Olive Garden Italian Restaurant — Restaurant in Grandville

TLDR: If you like Olive Garden in general, this location is up to par with the standard you expect from them. If you don’t like them in general, the location isn’t going to change your opinion.

I visited with my friend, and neither of us ordered anything exciting regarding drinks. I got a hot tea and she got water. Both were good as expected 😌.

She ordered the FIVE CHEESE ZITI AL FORNO (Oven baked blend of Italian cheeses, pasta and our signature homemade five cheese marinara) Which looked slightly over baked compared to the photos in the menu, but she enjoyed it. It’s a BIG serving, so you should be able to make two meals of it unless you’re really hungry or just have a big appetite.

I, as always 🤪, ordered the NEVER-ENDING SOUP, SALAD & BREADSTICKS (Our famous house salad, breadsticks, and your choice of homemade soup.) my soup choice was the MINESTRONE (Fresh vegetables, beans and pasta in a light tomato broth.). I honestly love the Olive Garden salad so much. The dressing is refreshing, the veggies are good, and I LOVE the banana peppers (peppercini) which spice it up a bit. The minestrone is good, but the breadsticks tho… 🤤

Overall, it’s a good location. Physically, it is conveniently located right across the street from the Rivertown crossings mall. It’s also sort of in a restaurant alcove where there are multiple other options of chain restaurants that provide a decent sit-down experience. Vibes are always good, and if you don’t come on a Sunday afternoon, if you only have two people, there usually no wait. I have visited with a larger group, however, and there can be up to an hour wait in my experience. this location is clean, the service has always been good, and the servers are generally friendly and nice.

Like I said, I always get the soup, salad and breadsticks because I love the salad and it can be a health-conscious choice… As long as you don’t eat every breadstick lol! The pastas here are decent, but in my opinion, a bit overpriced for noodles and cheese. There are a lot of variations of pasta, but it doesn’t taste like authentic Italian food. If you know that, then you will be fine with Olive Garden; just don’t expect authentic Italian.

I know people tend to come here because of the wine selection but honestly, Olive Garden is not the place for wine. My friends and I joke about Olive Garden wine being kind of the worst of the worst 🤣. The cocktails, however, have been good in my opinion.

One thing I don’t love about Olive Garden as well as several other chain restaurants is that they have you pay and sometimes order using the table kiosk. While this may be convenient for some people who don’t want to talk to a server, it does make it inconvenient for servers when you order an appetizer or something like that from the kiosk because the server still has to come around and note it otherwise they don’t know you ordered. It’s also a pain to have to divide your check up by yourself. It’s like, if I’m leaving a tip for the server, I would appreciate if they could do that for me lol! And for those who think I’m being too much, I was a server for over five years and it’s kinda part of the job …you know… for a server to do service for your...

The food was amazing as always, however that only accounts for 1/3 of the expected experience of eating out. Our server Mya took our drink order, and more than 5-10 minutes later she had a busser bring our drinks, we got waters, one sprite, and a raspberry lemonade with sprite in it. The busser boy first went to the wrong table with our drinks, and then came to our table to drop off the drinks and the raspberry lemonade was wrong, so he proceeded to take all 4 of our drinks back to the kitchen. More than 10 minutes later, our server brought out our salad and bread sticks and only brought back my incorrectly made drink. She apologized and then blamed the busser saying she "assumed" he still would have brought the right drinks that were prepared. Being part of the customer service industry myself, you never blame another coworker Infront of your customer. She also brought only 3 bread sticks. She checked on us a little later and we wanted more bread sticks and we didn't receive them until after our plates arrived. We got spaghetti and carbanara- our go tos, and they were delectable. About 10 minutes after we got our food our second round of bread sticks arrived. We finally got our bill and I didn't receive my card back until another 5-10 minutes. When my card came back, Mya failed to give me a pen to write a tip with. I saw the manager that seated us and asked for a pen and he didn't have one on him, so he ran to grab him. A server that was helping the table next to us stopped by and I asked her for one and she was kind enough to leave one. (I wish I grabbed her name to write how wonderful of a job she was doing as I was observing her work). I was prepared to leave a 2 or 3 star review, but the cherry on the cake was when the manager came back with a pen my boyfriend thanked him and told him we already managed to get one from another server; he rolled his eyes at my boyfriend as he walked away and then again gave my boyfriend a foul look as we were walking to the exit. Needless to say, we will never be coming back to this location. I've always been a fan of olive garden and will continue to go back to other locations, but I have no need to waste my time or money on what was supposed to be a lovely night out with my significant other at a place that doesn't care to teach their workers proper customer...

Still no response from the restaurant. Smh

As former chef and someone who spent decades in service,I hate to write this... But. We dined in this evening (12/15) and there were a party of four of us.

The bad: everything.Wrong food MULTIPLE TIMES, tiny portions, breadsticks were continuously cold, with no butter or garlic seasoning. So dry and cold we had to ask for butter and garlic. This is literally a staple of your restaurant, you I have a menu item that's unlimited soup salad, and "bread sticks." Well it was Sunday around dinner, I expected it to be busy. But it wasn't any busier than any other restaurant. Waited almost 20 minutes for ONE BLUE MOON. My partner was brought the wrong meal three separate times, a very simple order at that. Because she doesn't eat meat, Ravioli with marinara sauce. At first they brought ravioli with meat sauce, and then spaghetti and meatballs, and then spaghetti and meat sauce. Before they finally brought out the correct meal. Drinks weren't full, breadsticks were cold, salad plates were dirty. When they went to replace the dishes with new dishes we didn't get new dishes for another 10 plus minutes. They forgot another diners, dressing on the side. While most of the party has worked in service, we were not rude to the waitress(Renae I believe). We waited patiently, and they still tried to upsell us desserts... Are you serious? You can't even bring out the right food, but you want to sell us desserts? This is the worst experience and food I've ever had on Olive garden. Crazy this big box corporate restaurants keep putting more cost on the customer, but continue serving horrible, food, and not being held accountable on mistakes. Spending well over $100 and this is the type of customer dining experiences you give. Very sad. Please do better and make this right.

The...