Olive Garden Italian Restaurant — Restaurant in Fenton

The Great Lime Debacle of New Year's Eve, 2024.

I'm prefacing this review emphasizing I have eaten at this Olive Garden location so many times, I've lost count. I've had bad, so-so, and excellent dining experiences here in the past, which is to be expected. If there's ever been an issue (and it's rare), the host or servers do everything to make it right.

Lately, the misses are becoming more prevalent, and the last straw was yesterday evening, when my family was celebrating my son's birthday. Service and training with our server was so abhorrent, I had to get a manager to intervene, who took over, but by that time, my family was just in a rush to hurry up and get out of there and not look back.

I was confused with the balking at my order of water with a lime (which I've never had an issue with, but the server said there were no limes since they hadn't seen them), but I was quite defensive that I was getting lectured over such an easy beverage. I let it ride when the server came back slamming my glass of water with fortuitously found said limes down in front of me and sneered out a "here are your limes" quip.

What I did not tolerate was the snide "sorry, I don't do the dishes" when I asked for a clean salad plate since the one that was given (to me) had dried lettuce. Funny how I happened to get that plate, but I digress.

Anyway, that was the point in which I asked the manager for a new server. This server had behaved extremely unprofessional in front of my two children. I was absolutely livid that they witnessed such behavior.

The manager took over, and I know they were absolutely slammed, and I felt horrible. We didn't stay too much longer, but a very uncomfortable situation turned into an outright farce when my son's chicken scampi came out as shrimp scampi, which the manager fixed right away.

Our meal was taken care of, which embarrassed me even further, and I still offered to pay for my own meal.

I thank the manager for everything that was done to make sure my family's dining experience turned out as best as it could.

I'm just incredibly sad my son will remember his 14th birthday turned into chaos over limes, but it was a learning experience all the same. Unfortunately, I think we're done dining at the Fenton location.

TLDR; Management pulled through again, but training and empathy are lacking with some...

I was nervous that there was no wait on a Friday night when we checked online at 6:30 and at 7pm but we wanted to switch it up from our usuals.

Sat 4 of us with 2 menus and 2 utensils, and didn’t even offer a kid menu. Salad had so much dressing I couldn’t finish one bowl, same for 3 of us. My wife really likes salad and maybe finished a bowl after picking through it. Breadsticks were so salty we all had maybe one and now have high blood pressure… they were gross, I almost dipped it in my drink just to be able to have one. Kids Mac N cheese had the taste of water and fake cheese, my son couldn’t eat it and we didn’t blame him. Meetballs seemed to be a high % of filler and we’re spongey, taste was slightly edible but not without cheese and extra sauce…. NOT GOOD! The Italian margarita was pretty good but my wife pulled an ice cube out that appeared to have a large pepper flake on it… but it wasn’t. The ice cube had something Black frozen on the inside of it. Both my daughter and wife had plain fettuccini and it was ok, I think we could easily do better on our own, even out of a jar. And no lie or exaggeration…. My wife found a hair. She didn’t want the kids to freak so she gave me a look and wiped on her bread plate. Can’t make this up but even the tea wasn’t good, my son ordered a mango peach tea and it was underwhelming flavor, tasted watered down and not sweet or fruity- bland. The light hanging above our table had layers of dust hanging over our food and hadn’t been cleaned in a long time. It was enough dust that it caught my eye.

This was the worst $85 I can remember spending in recent memory, maybe the worst meal we’ve had out as a family. We wanted a nice dinner out for spring break and it was awful across the board. The waitress was nice but completely forgot to ask if we wanted dessert and I was actually hoping to leave happy after Tiramisu but I got the check instead. I wasn’t about to ask to spend more money… and it was a table with 2 kids… no dessert even...

Four of us went to this Olive Garden for dinner and had a great time. Parking lot was a little crowded and dedicated more spots to takeout than necessary, but once inside we only waited two minutes for a table. Beautiful interior, friendly employees, and pretty good food. I could tell the olives were canned and the tomatoes had been frozen and thawed, so that was a bit of a bummer. However, our balsamic vinegar was absolutely delicious, and the alcoholic beverage I ordered was gorgeous and tasty.

However, the biggest standout of the entire experience was Lindsay A., our phenomenal waitress. Although pregnant and covering tons of tables, she got us everything we needed, never ignored us, and was so friendly and helpful. I sparked up conversation about her nice tattoos and enjoyed her sweet demeanor. She turned this "good" experience into a great one, and she truly deserves a raise.

The only negative I have to say about our time here was a table of ungrateful customers sitting a table away from us. Although the restaurant was clearly busy (Sunday dinner rush) and these customers made a choice to accept that and come here, they complained non-stop about trivial matters and berated the sweet staff (our waitress included) until my husband was uncomfortable with the abuse and could barely hold his tongue. The staff bent over backwards to compensate this customer, which was a shame since they truly deserved nothing for their embarrassing, rude, and immature behavior. May karma catch up with them and kudos to the poor staff for maintaining civility around such troglodytes.

Overall, this was a wonderful experience only dampened by fellow customers. Although our experience was with Lindsay A., the rest of the staff was super friendly and stayed composed in the presence of nimcompoops. Highly...