of Olive Garden is to be authentic and true to Italian form? Their original slogan was "Good Times, Great Salad, Olive Garden". Now it is "We're All Family Here". This makes sense to me as, when I look around in Olive Garden, much as it is with my family, no one's having a good time and the salad is perfunctory and sad. So, knowing that "We're all family here" is a comfort, as I come in with depression and I leave with enough simple carbohydrates in my system to go home and sleep so I can fast forward until tomorrow, hoping that everything is better. It never is, but at least i had a few moments where I gave in to the self destruction without undue harm befalling me. I don't know though, ask me in 10 years when I get my first mycardial infarction. But I digress. The servers are always pleasant and because they're family, they know you're struggling, but will not offer direct advice or genuine assistance, opting instead to watch you destroy yourself until you get your act together. Which is what any good therapist would do... I think. So maybe Olive Garden's next epiphany will bring with it a new slogan: "Today, it doesn't get any better than this. If it did, would you...

I really wish that I could have given a higher rating as Olive Garden used to be one of my favorite places to dine. However, my experience here tonight was so below par that I truly feel that a one star rating is too high. We were seated to our table much quicker (about 10 minutes) then the anticipated 35 minutes. After our waitress took our order we were brought out a basket of breadsticks that were rock hard and our Luke warm soup. Despite this we continued to have higher expectations for the never ending pasta bowl that we had ordered. Little did we know that would come out luke warm as well and have a very sour taste. The sauce had appeared to be separated and had a very granular texture. We had ordered the new creamy garlic sauce, and since it was our first time trying this we believed that perhaps the sauce was just not to our liking and ordered the traditional Alfredo for our second helping of pasta. Our refill was not much better then our first plate. It took nearly an our to get our refill and the refill was little more then warm noodles topped with a small dollop of sauce. At this time my 3 year old son needed to use the restroom so I escorted him to the bathroom. Upon opening the doors and stepping in my son slips and nearly falls to the ground, had he not have been holding my hand still at the time he would have. The entire floor was soaking wet but he needed to use the restroom so terribly bad that we continued on. On our way back to the table we stopped to the front hostess to mention that the men’s restroom needed immediate attention as the floors were soaking wet and it was a hazard. Her response to the situation was very short and rude, she does not belong in customer service. Well this was a brief overview of my experience at Olive Garden. There were a few other experiences on this visit that left a bad taste in my mouth, but these I felt were some of the...