Olive Garden Italian Restaurant — Restaurant in Lawrence Township

April 5, 2024 I wanted to edit this review for our great service experience tonight w the waiter, Mostafa. He was friendly, warm, attentive, helpful and responsive. He was aware of our needs the whole dinner and served us w great kindness. I went up to his manager at the end of dinner and expressed that he was the best weight staff we had ever had at this Olive Garden location.

Beginning of February 2024: Food (5/5): the food was the exact quality we expected. We loved everything we had. It was absolutely delicious! We ordered the calamari for appetizers, the breadsticks and the salad. My 10 year old daughter ordered Mac-n-cheese with French fries and a raspberry lemonade. I ordered the fettuccine Alfredo with breaded chicken and broccoli. My 16 year old daughter ordered fettuccine Alfredo and mg husband ordered the Tour of Italy.

Atmosphere (4/5): it was average, although a little loud. There were many many people there. We went on a Friday night around 545 and beat the larger crowds that came in after us. We were seated right away and I liked where we sat. The temperature was a little cold in the restaurant but it was also 30 degrees outside, so it was expected.

Service (2/5): Let me start by saying why I'm not giving a rating of 0 or 1. When I called ahead to let them know we were coming (you can't make a reservation for a party of 4), they asked if we were celebrating anything. I mentioned that was nice of them to ask and told them we were celebrating my birthday. She asked if I would want them to sing to me and I said "sure"! When we arrived and checked in, both hostesses said, "Happy Birthday!" With enthusiasm, which I thanked them for and I made mention to my family that was very nice and thoughtful of them. However, my waiter did nothing with this information and never brought anything or sang for my birthday, although he acknowledged it at the very beginning when he introduced himself.

Our server came with someone to the table. It was unclear whether he was training her or she was training him. She never once spoke to us the whole night. They were timely in coming to take our order and asked if we were celebrating anything, to which my husband responded "her birthday" (pointing at me). The waiter wished me a happy birthday and made some small talk. We let him know we were ready to order. He took our order and within 5 min we had our drinks, breadsticks (serving of 4 for 4 people) and salad. He came back to our table regularly to see if he could take away plates or if we needed anything.

Now the reasons for the poor review: after his initial conversation, the remaining interactions were very poor. We each felt like he was annoyed at us, he stopped verbally acknowledging us once we made a request and literally just walked away. We wouldn't know if he heard what we said. We felt like he was frustrated that we had ANY request and did the absolute bare minimum that he was supposed to by coming to our table. We felt as if he really disliked his job and didn't want to be there. By the end of our dinner, he became almost rude to the point I wanted to speak to the manager but my husband thought we should just leave. I couldn't want to get out of the restaurant because we began to feel so uncomfortable with his poor attitude toward us. His non-verbal communication spoke much more volumes than any words he used. What is confusing is he gets paid based (tips) on how he serves/treats his customers and this concept didn't seem to matter to him.

Our night would have been much more enjoyable had we not felt like he was frustrated and irritated at us for making any requests (e.g more breadsticks, drink refills and unending...

DO NOT GO HERE!!!!!! This was the worst experience of my entire life at an establishment. So to start off we ordered waters with lemon and that took about ten minutes to even get. We had breadsticks before we even got our drinks. The waters come and no lemon. So we asked for the lemon. They seemed annoyed. Well we kept an open mind. Ordered salad, soup and breadsticks and an appetizer. We got the salad and soup and no appetizer. We finished our salad and soup and had to ask about our appetizer which came out cold and disgusting. We have gone to other olive gardens and this was not the normal fried mozzarella at all. It was nasty. Anyway still let it go. Meals come out and the server didn’t even know what we ordered and had to ask us. Our meals were cool, not cold but not hot. The chicken parm was not edible at all. Tasted old and microwaved and you couldn’t even cut it. A manager asked me if it was okay and I spoke up which I rarely do and said it wasn’t edible and asked for another meal. That meal came out and I asked for some cheese and more breadsticks from the general manager and he never returned. So I had to ask someone else for cheese and couldn’t get more breadsticks. Finally the bill comes, has the chicken parm on it still. They comped my mothers mozzarella sticks for taking too long but then when I said I sent back the chicken parm and got something else they then charged me for the new meal. I just kept my mouth shut and paid at that point but 45 bucks for a horrible meal that took about two hours to even get our food. Other tables were in and out before ours. The general manager seemed annoyed by me when I didn’t even complain when I should have and the food was disgusting. Definitely don’t usually give this in dept of a review with this much anger but seriously disappointed in this place and will never go back to this location again. If you are thinking of going here just don’t. Avoid it and go to an actual Italian restaurant that has good food or drive to another Olive...

My wife and I just spent $60 for one of the worst dining out experiences I've had in years. It's going to be a while before we trust going out to eat at Olive Garden again.

We were waited on what I assume was the bartender, next to the bar. In a far corner, along what appeared to be a major thoroughfare. It was a pretty uncomfortable location on what did not appear to be a particularly busy Saturday night. The bartender looked like he wanted to be doing anything besides waiting on tables. We heard him at least once shove some of his own work on a coworker.

We placed an order for an app along with our drinks. After a few more minutes we ordered our entrees. The soup and breadsticks came out alongside the app, and then our entrees came out less than 5 minutes later. My wife had barely started on her salad, which was also incorrect, and I wasn't done my soup. We'd only had a few pieces of the shrimp app. The pacing felt absolutely terrible, it had maybe been 10 minutes since we had been seated.

I got the never ending pasta bowl and my wife got ziti. The food was delicious. The problem here was that the pasta bowl ended after the first. We didn't see our server again for like 10 minutes. Another person asked if we'd need help and I requested another bowl. It was another 20 minutes at least without anything in front of me waiting for my pasta bowl refill. Eventually we were getting tired of waiting about I was about to just pay the bill, leave no tip, and walk out.

My refill finally came out and it was the most thrown together thing I've seen in years, that it actively annoyed me that I'd been waiting 20 minutes for it. It looked like someone had taken premade rigatoni, thrown it in a bowl, covered it in some sauce and threw a piece of sausage on it. The idea that it took so long to prepare was downright insulting. We packed it up and left.

The only reason I'm not giving my review 1 Star is because the food was genuinely good. The service and experience...