Olive Garden Italian Restaurant — Restaurant in Fremont

The incident occurred at 2021-09-19 4~6pm.

My wife and I ordered one "chicken parmigiana" with Salad and one "chicken alfredo" with soup to share with my 2 kids (both are 6 years old).

The salad amount was a little bit small, so we quickly finished it and asked for refill.

However, the waiter told us the salad refill should be only for the person who ordered "chicken parmigiana". If you wanted to refill salad and shared with other people, you should order "all you can eat salad", which would have an extra charge.

Then he said this time I would make an exception for you, but please follow the rules next time.

What came across my mind was: if I refilled the salad, my kids and my wife were only able to watch me eating it. So I rejected the refill because I felt like I was a beggar.

I came to the front desk to ask around about the rules. They just told me you should go back to your waiter. Looked like they just wanted to kick the ball. I requested to see the manager.

Manager then came out to talk to me. He confirmed the rules were quite right. He emphasized Olive Garden already offered a really good bargain then other restaurant (e.g. Apple Bee, Chevy ...). In other words, he implied you should not complain and you should be grateful.

I knew I could not win this war so I just said I acknowledged it. But from customer's point of view, I knew I was not right, but I was really not happy either.

For people who intend to bring kids to Olive Garden, please be aware of that if your kids want to share the salad or bread refill, don't forget they should also order their main dishes in advance.

For Olive Garden management, maybe you want to remind customers about this "all you can eat" salad or bread rules before customers start ordering, otherwise, guess many people will end up like me being shocked today.

Olive Garden has been my favorite Western/Italian restaurant. But after today's experience, I will think twice before going back.

Maybe Olive Garden also suffers inflation due to COVID-19 pandemic, so they have to be a little stingy for salad to rescue their business. Then I sincerely apologize for not being a very thought customer. However, based on my observation, their business still looks pretty good (For a customer to get a table, the average waiting time is one hour).

Thank you all for listening to my complaining and...

I was honestly impressed.

D. and I came here because I had a half marathon the following day and I felt like I should carb up. So no alcohol, nothing too sweet.

I had the spaghetti and meatballs, which was perfect for what I wanted to accomplish while being tasty. The server was friendly and the table and utensils clean. There were quite a few small children, because they are tolerated by the staff better here than at your more authentic restaurants.

D. had the chicken parm. A little dry but the huge salad composed of something other than shredded iceberg and a sliver or two of radicchio made up for it. More than enough food for both of us.

So why not 4-5 stars? It's a corporate chain. Their attitudes toward food is unhealthy and inhumane; they care more for their stock performance than for the health and / or welfare of their customers.

Our table, seats and eating / drink ware were clean but the carpet nearby showed evidence of the aforementioned rug rats. And then there was the tablet mounted to the table that offered games and other items that could be bought or something; I wasn't interested and turned the thing towards the wall so I didn't have to ignore its garish, annoying visuals.

Finally their tagline is "....where we treat you like family...." who wants that? I eat out for the opposite. I want to be treated like a guest, or a dear friend. Not with the suspicion and veiled threats that are a hallmark of Family Dinners everywhere. Maybe their ad people haven't had a family dinner in a while. Anyway. Go for the carbs. But leave your high...

Neglect, the feeling the thought the emotion. Upon our entry we were not greeted, multiple parties wandered listless without a hostess to direct. After an indeterminable amount of time the hostess wandered by and after telling us the wait would be 15 minutes sat us after 3 minutes. When arriving at the booth table and a loud section of the restaurant The hostess ask if this seat would work for us, when we asked about other options she pause waited 30 seconds, looking confused and then said they were not available.

One wonders why an option is offered that is not available. One seated it took quite a while to be acknowledged, and the first was acknowledged was I will be back shortly. Multiple other servers and bus people went out of their way to ignore customers. Even when this server button was pressed on the table activating the light. This would be more understandable in a restaurant that was highly busy. Sadly this was not the case.

Drink refills were not offered, the food was okay. One would expect much more tomatoes at an Italian restaurant in their salads. We could see the potential of a great restaurant, Our server and the rest of the staff we're not willing to put in the effort for today. Adding insult to injury the nail in the final coffin the restroom had no paper towels.

If you are looking for great customer service, look to another restaurant and give this restaurant...