Italian Garden — Restaurant in Lubbock

Updated review based on most recent visit: Oct. 21st we had the worst service I could have imagined. After the first visit we decided to bring the whole family back to celebrate my dad's birthday. The food was wonderful, but like I said service was awful. Our servers name was Alex. Here's my reasons for why the service was terrible. We were seated. Server walks away and immediately comes back to let us know we have to leave the restaurant by 7:30pm for a reservation at 8pm At the time it was maybe 5pm. Don't get me wrong my family is understanding of that, but the way it was said made us feel like we were an inconvenience and being rushed out. The verbal and non verbal communication came off as rude. Alex (our server) never gave us menus after taking our drink order so we had to ask a waitress for those. Server was not very attentive with our table during the duration of our visit. He basically did the bare minimum if even that. I requested my daughter's pizza to be brought to us in a box already because I knew she wouldn't be able to eat it all by herself, but specified I still wanted it at the same time as the rest of our food. Alex had checked on us maybe 2 times before our food came out and both times my 5 year old asked about her pizza because she was being a little impatient. Later when the food is brought out our whole party of 8 recieved their food, but no pizza for my daughter. I thought maybe he needed to go back and grab it but we quickly realized that was not the case. After trying to get his attention and failing (like I said he had no interest in our table) we had to ask the same server who previously had to give us menus if she could check on it for us. We find out Alex wrote "To Go" on the ticket and nothing else to let the cooks now it was needed such as "To Go for now". She offered to grab my daughter a dish while she was waiting for her pizza to now be made. I think this waitresses name was Beth, but could be wrong but she was such a wonderful help. When Alex was informed of the situation he came to the table with with an onnoxious tone and half decent apology while blaming the cooks for his poor communication and lack of attention to detail. We are hoping to be able to treat just my parents agains soon to see if they can get a better experience. I would love for them to have the same experience we did the first time and fall in love with this place as I have.

Oct. 1st visit: Our family of 5 absolutely loved it here when we came last weekend. It was an early birthday meal for my husband and was definitely not disappointing! Pictures are of our fried ravioli apatizer and the shrimp tortellini I ordered. The flavors are spot on for what we wanted and service was amazing. Honestly may become our regular italian meal place. Quality of food was excellent and we loved the calm atmosphere. Highly recommend and cannot...

HORRIBLE!!!!! Do NOT waste your time or money on this horrible restaurant. The food is bad, the service is worse, and the owner is a joke. Let me explain. We went to this place to celebrate a birthday. While we were there, we had three different servers – one took our drink order, one took our food order, and the third brought us our check. The meal started off with them bringing two of our drinks wrong. This was corrected eventually. Then, when we received the food, mine was wrong – wrong sauce on the meal. By the time they brough the corrected meal to me, everyone else in our party was almost done eating. I ordered the Crab Ravioli with Alfredo sauce. The crab ravioli had NO flavor at all. It was the worse version of this I had ever had in my life. I ate two raviolis and could not eat any more. Before I had a chance to tell one of our servers, a bus boy or someone came by and picked up our plates and took off with it. Whatever, it is what it is. From here, things actually got worse. When we went to pay, the man doing the cash register asked how the meal was. I just shrugged not wanting to get into the details. He asked again a couple more times, so I decided, if he really wants to know that bad, I will tell him. I explained to him exactly what I stated above. I also know for a fact I was not rude at this time because my wife was at my side and she told me that at that point, I was not rude (trust me, she would tell me after 20 plus years of marriage). This cashier person immediately started getting defensive and rude. He was saying he has never heard this before and clearly it was not right (basically calling me a liar). After him telling me how wrong I was for a couple of minutes, he said “I have been here for ten years and never heard that before”. My response to him was, “well, I have been here once, and it was horrible, and I will not come back”. He then responded very loudly – “thank God”. At that point, I had enough of him. I asked to speak to his manager, at which point he just started ignoring me. I then flagged down a waiter and asked for the manager, who then told me that the person I was talking to was a manager. So, I asked for someone above him. A few minutes later, another manger comes out to speak to me. I told him what happened with this person at the register. He then tells me “Well, he is the owner of the restaurant”. WHAT?!?!? This person was the owner!! What a joke. He is the owner, and he treats customers like that. I do not understand how he can stay in business if he acts like this when a customer has a complaint about the food. If you decide to go to this place, please be careful not to complain about anything or the owner will treat you horribly. I highly recommend you avoid this place...

I just want to start out by saying that I loved Italian Garden up until tonight.

We went to Italian Garden for my birthday dinner and we had a party of 12. When I told the employee that we had that many people he immediately asked if I had made a reservation. I told him no, but he informed me that he would be able to seat us even though we didn't have a reservation. After we were sat down, we waited for the rest of our party to get there. As soon as they got there, we waited for quite some time for our waiter to get to our table and take our order. I completely understand though because it was busy! Anyways, my husband gets their attention and then they take our order. After they took our order, we waited for over an hour and 20 minutes for the entire table to receive their order. Half of our table got their food 20 minutes before ours and then the rest of food came out staggered. After this happened, I asked to talk to the manager about the situation.

I talked to him about the situation and he apologized for the inconvenience that this caused and took ownership for what happened. He also informed me that he would give us a discount. I told him that I appreciated him and went back to eating. Sadly, this is not the reason why I'm giving this restaurant a bad review. When we arrived to the counter to check out, the same person that seated us was VERY rude. He apologized for what had happened and informed me that tried his best to get us seated. Which he did! But, then he reminded me that I didn't make reservation for my table. Honestly, I didn't know. If I knew that I had to make a reservation to get the same service as everyone in the restaurant, I would have called ahead. After he told me that, I apologized to him for being an inconvenience to him. He made it seem that it was my fault that this happened.

After we check out, my sister and my brother-in-law paid for their ticket, but as soon as they received the receipt for their food, my brother-in-law notices he was overcharged. My brother-in-law informed him that he was overcharged and the cashier gives them a 20. What he said as he was putting down the 20, completely shocked me. As he puts the 20 on the counter he said, "it was just 12 dollars anyways." (He was talking about the other entree he accidentally charged my brother-in-law for.) I'm sorry, but that is so INCREDIBLY rude and petty. He made it sound like we were trying to take advantage of the situation. Anyways, after that happens he doesn't continue to check the rest of our party, he walks off and leaves another person to finish checking out the rest of the party. I guess were being more of an inconvenience to him.

I'm not sure if I ever want to come back after the way we...