Olive Garden Italian Restaurant — Restaurant in Los Angeles

Today was supposed to be a special day—I took my mother to Olive Garden for a belated Mother’s Day celebration. At first, everything seemed great. We were enjoying our meal when my sister noticed a strand of hair in her salad. We immediately informed our server, who went to get the manager on duty.

While waiting, we became concerned and began checking our own plates—unfortunately, we discovered a second hair in another dish. By the time the manager arrived, we were disgusted and upset, worried we may have already consumed contaminated food. We showed him the second hair and explained we no longer wanted a replacement meal; we simply wanted to leave.

To our surprise, the manager offered no apology and showed no concern. He only offered to replace the dishes that had visible hair and argued with us when I said I didn’t want to pay. He insisted he would only compensate for the dish where hair was visibly found, ignoring our valid concern that we could have eaten food that was also contaminated.

The lack of empathy, accountability, and professionalism from the manager was deeply upsetting. A simple apology and acknowledgment of the issue would have gone a long way. Instead, we were met with defensiveness and indifference. It felt as though our experience—and our health—didn’t matter.

This situation raised serious concerns about food safety at this location. We, as customers, don’t see what happens in the kitchen, and finding multiple hairs in different plates is unacceptable. The way the manager handled it made us feel even worse—he was clearly more focused on minimizing the issue than actually addressing it.

Please take this seriously. Sanitation is a top priority in any food establishment. If you care about your business and customer experience, I strongly recommend investigating this incident and re-evaluating how your management team handles food safety concerns. I would be happy to help identify the manager involved, as this experience has completely shaken my confidence in returning to Olive Garden.

Very disappointed. Even now, I can’t shake the feeling that I may have eaten food contaminated with hair. This was not only disgusting, but also handled in the most careless and...

My niece was given the choice of having birthday lunch anywhere she wanted…. she chose this place. Where to begin? Not many people, we were there at 1pm, no wait, we were immediately seated. Great. We sat down in the booth right behind the host station… and proceeded to wait more than 5 minutes for someone to take our drink order. I remind you, it wasn’t busy. It was so slow that the host and about four other staff/servers were all congregating at the host’s station in front of our booth happily and loudly chatting and laughing away. At this point, I went to them and asked if anyone was going to take our drink order. To say they looked miffed that I interrupted their carefree chitter-chatter would be an understatement, but by this point, our server was already at our table… Poor woman looked frazzled, and I don’t blame her for the bad experience… Quite the contrary. I left her a generous tip because she tried. I can appreciate that she had other tables and patrons to wait on, IN WHICH CASE, the host or any of the other four servers engaged in conversation SHOULD HAVE helped her. I may be over 40, but I remember working in food service back in my day and one of the golden rules was: LOOK BUSY. If it’s a slow day, grab a damn washcloth and clean some empty tables or go around offering to refill water glasses, but by Jove, don’t just stand around doing absolutely nothing where customers can see! Our server brought coffee with no sugar or straws for the drinks, asked one of the servers standing around doing not-much by the host’s station if we could get straws, she tells us “give us a minute…” Oh, the irony! LOL Food arrived nice and hot, but that’s about all I can offer as far as praise goes. Wasn’t expecting a Michelin worthy meal. I mean, Olive Garden is basically the equivalent of a Dennys, only Italian inspired and more overpriced. My niece liked her pasta with chicken, bless her heart. The experience was just so negative that it ruined my appetite. Legit, asked for a to-go box and gave it to the first homeless person we drove by. All in all, it’s not a cheap place to dine in, food is subpar, not worth the price, but all that could’ve been overlooked had the customer service not...

Ordered the Shrimp Fritto Misto, Pasta e Fagioli soup, Zuppa Toscana soup, Chicken and Gnocchi soup, Shrimp Scampi, Spaghetti with Marinara sauce and 3 meatballs, Chicken Alfredo, and a Tiramisu slice of cake. The Shrimp Fritto Misto came with a half pound of shrimp mixed with onions and bell peppers plus marinara and ranch sauces. This was a good starter plate to start your palate with some decent fried food first. The Pasta e Fagioli soup was a hearty soup with white and red beans, ground beef, tomatoes, and tubetti pasta in a broth.The Zuppa Toscana had spicy italian sausage, kale and potatoes in a creamy broth. The broth was indeed creamy and the spicy italian sausage added a slight kick to the bite size kale and small potato blocks. The Chicken and Gnocchi soup was a creamy soup with roasted chicken, gnocchi and spinach. While the gnocchi seemed to fall apart more easily here, it still tasted pretty good in the soup and the chicken bits were either shredded or small. The shrimp scampi was delicious with medium sized shrimp mixed with asparagus, tomatoes and angel hair pasta. The angel hair pasta here is ideal for a lighter pasta on your palette. The Spaghetti with Marinara sauce and 3 meatballs was a classic spaghetti experience. The meatballs here were quite huge and they packed a lot of good seasoning inside of them. Mixed in with the pasta, this spaghetti was balanced. The Chicken Alfredo with grilled chicken was a thick and creamy pasta experience; the chicken portions were well sized and the use of thicker pasta complements the heaviness of the cream. And finally the Tiramisu slice of cake was still a bit frozen if you like that but overall, this was a nice cake with visible creamy layers. The staff were very patient and kind with helping us take our orders. The interior ambiance has some Italian countryside references to the nature of it and most tables seem to be booth style tables with a few regular tables around. Parking is not an issue here but it does fill up...