Olive Garden Italian Restaurant — Restaurant in Phoenix

First I love Olive Garden and that’s why it pains me to report a bad location in this franchise. If you love Olive Garden then skip this location because after you will never go to any location again.

Got there 3:00 pm Sunday. Place was kind of empty. Not totally empty but light on patrons. Even with this being said that sat us in a booth at the bar.

The waitress/bartender was totally not interested in doing her job. Had to call her over TWICE to get us stuff and mind you she was staring at a book 15 feet away. Yes we were the only ones in the bar area.

She was totally disinterested in taking our order. Acted like it was a big thing to help us.

The manager and the floor manager got a drink and chilled with her at the bar all the while ignoring us.

I eventually stood up and starred at him and he came over. I asked if he was the manager and he said yes. I then told him “shame on you for not giving and concern about his job” The waitress came by and dropped of the drink I asked for in the same uncaring way she acted the whole time.

I told him the food (lasagna) was extremely salty and I’ve had it before and it was never that bad. My friend said anything with the marinara on his food was the same. His response? “Well a lot of people order it!” Huh? He asked if I wanted to take it home and I said no it’s not going to get unsalty on the trip home. He asked if I wanted something else and I asked him if he had anything that was not overly salted. He shrugged his shoulders and said no.

He took it off my bill and I paid for it.

So shame on whomever owns this location. You’ve given up and your making Olive Garden look bad.

Now the real tragedy? My corporate headquarters is across the street. I’m the President. 46 people strong there. We will just go to your neighbors.. red lobster, Outback, longhorn steakhouse, and many more literally across the street.

Fire this GM. Fire that girl. Raise your standards back to what people expect out of Olive Garden. Taste your food and if it’s not right don’t dish it to the customers. Have a little pride!

Oh last thing, as we were walking out we noticed about 15 people in front with no reception to be found and a couple of those incoming customers started walking around looking for her. Their nightmare is just begun but...

I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed Olive Garden.

Ever since I was a kid, OG was the place to go when you had something to celebrate. Now that I have my own money, it’s tough picking a place to go out & drop $50+ on a meal. But unfortunately a necessary evil.

The last 10 times at least I have visited an OG, I have been STICKER SHOCKED at the increases in prices. I remember when $13 pasta seemed outrages & now they’re charging $24.99 for some of their “specialty” items, absurd to say the least. But I understand they’re not the only chain to do this.

Well somehow or another, I keep getting convinced to give them another shot. Today i went with a gift card in hand & I went & tried their new Calabrian Steak & Shrimp Bucatini. ($24.99) I asked the waiter for their recommendation & they said “best thing on the menu” ok sure. Pasta, steak, shrimp, can’t mess that up right?

What I got was a joke. Sure it had some steak shrimp & pasta, but the sauce I got was LAUGHABLE. I’m not even Italian & I cringed. If I would’ve paid $10 for a frozen microwave meal, & it happened to come with that sauce I would’ve tossed it without a second thought. Even at $25 a serving, I had 2 bites before calling it a day. I didn’t even box it up to take it home as leftovers.

Only thing saving OG from a 1 star review is that their employees often visited our table & asked if everything was okay. I didn’t wanna say their dish tasted like expired frozen microwave Chef Boyardee & make a scene, especially since I know I was the one who ordered the new meal. But wow, I’m just absolutely & totally disappointed? Disgusted? Just outright done I think with this chain. Thank god for their breadsticks or I would’ve left hungrier than when I arrived.

$70+ after tip for a party of 2. No drinks. Last time, this time I think I mean it.

TLDR Olive Garden serves mediocre food at ridiculous price points. Every time I visit an Olive Garden I find myself with a worse & worse impression. I will not be spending $70+...

I’m really confused why but our waitress was super rude and passive aggressive to us for the entire dinner from the moment we sat down.

I think we’ve all had a waiter who was slow to refill the waters before, which was the case for us tonight, but I have never had a waiter be straight up rude until tonight. I don’t know how we offended her but we just wanted to have a nice family dinner out.

To elaborate, the waitress took forever to check on us throughout the dinner, and every time we asked her for anything she just walked away to get it without even a word of acknowledgment, or seeing if we needed anything else. Then she would plop what we asked for down on the table with a sort of angry look, again without any kind of acknowledgment, and go away. It was really passive aggressive and bizarre.

She forgot the “bottomless” sauce we ordered to go with the breadsticks, and after 15 minutes of us waiting for her, we had to get up and ask for help from another employee. Our waitress then finally came out with a tiny plate of sauce 20 minutes after bringing the breadsticks, after they were already cold, and she left the sauce on the table super passive aggressively without saying a word and ran off. You would think she would apologize for forgetting something but didn’t even acknowledge it. She did the same thing with drink refills, and anything else we asked for. We were really confused by her behavior. Just really rude and passive aggressive towards our family for the entire dinner.

The manager took notice and came and apologized, admitting she already knew the employee was having an off day all day. I don’t know why the manager allowed her to continue working that day and take it out on customers just looking for a nice dinner. To make up for the bad experience, the manager offered us… dinner mints. Lol. Pretty weird and...