Olive Garden Italian Restaurant — Restaurant in Raleigh

I'm a pretty understanding patient person, but coming from a family in the restaurant industry I really need to share how absolutely terrible our lunch experience was today. We typically love Olive Garden, however after today I genuinely do not ever want to come back.

My coworker and I arrived for lunch this afternoon around 11:45am and were told by the host it would be a 5-10 min wait for a table. All good even though it's empty and very obvious there are plenty of tables and servers available, we decided to move to the bar for a faster lunch since we only have an hour typically for break.

We waited at the bar for close to 15 mins to receive any bit of service. Multiple employees walked by and did not once pick up on the very obvious clues we were eagerly waiting to order.

It was quite clear the bartender who was working had much more on his mind, because I had to grab ourselves our own menus from the bar and walk up to another worker to request someone come take our order. Even worse when a customer does finally speak up and employees act annoyed for you bothering them.

It looked to be the manager on duty that did finally come out and take our order. Great, I was okay with the mix up and was ready to move on with hopes of better service. My salad plate came out dirty and when I requested a new one it felt like I was being unreasonable. A clean wet plate was brought to me instead. Seems so simple, but when you are in the wrong would you not just wipe the plate to make sure everything is correct this time? In a situation like that normally you are quite apologetic and make haste to resolve the situation.

The whole environment today was not welcoming and/or helpful.

Food came out - great as always. I requested our checks as we got our food since I was aware of how long it was already taking to receive some attention. Eventually after waiting to receive them and quickly placing our cards out to be processed - we waited another 10+ mins for even just eye contact. The restaurant was not busy. There is absolutely no excuse for service that poor.

We felt entirely ignored. I have never been to a restaurant and felt more of a bother. I don't have one good thing I can say about the service today. Not one smile or apology or sincere act of care was expressed from any of the staff.

I really hope this can be a good reminder to your staff that the smallest bit of attention...

This was the worst experience I have had at Olive Garden. I ordered take out on 7/12/2025 for dinner and my dishes were Ravioli Carbonara, Steak Gorgonzola Alfredo, and the Meatball Parm appetizer. Paid about $60+ including tip. Got home open up the bag popped the lid on the dishes and to my surprise everything was lackluster. The 3 dishes I ordered all were in some type of sauce, but I couldn’t tell because there was little to no sauce. It was dried up as if the dishes had been sitting for hours. The pasta was stuck together and if you wanted to you could lift the pasta out in one large clump. The Steak Gorgonzola was pitiful the steak was not seasoned at all, and what little Alfredo sauce I did have needed salt. The Meatballs had good flavor, but where was the marinara sauce for the 4 dry meatballs. Little sauce maybe 3 tablespoons which is not a lot of sauce for a meatball dish. Let’s not get started on the salad. Huge salad almost a head of lettuce with 2 olives, 3 tomatoes and a few slivers of onions. Need I say more. The half way decent dish was the Ravioli Carbonara which I added chicken frittata to the top of it, and it needed the chicken. This dish was dry as well and all of my ravioli were stuck together. The sauce was non existent in any of these dishes. Yes I am getting it to go, but I want the same quality of food as if I was dining in. The food would have gotten sent back if was served like this to me and my wife while dining in. The dishes were way overpriced for what I received from this establishment. When was the last time anyone went to a fast food restaurant and they said the food was bland. Exactly my point made never or not often, so why is it that you guys have a chef or two and a whole professional kitchen, but your food is subpar. Go back to the drawing board. I won’t be back...

so if i could give a negative 5 i would service was so bad tonight may 9th 2025 dinner service we had a large party atleast more than 12 so one guest in our party requested a dish that suppose to have broccoli and shortly after the waitress came back and said they had no broccoli so the dish was made with no broccoli but another one in our party ordered the chicken margarita and had a whole side of broccoli ok so we let that pass but I did question it waitress didn't have a response so the night when on all orders were taken and submitted same time and food started coming out some later than others eventually about 5 guest did not have their main dish my self included I asked about it and the kitchen apparently held the ticket and never made no food everyone was done but us 5 mine was the last one a chicken carrbonera and the other 4 guess had their entrees I got up and went personally towards the waitress to cancel mine I didn't want it I don't know but the manager came and said she will take it off my bill and to still keep the entree my wife insisted and we kept it but 2 hrs to finally get a dish that's crazy and another 40 mins to finally pay because they didn't know how to handle a large group I don't know who was at fault waitresses or the kitchen but regardless if you have a party larger than 12 go somwhere else because the so call manager couldn't even come and apologize for her dysfunctional restaurant the last 5 entrees should have been removed from the bill and not just mine. first and last time I go to this location I've had large party's in Cary olive garden and never had a issue with service or food. So bottom line large partys...