Olive Garden Italian Restaurant — Restaurant in Pensacola

Revisited Olive Garden in Pensacola after a few years of absence (Feb 2024): Budget $20-30 per person. Their family style salad is plentiful & are quite generous with the fresh grated Parmesan cheese on everything. That said, our waiter Mark seemed to be connected well with other staff members, especially the kitchen staff.

4 of us dined in & ordered 4 takeout for rest of family to be treated that couldn't join us. All orders were correct. They were quite busy when we arrived, but got seated within 15 minutes. Let me say in general, all food portions are HUGE! Either share or take home for another meal. If you want extra breadsticks to take home, order a refill of them before boxing up left overs or you have to pay for extra order of breadsticks. All of the various pastas were done to perfection.

We ordered: Chicken & Shrimp Carboara: delicious. The creamy sauce was lighter than the thick white Alfredo, but with bacon. Yum

Minestrone soup & salad: nothing special. If you like minestrone, you will enjoy it.

Shrimp Scampi (x2): two of us wanted more garlic flavor, so we opted on Scampi. It too was delicious, but my family likes more garlic & crushed peppers. The asparagus pieces were perfectly done. Not limp & mushy, but flavorful with a crunch.

Seafood Fettuccine Alfredo (x2): The Fettuccine was good & creamy. Don't expect spices or extra garlic flavor unless you ask for it.

Plain Fettuccini Alfredo: should please most children & adults who just want noodles with a creamy Alfredo sauce. No large pieces of garlic this time around.

Five Cheese Ziti: yum. This is for the person who can't decide a red sauce or creamy cheese sauce. You get the red sauce with 5 different cheeses on penne noodle.

Shrimp Fritto Misto (appetiser): not our favorite. We tried it for the first time. In our opinion, order something else; not worth the price. Shrimp was good, but the battered fried onions & peppers were left behind. They were too greesy. No one wanted them. Bland batter which was over powered by the oily mess. Could use spicing up.

Overall, our bill with only 3 non-alcoholic beverages came to $167 +tip made it $200 for the night. Would have been cheaper had I bought the ingredients & made it myself, but the ambience & convenience along with the varied menu to appease everyone's tastes made up for it in dining out. Can't do this too often.

Original review several years ago: Gluten free pasta was gummy. Garlic Alfredo is just a bland afredo sauce with large whole cloves of roasted garlic. If you like eating large roasted garlic, then you might like it. If you want garlic flavored alfredo, it...

My wife & I chose to have a nice evening out. After our long day, we changed clothes, put on something nice, and headed to Olive Garden. We had several choices, but we chose Olive Garden because we wanted a nice grown-up experience. When we arrived, we were seated immediately. The problem was that the area around the table was very cold...colder than the areas we walked through to get to it. We requested to be re-seated. After a brief wait, they took care of it. Our waitress was Emmi H. She was fabulous! Make sure you keep her! The problem we encountered was the little screens on the tables. When we walked into the dining area, the atmosphere was ruined by the dozens of flashing screens all over the room. The room lighting is appropriate for an adult dining experience. The screens are bright, flashing, and garish. The place might as well have been littered with TVs with sports games playing. The first thing I did when sitting down was put ours on the floor facing the wall. There were still several in sight flashing their advertisements, etc. It was frustrating. Then came the big issue. When it came time for the bill, we didn't get one. Emmi grabbed the screen off the floor and pointed it at my face. I let her know I didn't want to interact with the screen, so she put my card in, then she let me know I needed to slide the icon on the screen to select the tip amount. I asked her why I couldn't have a regular paper bill from the restaurant and fill it out in private like most grown-up restaurants. She said it is an option, but that she gets penalized if she does that for a customer. She literally told me that if she provides what I consider quality customer service, she gets penalized. This is not a big chain department store where half the customers are still wearing their pajamas. This is a nice restaurant. Self check-out doesn't belong there. The next time my wife and I get dressed to go to dinner, it won't be at...

We visited Olive Garden on Christmas Eve, which I realize was probably our first mistake, but it was our son’s birthday, and for whatever reason, he wanted Olive Garden. We don’t expect much from this place—it’s essentially a “quasi-Italian Chili’s”—but it’s usually reliable for decent food and service at a steep price. Unfortunately, this visit was a disaster from start to finish.

I joined the waitlist ahead of time, hoping it would make what I assumed to be one of the worst dining-out days of the year a little smoother. However, when we arrived, they informed us that it would still be a 20-minute wait, despite the app showing only one party ahead of us. When I asked for clarification, they casually mentioned, “Oh, the waitlist doesn’t actually work; we’re just now adding you.” Not great, but fine—we waited about 30 minutes and were seated.

Our waitress took our drink and food orders at the same time, which seemed efficient—until we noticed every table around us receiving their drinks and food while we were still waiting. It took 20 minutes just to get sodas and over two hours to receive our meals. When our food finally arrived, the waitress brought boxes with it and explained how to pay because they were closing early for Christmas Eve. We barely had time to eat before we felt rushed out the door.

To top it off, we ordered a kid’s spaghetti for one of our children and even held up the kid’s menu to show her, yet she still brought an adult portion and charged us accordingly.

Overall, this was a frustrating experience, even by Olive Garden standards. I understand it was a busy night, but the poor communication, long wait times, and mistakes were unacceptable. Sadly, I don’t think...