Olive Garden Italian Restaurant — Restaurant in Naperville

I rarely visit this location being that it is so old. We attended a musical at the Paramount Theater In Aurora. We saw The Little Shop of Horrors. So we decided to dine for dinner at your location. First and foremost I didn’t realize I was going to be dining at The Little Restaurant of Horrors. Once finding parking and which was basically at another restaurant because your lot is small that was awful. Upon entering the restaurant the hostess was not welcoming at all she was rude to everyone in your lobby. Shouting that she’s been there all day, she didn’t smile once. I was very uncomfortable. I also over heard that sections of the restaurant where closed. Why would you close sections if you are on a wait? After a small wait, we finally got sat. We ordered, my friend wasn’t offered soup or salad with his fettuccine Alfredo. The server just assumed we all wanted salad. We where a party of 3. I ordered salad with Ranch and my other 2 friends wanted Italian dressing. The server brought out a small bowl not enough for 3 people with Italian dressing. He came back out and I said I ordered mine with Ranch can I get the salad without Italian dressing on it? The server replied! “I’ll try” Finally I get my new salad, it was in a small soup bowl, it was very little lettuce and a ton of red onions. It was missing croutons tomatoes and carrots. It was basically like eating a bowl of red onions. I asked for butter for my plain bread sticks. The server said again “ I’ll try”. He said he had to get it from the kitchen? The other Olive Garden has pads of butter. Two bites into my salad that finally arrived our main course arrived. I had no time to eat my bowl of onions. My friend ordered water and was never offered a refill. He had to drink his wives water because the server never filled it. She gave him dirty looks throughout the experience. We found strays of un shaped pasta in my angel hair, it was gross. My friend ordered angel hair as well, she found fettuccine noodles in hers. The pastas didn’t have enough sauce either. Throughout the dinner we over heard the table next to us ordered salad. The server stated they were out of salad. We where never offered cheese for our salad or refills for the salad. Or in my case my bowl of red onions. Why advertise never ending salad and bread sticks? If your out of something then we should have been asked if we wanted soup! My friend was still thirsty with no water. The food wasn’t good. I stopped a member of your staff to send the manager over to our table. The staff sent over another server. I listed off all my complaints because she offered to help but yet she still wasn’t the manager she said the manager was busy. Finally Luis stops by. I again had to tell him all the issues we had. He offered us a 25 % discount and dessert. Why put a price on a customer’s experience? We never got Andes mints either. So I assume you ran out of those. I thought when your here your family. Well I didn’t feel like family. We where rushed, I guess the restaurant was closing. But we sat down at 8:15. I thought you closed at 10:00 pm? I’m sorry to say we won’t...

I rarely leave poor reviews because It could be a fluke thing...one bad experience does not mean it's a bad restaurant. However at this point I have to go with there is a trend...one that won't continue for me. My last experience concluded in the trifecta bad service bad food bad overall. I wish I had taken pictures. Dinner for 4 consisted of a tour of Italy, chicken Alfredo, spaghetti and a ziti and meatballs. Short wait to be seated around 30 minutes. The waitress attended the table seated after us before acknowledging us..bad form on them double seating her...I get it . After about 5 minutes she very grudgingly acknowledged us took a drink order and left. A few minutes later our drink order arrived..wrong. or most of it, I ordered a sangria so I expected it to be a few minutes. I did expect to have bread sticks on the table rather quickly but was also disappointed in that. Before my sangria arrived the waitress attempted to take our order but we had not all decided yet. Less than 2 minutes went by and she returned to take our order again so I just tossed out the old standby instead of trying something new. Still no bar drink still no bread sticks. After taking our order we didn't see her again until my sangria showed up at that point the other 3 needed refills and requested the correct drink but still didn't get it. After having been seated over 30 minutes the salad arrived and we were told fresh bread sticks would be our shortly. Shocking that we finished off the first bowl of salad before they showed up .. and then... The food. First off one of the things I appreciate about good service is giving the right food to the right person...didn't happen. But once everyone got their food it was a symphony of I asked for extra sauce and this is really dry the meatballs were on the wrong plate and the 2 big issues. The chicken Alfredo noodles were literally hard. They were baked to the plate from sitting under the warmer so long. And the final ick ..I took a bite of my lasagna and it was literally burnt. I flipped it over because I couldn't believe my taste buds. It was literally blackened sauce noodles cheese everything. The waitress came over she asked how everything was I gestured to the lasagna and she didn't appear to understand that it wasn't supposed to be burnt???? My husband explained to her because I was flabbergasted. She went oh ..Ill go get the manager. The manager came and we sent back both dishes so my daughter and I sat there for 20 minutes until the others were done eating when our orders came back out my daughter's fresh mine half the size and smothered in sauce which I was fine with I just wanted to leave at that point I was so disappointed. The manager was non chalant about the whole thing and it seemed it was more of a bother to her to have the meal corrected. So fox valley mall olive garden gets my first poor review in a...

This was just a poor experience but after reading through reviews of the past six months, it looks like this is the norm for this location.

Beginning from when we walked in, the greeters and others at the front desk were laughing and joking around and we're unable to locate menus. Fine, they seemed to be high school kids and it was a Wednesday evening so it may have been slow.

Once seated, we we're left waiting close to ten minutes to get drinks. Another ten to get the drinks at which point we called another server to take our appetizer and entree orders because our original server was not seen until that point.

We got our soup sides but as soon as we we're finished, our original server came through and removed the plates without asking if we wanted more. Two of our drinks came, one was just forgotten about completely and that person just convinced themselves they'd make the healthy decision (at an Olive Garden) of sticking to water instead of a soda. The appetizer never came.

We were brought our food eventually and it was fine, no complaints there. At this point, 7PM, the restaurant had gone from about eight seated tables and down to about three, including us, a party of three. They were not busy at all. We asked for the check and we're told to pay at the table with an interactive machine that displayed our bill and allowed a card to be swiped. We we're charged for the drink that never came. It was nice of them not to charge for then appetizer that was still making it's way from Narnia.

Still, we wanted to speak to the manager and asked for them at the front desk. They couldn't find him. An 'acting' manager came and listened to our complaining and tried to sort it out for us. It turns out it was the 'acting' manager who was the one that took the food part of our order and somehow the appetizer never went through.

Ultimately, they discounted the tab and got us our appetizer to go, so for that I give them credit. But people write reviews about the experience or service of a place and rate them on that and not on how well they fixed a screw up. A surgeon isn't graded based on how many times he's 'fixed' vasectomies that he previously botched.

This isn't going to stop me from coming to Olive Garden; I'm just going to avoid this one. And it seems many people have had the same list of complaints as we did that right, for a long time.

Something is up with this location and perhaps it needs...