Olive Garden Italian Restaurant — Restaurant in Gonzales

It’s a chain restaurant in a 100-mile radius of some of the best and unique cooking in the world. With that said… I was pleasantly surprised at this new Olive Garden location. It is designed to feed about 1500 people at a time (only joking a little) and unfortunately that makes it feel a little more like a Panera than the old school Olive Garden with table cloths and oversized armed chairs with casters. But I digress…

The food was okay… normal Olive Garden fare. Nothing to write home about, but portions large enough to take home and eat on 2 more times. So that’s a plus I guess. We went here mostly because my 88-year old grandfather loves it, and he fully enjoyed himself. So that in itself makes it a winner.

The best part was probably the server. While it did take a little longer for her to get to the table (i think that was my fault because I requested a different table than they were going to give me initially…) Makenzie was great. She was attentive, anticipated our needs, and was very patient with my grandpa. The only thing that was kinda weird and clunky is Olive Garden requiring servers to key in drink and appetizer orders on the tabletop computer doohickey, and then immediately switch to traditional pen and paper once she started to take our order for our meals.

Overall, an ok experience… but with so many options around here, I probably wouldn’t return… unless Paw Paw asks...

The stuffed chicken Marsala used to be our family favorite but boy has it gone downhill at this Gonzales, La location. I’ve dined in there 4 times since they brought it back on the menu and every time has been exceptionally disappointing. Not only have they burnt it every single time, I’m not sure why they’ve been putting broccoli and loads of whole tomatoes in the stuffing, maybe to save money. And the overkill on breadcrumbs with hardly any cheese. Thankfully the sauce has stayed the same so that’s what keeps me coming back hoping they will get it right. Nine other locations we’ve dined at have all made it perfectly, so it’s a location/chef error. These line cooks need to learn the recipe or we will not return.

Not to mention the servers were awful to us. The last time my husband and I dined in, we walked in an hour before closing, but to a pretty much empty restaurant. On my way to the restroom I overheard a waitress talk about my husband and I and how we were an inconvenience to dine in an hour before closing. The kitchen apparently also wasn’t pleased as they already put away most of the items and told us they were out of some of the first couple things we tried to order.

All of these things are a direct reflection on management…This location needs better managers and chefs. They should be embarrassed to treat...

I was so excited to go to this location because I grew up near here and I was so exited to see Gonzales grow. So my boyfriend and I made plans to travel out of town from where we live and visit here. On the way to the restaurant I checked to see if I needed to join the waitlist on the app. On the app for this location it said there was no wait time for 2 person table. We arrived and straight waitlisted for 30 minutes. I'm not frustrated with the waiters/ waitresses- they did an AMAZING job doing their job with what they had. I worked in the food industry so I know how hard it is. Management just didn't help the waitress get tables and orders in. They weren't doing anything to help the load on the workers. Our waitress took a while to get our food and drinks but again I'm not mad. The food was amazing- we ordered 2 tours of Italy. We were able to leave with leftovers and were full. I just really wish I was able to experience the restaurant at a full working order. It was not worth the $60 we spent that night. Edit: the utensils that they gave us were also dirty. The table next to us also had the same problem and I overheard a worker say that they don't have a dishwasher that night so some utensils came out dirty. That is a health/safety issue. I really hope management sees this...