Olive Garden Italian Restaurant — Restaurant in Marion

0 Stars if I could! We walked in and was told by the unfriendly hostess (didn’t get her name but she had multi color hair) she could seat us right then with no wait. My husband has had 2 back surgeries and needs a booth instead of the hard chairs, I asked for a booth. The unfriendly hostess then told me it would be a 10-15 minute wait for a booth. I said that was fine and went to the restroom. On my way back, I counted 8 open booths. At the restroom, there were 3 employees standing there blocking the door area for entrance. The men’s restroom had a leak. A brand new restaurant had a leak and there was water back there everywhere. All 3 of these employees were super nice and 1 might have even been a manager. On my way back up front, I noticed the empty booths and then noticed the one back wall is a complete booth AND WAS COMPLETELY EMPTY AS WELL! I get back up front and the same unfriendly hostess finally seats us in one of same empty booths on my way back to the restroom. The waitress finally makes her way to our table to place our coaster on it. We place our order and as she left, said she will be right back with our salad and breadsticks. The waitress comes back with our drinks and leaves again. Several minutes later, the waitress comes back again, with breadsticks. Then after several more minutes finally comes back again and says “the salad tongs are ALL being washed and I can’t bring the salad out until the tongs are ready”. Keep in mind, 3 other tables were seated after us and already had their salads. We left.

**NOTE - There might have been 10 tables with people actually sitting in them. The restaurant was NOT that busy. There is NO way should a brand new restaurant have “all the tongs being washed” at the same time. If so, buy more.

This is our 2nd time going to Olive Garden in Marion and the 2nd time we’ve had crappy service.

Save your money and DONOT eat here! Go across the street and eat at...

It's new, so there's room for improvement. Food was good, but the staff is still in need of a lot of training. The decor was very nice.

*Update 12/4/24 I really want to like this restaurant! However, the SEVERAL times I've gone back there's been something wrong. Either they are out of food (Tour of Italy at 3p), the 6oz steak (3x) and NO BREAD!! Most recently, I went to lunch 1p with my Hubby. We ordered the 6oz steak (it WAS available) and the Ravioli Carbonara; and on brand, they were out of the Zuppa Toscana (the only soup Hubby likes there)!!! Did I mention the 'NO BREAD' thing? Just kept hearing that 'they are in the oven'. We did eventually get our 4 pieces of bread to go with the cold, too thin alfredo boat... UGH After 40 minutes sitting, watching other tables that were seated after us receive their meals, we finally spoke up! The server was very nice, and kept apologizing that our food was not ready. I asked to speak to the manager as I had to leave having only an hour for lunch during the work day. The manager NEVER came to the table nor apologized, and although the server said the manager would remove my meal from the bill, I'm not sure why both meals weren't comp'ed as my husband did not eat either. We did finally get our meals, in a to-go bag. The steak, once reheated at home, was inedible dry garbage. Felt like...

Tried to have a date night on Sunday evening. I called ahead to reserve a table for 2. I was told they don’t do reservations, but they have an online wait list. I asked how long the wait would be. The hostess told me about 30 minutes. I went ahead and got on the online waitlist which confirmed the 25-30 minute wait time. My fiancé and I drove out there and waited over an hour, after checking in, for a table. We were told twice that it would only be a few minutes as bussers were cleaning off tables. After another 20 minutes or so, we were taken to a table. We sat down and waited another 10-15 minutes for our waiter to come by and ask for our drink order. My fiancé went to use the restroom, and our waiter still had not come by the time my fiancé got back to our table. I understand the restaurant is still new, and they are working out the kinks, but I was a server for over 6 years and have never seen anything like this. We were polite and let the hostess know we were going to be leaving. She offered us a business card, to which I politely declined and stated we were just going to get dinner elsewhere. We may try to go back again after they have had ample time to get staff hired and work through the kinks. I was a little disappointed. Having a 1 year old, we don’t have very many date nights and I was really looking forward to Olive Garden....