Olive Garden Italian Restaurant — Restaurant in Jackson

So, I am very disappointed that I have to even submit such a review about one of my favorite restaurants, but this was just too much. If I could get a negative score this time, I would. My family and I decided to go out for dinner Monday night, Nov 6, 2017. We called ahead to ask for our table to be ready, and when we arrived they were tracking that call with a table for 5 prepared. Granted, the restaurant was a ghost town so I wouldn't expect anything less than quick seating. We were seated by our server so drink orders were taken promptly. It took a couple moments to actually get the drinks, and he was short 1 straw that he never returned with, btw. My daughter went to the hostess for one. OK, orders placed, we had 2 appetizers and all 5 of us had an entree as well. Mr Samuel, I believe was his name, brought us late and luke warm appetizers. so much so that our cheese on our stuffed mushrooms was separated. OK we are hungry so we are going to just work with this. Then we realize we have no salad yet, huh?! Apps before salad.. pretty sure salad and bread comes out before everything. Got a small salad built for 2 for our family of 5 and hard cold breadsticks. Now Im getting frustrated. Ok by this time a table of 2 is set across from us. It takes Mr Samuel a good 10 min before he even greets them and takes drink orders. We work through this luke warm appetizer, hard bread and small salad and begin to wait again. Samuel comes out and says the "new girl" messed up the gnocchi soup which is what my 7yr old eats here, so we understand a batch didnt come out right, it could happen, he offered no solution, which is when I said ok, we will wait on the next batch, which for whatever reason he seemed confused as to why we would do that. Still no main courses. We tell him to give us the Fagoli as a substitute while we wait. Ok here comes the mains, also LUKE WARM!! Soup drinkable, no steam at all. My kids called the food room temperature. I ordered the braised beef tortellini, love this dish. Mine was so cold I sent it back. Mr Samuel had the nerve to say he was going to have the reheated. No thank you sir, i will not have a microwaved dinner from a restaurant, they can re make it and I will wait. He walks away with attitude. Other table of 2 still receiving horrible service as well. So after waiting a while he hadnt refilled drinks or salad we got that done and I was still waiting. NOPE thats it manager please! Manager comes out looking confused saying he was doing inventory and has no idea whats going on blah blah blah. Ok he offers to take care of us in "some way", whatever that meant, I just wanted my meal. As Im explaining our experience Mr Samuel returns with the long awaited gnocchi soup. LUKE WARM!!! I grab that bowl and hand it right back at which point Mr Samuel goes into defense. He says, "no, that soup just came out" maybe so but its cold. He then says" how is that my fault" really lil dude?! Nobody is blaming you but I would like hot food that is due to me. I can go word for word with how he screwed this up, but It only frustrates me more. Bottom line, never argue with a customer! If he doesnt know that he might want to come out of customer service. The manager offered a gift card, but at this point I will never return to that location due to Mr Samuel and his horrible ability to just basically shut up and do his job. Had he not come over with the brass attitude he had, we would have let there be resolution and I would have waited on my food and carried out our dinner. But he was so arrogant it totally put the nail in the coffin. There were several other aspects to this serving and horrible food experience but I will let this eye full be enough. We will NOT go there again we live in Brandon, so there was a choice of other restaurants to go to. We will surely choose something else from here forth. Time for a new Italian favorite in Jackson/Flowood. Mr Samuel perhaps needs to be a host, or bartender. Serving is...

This visit happened last week. I arrived at 4 with my daughter and was told that there would be a 30-35 min wait due to staffing issues. We stayed in the area but ran some errands in the same shopping center. I made sure to let them know we would be close by and to just call when it was our turn. 45 mins later, we’re back from our errands and still weren’t contacted to be seated, so I called. I was assured we hadn’t been skipped over and was told we would be seated next. Another 45 mins and we were still waiting. I went inside after noticing another couple was seated before us but that had come after us and asked what the confusion was. The woman said she’d just clocked in and wasn’t sure but that she would go ahead and seat us. After being seated I asked for the manager. The waitress beat the manager to the table and i placed our drink and appetizer order (mind you it was just myself and my 4 year old in our dining party).The waitress was very nice and said it was just her first week, but seemed confident in the menu. Our drinks came quickly and the manager came right behind them. He immediately apologized and said there may be an issue with their network and that may be why we didn’t get a text or call for our table. I explained that we had been waiting for over and hour and a half and even showed him my call log where I called in half way through our wait, and told him that my daughter was the only reason why we stayed for the table (she loves the breadsticks). He apologized again and gave us a free appetizer. Our appetizer and salad and bread sticks were good, and we placed our entree order 1/2 way through eating. The waitress came back and told us that the kitchen was backed up, refilled our drinks and apologized. After 30 more mins our food came but we had to take it to go because at that point we had been there for 3 hours. I’d give 0 stars if I could but the waitress again was very nice (none of that visit was her fault or cause) and the manager was nice too- so 1 star each. But 3 hours in one place hungry with a crack 4 year old is not how I had planned to spend my time, and no amount of free appetizers is going to get back those 3 hours of my life that I wasted. The nonchalant and clearly disorganized wait staff at the entrance really irritated me I don’t think we’ll be...

Where to begin?? There are some restaurants that have an old school legendary status of great food, customer service and quality. The Olive Garden is one of those that usually delivers. This particular store fell so short of that mark of excellence that it's painful to describe. The management and some staff are prime reasons to go ANYWHERE else to eat but here. Before naming the managers,and describing the lackadaisical staff...I want to make sure to praise the only waitress who was of high caliber, that she is noticed out loud.. Her name was Kayana..she actually was given me and my wife's table after us being ignored for over 30 minutes by the waitress who was assigned our section. My observations told me that we were ignored because we were a married interracial couple..me being white,my wife being black...The waitress who ignored us was talll,thin. She had blond hair weaved into her wig,and was tall and gangly, having very distinctive features. She made a consolidated effort to keep her name tag hidden. The waitress who had ignored us, gave our table to Kayana. We heard the conversation. The clearly racist/prejudiced waitress was clearly not concerned about her verbage and attitude because she spoke loudly...as if to let us know she was above us in her rather small mind. after us waiting nearly 45 minutes to be even noticed. Kayana rocked it, took our order and did her best to rectify the errors already done.She needs a raise. The mangers are Jackie and Jacob. We requested to speak with either one of them, and waited an additional 20 minutes with niether one being professional enough to come and talk about our issues that we encountered at their restaurant. Our food took forever, was of low quality. The restaurant was dirty, inside and out, including a thick layer of dust/dirt on every surface,the glass doors coming in were filthy and our table was sticky,and dirty. The fact that some of the staff are clearly racist,prejudicial,..including the management... shows that unfortunately, racism and it's ever present cousins of fear and hatred, are alive and well in this Olive Garden Restaurant. Thank God we still have some great people like Kayana left in this world. Thank...