Olive Garden Italian Restaurant — Restaurant in Ocala

This is my second poor visit to this location. The manager the first time begged me to come back and give them a try again. I did. 1. the hostess was seating me to the right side. I mentioned how hot is was here. She smiled and proceeded to seat me at a table by the window directly in the sun. I tried to ask to move but she was walking away. 2. My server walked past me 3 times and then seemed to realize that I was her table (there were no other tables seated). She took my order quickly however her attention to detail was not great. My iced tea sat untouched at all. It was luke warm at best and though I asked for ice no ice came. My food was ok, I ate the chicken from the chicken marsala, the sauce on the past had a very odd very sweet taste. server walked by 3 more times, no offering of another drink, box, nothing (I had moved my plate to the other side of the table). I then put up my card to cash out. I do not like to use those machines at the table as I was considering desert and coffee. After 3 more passes and no questions I tried the machine. It would not take my card for some reason. I gave up. Server finally came back offered me a box that I declined and then tried the card herself. I shared that I had already done that. She took it and I cashed out. 3. Asked to speak with the manager on my way out. Manager was called, I waited a few minutes, decided to use the rest room (by the way, there are no hooks in the ladies room stalls to hang our purses on. they have to be put on the floor.....yuck!) Came out, still no manager. Spotted hostess, saw manager type exiting the kitchen, hostess called to him, he went back in. I left.

In addition, during the first 20 minutes of my visit I was regaled with a non stop conversation amongst the servers. I know one lady was just starting and hoping to make money, another had bills of $3500 a month and needed to make money, the young man standing there drinking coffee was 27 years old but the girls couldn't believe that and that a third female was answering her personal cell phone, trying to make an appointment but was very busy at work and would have to call back. All things that I did not...

BEWARE OF THESE THIEVES‼️‼️ I have posted this review all over for all of Ocala to see. Many have come forwards saying this has happened to them as a customer and an employee themselves. Last night me and my family went to the Olive Garden right next to the red lobster on 200. We were celebrating my little sister bday. It was a party of about 15. As we were leaving my mom realized she left her purse hanging on her chair. At this time Olive Garden keeps their doors locked so no new customers try coming in. Immediately after walking out my mom started banging on the door to tell management her purse is inside. They refused to let my mother in and said they would look for it at our table. They came back and said her purse was no where to be found. My mom then demanded she go inside and look for it that’s when one of the servers handed her her purse from the KITCHEN area. They stole $600 out of my mom’s wallets all within 3 minutes! There was a bus boy who was waiting next to our table till we left he was the last one next to our table and we even said goodbye to him. Next thing we know money is gone and bus boy said he wasn’t even near our table. Cops were called and everyone got patted down but this was several moments after giving the person whoever stole money plenty of time to hide it or sneak out back and place it in their vehicle. Olive Garden also has no cameras within the establishment not even outside either. Management claimed her team would never do this but inside was laughing thinking this whole scene was funny. The $600 was never found and someone was definitely lying. Just wanted to warn everyone about this Olive Garden. It’s desperate times right now, my mom only had that amount in her wallet bc my little sister gave her the cash for her car note and car insurance. Whoever stole that $600 was targeting us the entire time and is having a hay day with it. My mom was extremely upset and crying. I know for a fact I wouldn’t eat...

The one star is because the manager, Shelby, did come out and offer to rectify the service issue. At that point we were the ones that said no thank you, just to frustrated. We sat down and I sent a txt to my father, which sadly became our method of checking time. A table waiter passed by us multiple times helping other tables however nobody came to see us. A family was sat behind us about 5 minutes into our stay and the same tall (about 6'8) server went to help them getting them drinks and then taking their order. We still had seen no one and by this point we're discussing we had been there over 10 minutes and we're planning on leaving. Suddenly the same tall server, I believe his name was Colby or Cody, shows up at our table and offers to take our order. He obviously had heard us saying we were leaving, so I told him we weren't sure if we were going to stay considering we hadn't seen anyone yet. He said let me fix that so we decided to stay and we ordered our entire order right then. Now began the next wait. We watch people going by however nobody ever came back to our table. After we had been there over 20 minutes, we still had not received even a glass of water. Both of us had opened our silverware which had food still engraved on the silverware themselves, we gave these to Shelby the manager. We left. I appreciate that Shelby offered to make sure that our service was right if we would stay, but by that point we were both too aggravated to stay. Personally I love Olive garden. So we hopped in our car and are driving over to the villages where we know we can get good service. It's sad that we have to drive an extra 45 minutes away from the Olive garden close to be able to have good service. I guess you could say to have any service. I also realized we came in at 3:00, and I think our server just wanted to go, but that...