Olive Garden Italian Restaurant — Restaurant in Lafayette

I went to the Olive Garden with my daughter after she took a 6 hr exam to be a licenced pharmacist. It was a 6 hr exam and then nearly 75 mile trip back. It has been a very stress filled month studying for her and 7 years of school. I don't wanna get too personal, but we lost mom the first year she was admitted to the program at purdue, which was so rough on her and her brother and i....then unfortunately we lost my son her brother last year he was 20 yrs old,,and she still made it thru her classes.. This was the culmination of everything and she is totally exhausted, and hurting as i am. Olive GArden is one of her favorite places to eat, we don't go often as her college cost soared and the money is mostly gone,, BUT this was our special dinner to celebrate,, We came in, i was a little underdressed,,yet we were seated and treated kindly. while we ordered i had questions some about the prices cause i wanted to eat good and tip the server too. while we were there we were chatting with the waitress and having good time she was great lady , she was a latino name started with an A. I am so rude i forgot her name i am sorry.. and i finally figured what i was gonna get ,, salad soup bread was out ASAP i asked for butter and it was there asap.xra dressing was awesome,. we got the food and she came over and said how is it,, i had one issue about what i ordered and it was probably my fault, yet she took to fixing the food just as i wanted and since the other half of my meal i was going to take home to eat anyway , she just made it all in a nice togo package,and always was happy to help. we talked about my daughters test and the fact we were just exhausted ,, this i s when i got a phone call i took, it was the docs at the VA to get me in for mental health appt..so we don't go around telling others our issues even tho now it looks like it, maybe she saw thru our smiles and struggles,, who knows..,,, what happened next was the waitress and staff there did something special for my daughter ,, and me ,, but they helped her and us celebrated her SPECIAL DAY with a very loving gesture, this made my daughter so happy and i was so thankful to them. sorry bout the long story, but it had to be told to show how nice the waitress and staff was, THANK YOU .....

fyi,, all the food we had and the take home orders were awesome and we had great midnite dinners.. God...

We were in town for the women’s state bowling tournament Saturday night(the 29th) and decided to go as a group for dinner. 6 p.m. on a Saturday that was also local prom night so our 40 minute wait for a large table was reasonable. What put a damper on our evening was our server, Nora G, per the name on the receipt. Apparently serving our table was not on her priority list, there were 6 in our party, receipt says 5 Gst, it seemed to annoy her that we needed two bowls of salad for the table as two different dressings were requested, which were plunked down on the table with no offer of extra cheese, no breadsticks brought to us, when we asked, she said the kitchen was making fresh, which was fine until baskets started coming out and going to tables that had arrived after we were seated and she walked right by our table TWICE on her way to other tables with them, we stopped her on her way back to the kitchen and asked again, and again we’re told the kitchen was making more. Three times we had to ask before any arrived table side. Our meal was served by two other servers, not Nora who was supposed to be our server. One gentleman in our party actually had to go to the kitchen entrance to get a refill on his soft drink, we stopped one of the passing servers and requested to see the manager who came to our table and asked if there was a problem to which we started explaining our service. Nora G saw him at our table and stood within ear shot and actually smirked and gestured at another of the servers while listening to our explanation of our visit. The manager on duty, I believe his name was Juan, seemed concerned about the lack of service and offered to adjust our bill to compensate for the inconveniences we encountered, which we accepted. He also said he would address the situation with the server. By all means, go to Olive Garden and enjoy all of your Italian inspired favorites, just ask for a different server if Nora G says she will be taking care of you during your visit. The three stars are for the food which was good, five stars would have been given if we had been given...

Had severe allergic reaction from curbside order, very clearly issues with cross contamination practices as it was the only thing I had eaten or been in contact with that would caused a reaction. Both times I called, was left on an extremely long hold trying to speak to a manager even though the second time the manager reached out to me via voicemail and email because I left a negative survey response. I don’t think they would have responded or cared unless I had left that review since there was no sense of urgency to find a manager to speak to me when I initially called. Once I did finally talk to them, the manager seemed incredulous and I got the sense that they were completely in disbelief of what I was saying. Including in their email even saying “they weren’t sure what would have happened to cause my reaction” and saying similar things over the phone despite me telling them I am allergic to shellfish which they do have on the menu repeatedly so that just rubbed me the wrong way. Manager offered me a refund and then couldn’t find my order from my name or phone number or card number because I paid with apple pay. I don’t know if they’ll find my order for a refund and I stated that I don’t want a gift card to eat somewhere that I can’t trust the staff to not almost kill me. I debated leaving this review because they made some dismissive half promise to make it right but at the end of the day, this isn’t about a simple refund. If you have severe food allergies, people need to know their current staff isn’t being careful enough and they either need more training or to not be so careless. It’s really disappointing because I have never worried about dining at Olive Garden in the past but unfortunately now this experience has tainted this chain for me forever.

Making a small edit to say that they did not follow through on “making it right” with a refund even so that’s laughable and was the only thing I debated on in regards to leaving...