Olive Garden Italian Restaurant — Restaurant in Mesa

The food was great, as always, but some of the floor staff need some serious work as of lately.

Let me preface by saying I "grew up" in the service industry (I was the manager's kid getting dragged into staff meetings bright and early on weekend mornings) so I know a little patience and understanding is required, especially with larger parties.

We're a big family and come here often for family events, as we did on Sunday afternoon. We usually don't have to wait more than an hour for a table but we only had 16 people this time (usually between 20-25), so I was optimistic when the hostess gave us a wait time of only 20-30 minutes. Unfortunately we wound up having to wait over an hour to be seated. After the 40 minute mark, we were told they were waiting for "one more table to clear" at least 3 times over the next 30 minutes.

Everything else went fine until we were ready to leave and it took an act of congress to get our to-go containers. I had asked our waitress for my daughter's to-go cup 3 times and she still forgot. And once the bill was paid she completely ignored me all together, even walking right passed me, with my hand up, like I was invisible. I finally had to flag down a random waitress from another section, who was kind enough to quickly grab a cup and apologized for the wait.

After all of that, the biggest kicker wasn't that we weren't comped for waiting over twice as long as we were quoted to be seated (I was grumpy about that but whatever), or the fact that my husband and I were billed for his nephews playing with the tablet (his nephews weren't on our bill, and the boys AND the tablet were all the way at the other end of the table) the biggest wtf moment was when we brought up the discrepancy to our waitress and she tried to argue with us! Yeah, I don't doubt one bit that they played with it, but we weren't in charge of them and we weren't paying for their food, so we sure as heck weren't paying for their games either!

We got to the restaurant at about 12:30 and didn't leave until almost 4pm. That was the most frustrating 3 hours of an event that was supposed to...

On 07/04/2025, we arrived as a party of 3 for Wife’s birthday dinner and were originally told 10-15 minutes for a table, being one of our party members we were the only people when we had arrived. However, while waiting, two large parties arrived and we were passed over by both larger groups, including one appearing to be family members of the hostess, who made a point to hug everyone in one particular party, and we were not seated until we highlighted that we were only ones in the lobby before the large groups had showed up and were still waiting on a table of 3, when the hostess seated what was clearly her family ahead of us. This triggered the hostess to finally seat us with a half ass apology from the hostess, knowing she got caught red handed. We were finally seated but got what had to be the most untrained server in our years of visiting this specific location, as we alerted him to one of our guests being a diabetic and had brought sweet tea in place of regular tea (failed to provide straws when delivering drink order), had forgotten about our appetizers, brought out what was supposed to be endless salad but no breadsticks (also supposed to be endless) and had to be reminded (3) separate times before we finally got what could have been concrete garlic sprinkled parking slabs, indicating they clearly sat under a heat lamp for quite some time. The final insult came when it came to have the staff sing happy birthday (being the server was told when placing the drink order), 1 adjacent table was treated to the birthday tradition, but wife was completely skipped over. As a frequent visitor of this specific location, this was the absolute worst experience we have ever had and was so bad, that if I had known the service from the hostess to the server was going to be so horribly dismal, I would frankly started to saw a penny in half for the...

My husband and I have wanted to come here twice recently. Both times, we were met with the worst service possible. This most recent time, we walked in and were told it would be a 5 minute wait. No problem. We sat in the back next to a manager interviewing two people. We saw 4-5 tables get sat after us. All of which were tended to immediately. We sat there for 15 minutes without any sort of greeting, nothing. We watched all these other tables get their drinks and appetizers. Everything. Meanwhile, the manager sitting right next to us is working on work books with the two. They are talking about situations that are important to tend to. While we are sitting right next to them, a real-life situation needs to be addressed.

Finally, my husband waves a server over and says hey we've been here awhile now." Can we get some service, please ? We are met with a huff and puff breath, an eye roll, and an excuse. Followed by - okay, what do you want ? And you need to order it all right now! At this point, we are absolutely baffled. We even said, " Wow, the manager is sitting right there, completely ignoring us! " allowing this kind of service.

We decided to just leave. Basically, we were told to " F OFF." All we did was ask for service after waiting and watching everyone else having no problem. It's so weird to go to dinner and feel like you're just an inconvenience? Sorry for existing! We didn't even make a fuss. We should have, so I am now. We ended up going to Red Lobster across the street. It was more expensive, but we were so happy to be treated like decent human beings there. 🥹 all we wanted was to enjoy dinner together, and we've been seeing the olive garden commercials. We were really looking forward to it.

We are extremely...