Olive Garden Italian Restaurant — Restaurant in Live Oak

I don't even know where to begin, but I guess I'll start at the beginning. The only person who didn’t have a bad attitude was the hostess. She was the only bright spot in our visit, greeting us with a smile and doing her job with courtesy. Unfortunately, that’s where the positivity ended.

When we were seated, the waitress who led us to our table tossed the menus and crayon packs at my kids as if we were inconveniencing her. I couldn’t believe it—it was so disrespectful. Then, our actual server came to take our order, and she made it clear that we were interrupting her day just by being there. There was no friendliness, no warmth—just an attitude that screamed, "Why are you even here?"

It only got worse. She messed up our drink orders not once but twice, and when the wrong appetizer arrived at our table, we figured she just wasn’t paying attention at all. By the time the salad and breadsticks finally arrived, we were relieved that at least those were fresh and delicious because the two of us had ordered the soup, salad, and breadsticks option. At least something was going right at that point.

For our main courses, we ordered a Tour of Italy, a kids' pizza, and a kids' spaghetti. The portion size of the Tour of Italy was shockingly small—it looked like someone had taken the usual serving and halved it. To make things worse, the dish was poorly plated with hardly any sauce, and they skimped on the cheese. For a meal that’s supposed to showcase Olive Garden's classics, this was beyond disappointing. As for the kids' meals, they took 45 minutes to arrive. By the time they did, at least they were hot, but no family should have to wait that long for basic kids' dishes.

Then there was the soup. It took another 10 minutes after the main dishes to get our soups, and when they finally came, they were cold. When we asked for a second round of soup, the waitress looked at us like we were out of line for wanting more. The same attitude surfaced when we requested more salad and breadsticks—like we were burdening her with our requests, despite the fact that these are unlimited items on the menu.

As the meal went on, the waitress became more and more visibly annoyed with our table, and I have no idea why. We didn’t complain about the cold food, the long wait, or her poor service—not once did we give her a reason to act this way. But her attitude made it clear that she didn’t want us there.

If it wasn’t a school night, and if we weren’t so tired, we would have walked out and found another place to eat. We were just trying to enjoy a nice dinner and celebrate something as a family, but the experience was downright miserable.

What’s worse is that my wife and daughter had a similarly bad experience here a few weeks ago, but I wanted to give this location another chance. I figured maybe their last visit was just an off day for the server. Now, after seeing how the entire staff behaves, I realize this is clearly a larger issue—a toxic working environment that management either ignores or enables.

The saddest part is that this used to be my go-to Olive Garden in San Antonio. I frequented it during and even before the pandemic, and it was consistently great. After being away for a few years, I came back expecting the same quality, but the staff now is just awful.

There was one glimmer of hope during the meal—a young guy with a great afro who wasn’t even our server but went out of his way to help me and my son. He was friendly and genuinely cared about our experience. I wish he had been assigned to our table because he was the only staff member who seemed to value customer service. Unfortunately, we...

So, we typically come eat at this Olive Garden, Live Oak location at least twice a month because the New Braunfels Location, which is where we live lost our business due to their lack of sanitary handling and lack of service. We actually haven’t been to the New Braunfels location for at least 2 years since we had found a fly in our soup and the manager was not helpful, she genuinely didn’t care back then. We never went back since. Since my kids and I grew up loving Olive Garden, we decided to give Live Oak location a chance and had always proved to give us an outstanding service and the best quality of food, seriously the plates were served very well and we had never had a complain. There were times here and there that we would get service from a waitstaff that might have not been the best but the food presentation and portions always made up for the lack of service in a few of the occasions. Tonight my family and I drove 30mins from our hometown New Braunfels to Live Oak craving that Dine in experience we so often have enjoyed at this establishment. Today however, we were extremely disappointed from beginning to end. As soon as we got seated, it took about 10 mins to have someone over at our table. To be proactive, we sent an order on the Touch Screen at the table for some Alfredo Dipping Sauce as a starter and ordered the kids meals so they could be our first. When the waiter came to get our drink order I informed him we had order those things right away so he knew about it. After he took our drink order the first thing he came back with was a boat of Alfredo sauce with no breadsticks and he said they were completely out and had to wait. Which in my opinion, why even bring the sauce if there’s no bread to dip? Secondly, 10 mins later he comes back with no drinks so at that point we ordered our food. Another 5-10 mins later we finally got our bread again no drinks. Eventually we got our drinks, then the kids meals came out right after along with the soups we ordered. One of the soups ordered was a Toscana and it was nothing but water and we found a dumpling in a Toscana Soup. When we notified the server he kind of just shook his head like- “yeah I noticed” but didn’t follow up with an offer for a different soup or to notify a manager about it? Like he was very condescending the whole time. Eventually, when our food finally came out, one of the plates was incorrect and no apology was given for that mistake, as well as having to wait 15mins for spoons on our soups and a steak knife for the steak which by the time he came back with that stuff after reminding him about the missing silverware multiple times, made the steak cold and unpleasant to eat. It was very disappointing to order a $20 Steak and not eat it freshly nice and warm as ordered. Then on other occasions he kept forgetting our drink refills or overall the attention was much lacking. We are typically not people who write bad reviews unless it is deemed. This experience however was so disappointing especially given that a manager NEVER approached our table ONCE. Looks like my family and I are going to start looking for other...

I came last night 8/18/24 around 630/7pm with my husband and daughter, and we had the WORST experience. The hostess who sat us was extremely kind and friendly. As well as the girls up front. We were seated at table 109, Our waitress Naarah B started off super friendly and kind, then it just went downhill. We were offered breadsticks and then offered dips for them as well. We said sure, of course. Little did we know we would be charged $5 for Marinara and Alfredo sauce. Something that should be mentioned ahead of time. Not a "would you like me to bring you dips?" Makes it seem like it's available to you instantly. We ordered our food. I had the BYOP, my husband had the AYCE soup/salad, and my daughter had the kids Alfredo and side spaghetti. My daughter didn't even get fettuccine pasta for her Alfredo. She received spaghetti noodles and a smidge of Alfredo sauce. It was so dry that we had to use the side Alfredo dip as extra. My husband kept being called "ma'am" all night. He just has LONG hair. But he is clearly a MAN. He kept trying to wave down the waitress Naarah for refills, new soups, and cheese, and she made eye contact several times but never came to our table. He wanted new soups, and she brought he the same one. We were never offered cheese for anything. But all the other tables were..makes no sense. I had 1 glass of water the entire meal because she never came to refill. My daughter had no drink because the waitress never stayed long enough to see if we needed anything. I'm assuming she was new? I'm not sure. But a lot of training is needed there. I was so fed up at the end of it that I just wanted to pay and go home. I had to ask another waiter for assistance with the tablet because it wasn't reading my card and because Naarah was nowhere. I couldn't even find a manager to complain to. I was extremely disappointed, which is sad because I come here a lot and have never once had this kind of experience. Almost $100 to be treated like we...