Olive Garden Italian Restaurant — Restaurant in Independence

I’m extremely disappointed with the experience I had at the Olive Garden in Lee’s Summit. As a pregnant woman who had been craving Olive Garden for days, my husband took time off work to take me there, hoping for a nice family outing. Unfortunately, it turned out to be anything but that.

When we arrived, the host (older woman with black, thin hair and bangs) took several minutes to seat us, despite the restaurant not being busy. She placed us in the section in front of the bar, which initially didn’t seem unusual—until I noticed a troubling pattern.

My son needed to use the restroom, and while walking him there, I saw the other side of the restaurant had plenty of empty tables. What stood out even more was that not a single person of color was seated in that area. Meanwhile, the area we were placed in was where every person of color (POC) was being seated. As we continued our meal, I observed the host repeatedly seating all white patrons on one side of the restaurant, and all POC on the other. It felt like something out of another era—like segregation in 2025. Absolutely unacceptable.

On top of that, the food was subpar. My chicken frittata was nearly burnt and tasted old. My husband’s steak was served well done when he requested it medium, and the pasta had barely any sauce. Thankfully, our server corrected it when I pointed it out, but the damage had already been done.

We ended up packing our food to go and leaving early. I felt incredibly uncomfortable, hurt, and unwelcome. I’ve never experienced something so blatantly discriminatory in a restaurant setting, especially one as well-known as Olive Garden.

I will not be returning, and I sincerely hope this location is held accountable for its practices. No family should ever feel the way mine did during what should have been a simple,...

Went on Friday night at 6pm. Was excellent service through the whole experience. Even though toting a sleeping babe in a car seat, the Seater helped us be seated in a booth. I knew why she had instinctively selected a table for us when the car seat did not fit between the seat-back and table. That's when our server Chad S stepped in. As I was arranging things to set the seat on the table, my side glance caught a puzzled look from the server that I knew had never seen this before. At that point I asked if it would be ok to set seat and babe here until he wakes. The response was automatic, without pause, and with direct eye contact "Perfectly ok. No one with childeren will complain. My name is Chad. I'll be taking care of you this evening. May i start with getting some drinks for you?" He made 3 excellent suggestions for both my wife's and my dinner with wine to accompany the meal. offering information for plates ranging from $9 to 17. Truly excellent service through the whole meal. Chad even cleared some counter space by his register to set the car seat when the boss woke up requesting his own beverage. 1 hour visit from start to finish. Even though this is 15 minutes longer than a restaurant's optimal table occupancy, without alcohol sales, we never felt rushed to make room for the next customer.

I would recommend dining at this restaurant from lunch to early evening if you simply are not able to wait to be seated. The quality and cost of food is worth the wait on a Friday or...

After being seated we quickly realized that the table next to us was playing two different videos on devices for their little children to watch. We tried to discreetly ask an employee if they could find our host to move us tables, as we were feeling some sensory overload in this section. That staff member found our waitress who discussed with a host who eventually got a manager. These conversations were not quite/discrete. I don’t know where we went wrong to anger the manager because he walked us past a quiet section and instead offered us a table next to another family playing videos for their children. We asked if there were any other tables they could move us where we wouldn’t have to listen to videos being played and could just enjoy our meal. We were told “this is a family restaurant”. I clarified we specifically wanted to be away from videos being played, we of course understand it's a family restaurant and weren’t asking to be in some non existent adult only section, but they just repeated “this is a family restaurant.” I apologized and said I don’t think we’ll be able to stay here then. On the way out we passed two more sections without videos playing, but people were seated so I know they weren’t closed sections, and there was an entire other half of the restaurant we didn’t pass through. Those quite sections we passed through made it easy to hear the staff talking about us as we left.

Completely unacceptable service, and...