Olive Garden Italian Restaurant — Restaurant in South Burlington

I'll first start off by saying our first time at Olive garden ever was interesting. Although the food was great I can't say the same about all employees. While waiting for our table to become available we were told to wait around the restaurant and they would call us when our table was ready we were approached by a server name Jason who accused us of trying to steal his bike for taking a picture of the unicorn Bell he had on his bike for my daughter for my daughter as she loves unicorns and I thought it was cute. Unknowingly to Jason I own a major company that serves most of New England. I thought moment we felt belittled and embarrassed and almost decided to leave when my husband walked back to the vehicle to leave where there was a bus boy named Abu. That convinced him to stay just by his conversation and personality. Which I can't say that about him when we went into the restaurant we felt uncomfortable as because everybody was staring at us as if we were thieves so my husband decided to call Abu back to our table which did take a few attempts even asking Jason to call him back to our table we left him a large tip and thank him for his great customer service. While we waited our table a few minutes before I drinks a manager approached us and offered to bring us our drinks faster which made us feel more uncomfortable like they were trying to make up for Jason but then Beth our server approached us as we talk to her she informed us that Abdul was a new employee and he had helped them out tremendously. That's when I decided to give him another tip because I was so impressed with his customer service we were approached not once but almost three times by multiple managers in the store asking how our service was we told him it was okay. We noticed a table beside us with a young family and offered to pay anonymously for their meal then we explain to the staff about the company we own and how our first experience at the store was they thanked us up and down we weren't looking for thanks we were just looking to be treated like everyday people and a normal customer. We also decided to leave our waitress a nice tip as she was very polite and couldn't believe what we had done and apologized for Jason's actions as she has seen it with her own eyes. Some people are just very hard working and I hope people don't judge a book by their cover just because you're not always dressed the best doesn't mean someone doesn't have money or make a decent living we hope the employees complement our business and we will definitely return to the restaurant and hope to get treated better from Jason and never be accused of that again I'm attaching a picture of. The bell on Jason Fuji bike anyone with a sense of humor would wonder why there is a unicorn bell attached to the bike. If not for this experience i would give Olive Garden a 5 star as I've never been approached by someone with such animosity while representing a franchise over a bike. I hope. He hides his bike if he doesn't want attention brought to it instead of attaching it to the apple tree i the middle of the parking lot. Other then that shout out to Beth and Abu for Great...

One of the nicest Olive Gardens I've ever been to. Staff was pleasant, polite, and helpful and good customer service is always worth a star on its own. The food was next, generally the food "is what it is" at these large chains, but this particular OG takes their food seriously and I appreciated that. The fried ravioli and mozzarella sticks we got for the appetizers were nice and crisp without being greasy. We got a dish of marinara for the bread sticks and it tasted like fresh marinara - lightly seasoned and letting the tomatoes speak for the flavor. As near perfect in every way as one can get when it isn't my great grandma in the kitchen with her garden ripe tomatoes, you know?

While my rating is closer to a 4.5 stars, it was very good and worth it.

The salad was well dressed, no wilty lettuce anywhere - nice and crisp. The chicken and gnocchi soup was very good - not salty, just right creaminess, gnocchi tender and tasty. Chicken is good in it too, I've had this where the chicken can get a little rubbery and it was not this time.

The spaghetti and meatballs were good. The meatballs weren't dense at all. The chicken marsala was slightly disappointing for me personally as the sauce tasted more heavily of wine than I'm used to. I also wished for more mushrooms in it since it's described as a mushroom and wine sauce. That said, it was flavorful and the chicken was tender enough to cut with a fork. The side of pasta I got with Alfredo sauce but the pasta didn't have enough sauce.

My husband got pasta with marinara and somehow the marinara that we got for dipping the bread sticks in was WAY better. Sadly, from appetizer to meal the sauce got spicy and lost all the fresh tomato flavor. I'm not sure what happened, but that was a bit sad since I had crazy high hopes for it after the bread sticks marinara.

I'm keeping this as a well earned 5 star since this is easily the best meal I've ever had at an Olive Garden. Corporate should stop by this restaurant to check out what they are doing so right here in hopes of helping their other restaurants out. Customer service is nearly impeccable and the chefs clearly care about their work here. Also we saw the manager out in the restaurant checking with people and helping with clean up. Love to see a manager involved with all the details.

I have a new high point to compare every Olive Garden to from...

Last night I went to Olive Garden with my Fiancé, to celebrate his promotion. Our server was Melanie. We ordered endless soup, and endless dip to go with the endless breadsticks, along with entrées. The server brought out our first bowls of soup, breadsticks, dip and our entrées. After that, she seemingly ignored our existence. We were nothing but polite this entire time. Even when we used the table device to "call server", we weren't acknowledged for at least 20+ minutes, even though she made sure to tend to the tables around us, while simultaneously ignoring our flashing red table device (flashes when you hit "call server"). We organized our used dishes in a neat pile on the edge of the table, hoping MAYBE she will at least grab those for us and ask us if we would like more bread sticks or soup. Its not even busy at this point and me and fiancé are to the point where we just want to leave,, the service was THAT bad. We FINALLY get more breadsticks and ask her to bring us an extra order of them, so we don't have to endure another 20+ minute wait. We didn't even bother asking for more soup or sauce. We were just sick of the experience. She comes back with the extra order of breadsticks and it's TWO BREADSTICKS. 🤣 at this point, the dipping sauce is ice cold. We just decide to cut our losses and package up the rest of our food to go.

To our surprise, we told the manager about the situation and he handled it very well. Got us a whole container of sauce to go, and an entire extra container of breadsticks.

In short, if you get the server Melanie, I highly advise against ordering anything endless. She will pick and choose who she would like to attend to, instead of actually doing her job.

Thank you for ruining what should've been (and usually is) a very good...