Olive Garden Italian Restaurant — Restaurant in Parma

So, I don't usually write restaurant reviews, but after my bad experience last night (4-4-15), I felt compelled to write one! I used to go to the Olive Garden fairly often, back when I was a teen and in my early 20's (I'm 30 now). Before last night, it had been several years since I'd been there. Always have gone to the Parma Day Dr. location. In the past, I remember having good food, pretty good service, and never really any issues/problems. Big difference when I went there for dinner with my boyfriend last night! First of all, our waitress seemed SO unhappy to be there! Never once did I see even a hint of a smile cross her face (always a sour expression)....and she complained (loudly) to another waitress that she had to be there "Allllllllllllllll day tomorrow!" I understand that being a waitress is probably not the must fun/rewarding job....but if you can't at least fake some enthusiasm/have a positive attitude, then perhaps it's time to consider a new line of work?! It was funny because just as I was thinking it...my boyfriend said "She seems like the most unhappy person!" This may not seem like a big deal, but it gets worse. We got there around 8 P.M., and the restaurant was NOT BUSY at all, during the time we were there. There were only 3 or 4 other occupied tables in the entire restaurant. However, we still waited 40-45 minutes for our food to arrive! We were seriously starting to wonder if our order had been forgotten about! When our meals finally came, of course our waitress did not apologize for our long wait....did not even mention it. I know she didn't make the food, obviously, but a polite apology would have been nice. My boyfriend's fettucini alfredo was good/satisfactory. My food, on the other hand, was terrible!! That was probably the most disappointed I have EVER been with a restaurant "meal!" I ordered the Cucina Mia (build-your-own-pasta)....with vegetable penne, garlic-asiago sauce, and grilled chicken. There were only about 6 SMALL bite-sized pieces of chicken in the entire dish....hardly any sauce at all (most of the noodles were dry)....and...here is the kicker.... there was a handful of these black, hard, oddly-shaped objects in my pasta. I was like...."what the heck is this?! sure doesn't look like chicken to me!" So (against my better judgment), I tried one....and had my boyfriend try one of the "mystery chunks" also. And it was determined that they were BURNT POTATOES! Seriously, what the heck?! I certainly didn't order potatoes with my pasta...and these were awful, anyway. I am pretty sure there was some sort of issue with the chicken (maybe they overcooked it or something and had to throw some away...)....so the "chef" thought it would be a brilliant idea to toss in pieces of burnt potato to substitute for my lack of chicken! Again I was just thinking....SERIOUSLY?! I'm not an idiot--I know what chicken looks and tastes like! If the cook/"chef" had simply come out and explained to us that there was a problem with the chicken....and we would have to wait a little longer so they could adequately prepare my meal (I have been in this situation in restaurants before).....then I would have been happy/satisfied with that! I would rather wait longer for a decent meal, then be served an awful "substitute" for what I actually ordered! All of that being said, I know the Olive Garden isn't some fancy, upscale restaurant....but I was expecting to at least get a decent/good meal and good service. The best part of my visit was the Andes mints! I definitely will NOT...

We went to Olive Garden the week after Easter 2016 at the insistence of our 10 year old daughter. My husband and I wanted to go to a local Italian restaurant instead but all of Olive Garden's commercials obviously worked on my daughter. We arrived and were seated with no wait, but that was just fooling us as we had a long wait for our waiter to come and take our drink order. He brought the drinks to us in a reasonable amount of time but then we had our second wait for the waiter to return and take our meal order. We ordered the "Pick 3" appetizer, I had a build-your-own pasta and the soup, our kids ordered off the children's menu and my husband ordered the buy one-take one and opted to have the stuffed rigatoni in the restaurant and the waiter said he'd take the order for the take-one towards the end of the meal. The appetizer came quickly and with it, the infamous breadsticks (I recall in the past having the breadsticks before the appetizers but my memory could be wrong), but not my soup. Then we waited for the food to arrive. It was a bit of a long wait, and it was later in the evening, 8:30pm on a Sunday at this point, but we were busy talking so the time passed by fast enough. The dinner arrived (with my soup). The food was so disappointing. My son ordered mac-and-cheese with fries, he only ate the fries. My daughter ordered pasta with meat sauce and she only ate about a third of it. My tri-penne with primavera sauce and chicken meatballs was terrible. The meatballs were very odd tasting and the penne?! COMPLETELY overcooked. No chewing needed, soft enough to swallow whole, I didn't eat it. Thankfully the soup was good, the Chicken Gnocchi, and since it was unlimited refills on the soup, I figured I'd just eat that. My husband's stuffed rigatoni wasn't terrible, but it wasn't good either. I wish I could tell you the waiter arrived and we told him our concerns but he never showed back up. No refills on my soup, no take-one for my husband, no drink refills, nothing. At this point, it was only us and one other table of 4 people in that whole side of the restaurant. We utilized the pay at the table option (and really? I find that terribly tacky), did not leave a tip (only the second time in my 40 years that I've done that) and left. No worries about leaving an entire meal behind, none of us wanted to eat that awful food the following day. My husband e-mailed Olive Garden corporate offices that evening and got no response. Terrible food, terrible service. The only good thing that that my daughter will never ask to go back...

I came in expecting a substandard server for the night but boy, was I surprised. Our server's name is Phoenix but might be spelled differently, it just sounded like this. I we had 4 people in our group and I felt like pasta for the night, hence why we came.

To start, our server did not come greet us at the table too quickly but he could have been busy at the moment when we sat so I will give him the benefit of the doubt and let it slide. After greeting us, it was pretty much text book serving for anyplace we go. Started off with drinks, ordered our dinner, then check.

What set him apart from everyone else, everytime he came around to ask us for something, he brought us everything in one visit. True, the drinks took a little longer with he refilled everything in a timely manner. Most servers that served us, they do one thing at a time and then make about 2-3 trips before our need of certain things were fulfilled. He was by far not the fastest but he worked at a different pace than others that set him apart from the group along with getting the work done without us demanding it to be done.

I do want to mention, those tablet units that sit on the table, they make this restaurant kind of cheap and lazy. On many occasions, we used this unit to call our server and it really does not work. Maybe when the restaurant has a rush and the servers are all running by many different tables, they might catch the little red light and then stop by. But when it is kind of dead in there, it is useless until they are around the dining room and see the light physically.

The reason for a high rating is a week before I had went to a different location Olive garden and the server there was so bad that it left a super nasty taste in my mouth. So this server saved it for me on ever going to there again.

I really hope this guy stays as he is what many restaurants needs, a...