Olive Garden Italian Restaurant — Restaurant in Medford

My friends and I were here last Sunday (Oct 7th) around noon. The restaurant was quite busy and so we expected a few delays which would have been alright because my friends and I haven't seen each other in a while and that would have given us time to catch up before we ordered. However we were surprised when the bar attendant was ready to take our orders so quickly, which wasn't a problem, we just thought we had more time.

The ordering process was a bit difficult for a couple of us, one of my friends is a vegetarian and there turned out to be some misunderstandings and/or miscommunication and because of this, my vegetarian friend was given something that didn't remotely look like what she thought she was ordering. My friend was trying to order breaded and deep fried zucchini but was instead served mushy looking zucchini planks with a little breading sprinkled on top, it looked pretty disgusting actually and my friend sent it back.

Because of the big zucchini issue, we expected the server to look the other way while we shared our salad with our vegetarian friend but she did not. Instead, we were told about how we cannot share our salad with her without being charged a fee for an additional salad. We all felt that since the zucchini was such a disappointment that the server would overlook the salad sharing. Instead we were given what felt like a bit of a scolding and she tried to justify it by saying that management was cracking down on salad sharing. My friends and I were there to visit each other, not to get a lesson on restaurant policies.

We were served our meals a little later than we expected, but it was Sunday so we expected that could happen. However, shortly afterwards we needed refills on water, salad, breadsticks and a cocktail that I had ordered from the bar. We were seated right next to the bar, so I feel it shouldn't have taken long too get my cocktail (as well as the other items we ran low on) yet we didn't see our server again for nearly 30 minutes.

The server wasn't rude exactly she smiled a lot and had a tone of voice which sounded friendly but we were still made to feel more like an inconvenience rather than appreciated customers.

I don't know if we will be back or not. The food we ended up with was hot and delicious but the service left a pretty bad taste in all...

Our waitress, Amanda made our night!! We arrived to Olive Garden at 8pm on a Friday night. The place was packed! I had looked online, a head of time and saw that we could be added to the waitlist. There were 19 guests ahead of us and a 30 minute wait. When we arrived 30 minutes later we were immediately seated. Score! We waited to order and I was going to order the special for the stuffed pasta. I ordered the mushroom ravioli with garlic shrimp fritta on it. Our waitress, came back and apologized but they kitchen just informed her that they had run out of the garlic shrimp fritta. So I went with my second choice and said it was fine grilled chicken was ok. She then came back and said they messed up and put crispy chicken on it which was an upgrade but we wouldn't be responsible for it if I was okay with crispy chicken. I asked if they could change it to grilled chicken and she said that was fine and would have it out shortly and to pick a dessert on her because she felt bad we were waiting so long. We laughed it off. The restaurant was busy! The food came and our dinners were delicious! We ordered our complimentary dessert to go and she packaged up another order of my mushroom ravioli just because. Our waitress came back and apologized and said we just ran out of the dessert you picked! I had a second choice picked out and she brought that and two other desserts. The whole time we are laughing. This could have been a horrible experience but I think Amanda went above and beyond to...

It was around 90° outside and it was my best friend's birthday so I took her out to dinner while I was in town visiting. We were seated in the back. We were told that there was an air conditioning issue assuming that this was throughout the whole entire restaurant. We were the only ones sat in a random table in the back where it was sweltering and I had sweat dripping off my forehead throughout the whole dinner as I used a menu to fan my face. The manager sat in a nearby table staring straight at us doing nothing other than just staring at us the entire time we were there. So maybe he was watching his new employee but he looked a lot more hostile if anything, never once did he come over and ask how our experience was or ask how we were doing or ask if there was anything he could do to make my experience better. Having been a restaurant manager for over 20 something years, I would say the experience was quite low in the book. However, when we were getting up to leave we realized the restaurant was full of air conditioning everywhere else except for in the little part where we were sat. I have no idea what that was about and if that was just some kind of trip on the management's part but we probably won't be coming back which sucks because the waitress even though it was her first week there. She did a great job and she was special. Unfortunately she's working at...