Olive Garden Italian Restaurant — Restaurant in Springfield

I have never written a negative review, especially for one of my favorite restaurants, but this was one of the most disappointing service experiences I’ve ever had. We had a group of seven and called ahead at 3:30 to ask if a reservation was needed. We were told it wouldn’t be necessary and that the wait would likely be about 15 minutes around our arrival time of 5:30.

Three of us arrived at 5:25 to put our name on the list, and the rest of the party was there by 5:30. Despite being told our wait would be about 15 minutes, we waited 30 minutes and only after we checked in again were we seated.

Once seated, we ordered drinks, which took about 15 minutes to arrive. We didn’t mind the wait, given the size of our party and the specialty drinks. When our server took our order, five of us requested the unlimited soup, salad, and breadsticks, while the other two ordered pasta dishes.

Unfortunately, this is where the service really started to fall short. Our salad didn’t arrive until 30 minutes after we ordered, and the breadsticks took an additional 15 minutes. During our entire meal, our party of seven received only eight breadsticks total, despite politely asking twice for more. About an hour after ordering, we finally received our first bowls of soup and the two pasta dishes—still no additional breadsticks.

Meanwhile, we noticed two tables seated after us had been served and finished their meals before we received ours, and two other tables nearby consistently received refills on soup and breadsticks from the same server. By the two-hour mark, we’d received just two bowls of salad, eight breadsticks, and one bowl of soup per person.

As we were ready to leave, we requested additional breadsticks and soup to go. The server returned with only a single bag containing three breadsticks. When I asked if we could receive a bit more, the server appeared visibly annoyed, but eventually brought more as we were paying the bill.

To end the experience, our server leaned across us to clear dishes as we were gathering our things, despite having other tables that were unoccupied and in need of clearing. As we stood up to leave, the server stopped clearing our table and walked away, leaving it partially cleared.

I have visited this restaurant four times in the past two months and have always experienced exceptional service. It was a Wednesday night at 5:30, and the restaurant wasn’t particularly busy. While tables around us seemed to receive the usual, caring service, our table was handled in a manner that felt dismissive and disrespectful. I hope this was a one-time issue, but this experience was disappointing and left our entire group feeling...

My husband and I just had a terrible experience at Olive Garden. We came in at 8 pm Friday 10/21 for dinner. My husband ordered a create your own with ziti noodles (which they were out of) and I ordered shrimp scampi. Our server brought us our drinks and salad. When the food was delivered, our drinks were empty, but we never saw our sever again. When the shrimp scampi arrived it was nothing like what I had expected. The tomatoes and asparagus were raw and garlic was used as a garnish, topping the entire dish. There were large uncooked garlic chunks over the entirety of the top and the smell alone turned my stomach. I took one bite and had to spit it out. ( Keep in mind, garlic is my favorite ingredient to cook with and this was downright disgusting) I was waiting for the server to come back to us or any of her tables and never saw her. My husband finished eating and at that point we were waiting on the check. After waiting 40 minutes with no server, we pulled aside someone else to ask where our server was. I explained the situation with the pasta and the lady informed us she would talk to our server. A manager (never our server) ended up coming over and asked us what was wrong with the dish. I said it was raw and inedible. I also informed her of our frustrations with an absent server, no drinks, and not a single check in from anyone. The manager offered to remake the dish but at that point we had already waited so long that we just wanted to leave. The manager said that our server would bring by drinks to go for us and she would take my meal off of our ticket. The manager brought back the ticket but no drinks were ever delivered by our server. In fact, we did not see the server past the point of our food being handed to us. I know it was later in the evening so end of shift chores start to become something that is important to the servers, but completely abandoning the guests is ridiculous. Quite frankly, we paid for my husbands meal but since our once a month date night was ruined it should have been taken care of. I am appalled by the customer service the servers and management have displayed this evening and shocked that the best the management could do was remake the food after we sat there waiting for someone for so long. I understand it is hard to find quality staff to train...

I just moved to springfield and this is the worst Olive garden I have ever been to in my life. We started out waiting about 5 minutes for our server to introduce herself and then we ordered drinks and an unlimited alfredo bowl for the bread sticks. Keep that word in mind UNLIMITED. We then waited 15 minutes for the drinks and then another 15 minutes for the salad and the bread to which we had to ask now 30 minutes in “where’s the alfredo bowl” she claimed she had it with her and she would be right back. It was then another 25 minutes before it got out. So we are now an hour in and we haven’t gotten a refill on any drinks and all of the plates for our appetizers whether it was the soup or the alfredo bowl came out so hot that it burned to the touch due to being under the heat lamp. We then ate the alfredo and the bread and asked for more. The next bowl of alfredo was so hot and left under the lamp for so long it started to create a film on top. We have now been here for over an hour and a half and still no food or refills. Our food finally came and it was completely dry due to being under the lamp and we called for the manager and he claimed to comp the whole meal. We then ask for boxes so we could take out crusty noodles and cheese home and he said okay i’ll be back. We then watched the kiosk light up and the manager had the audacity to come back with a full bill and said we had to pay because we were taking it home. We then pushed the bowls aside and said nope we’re good then. He then said you sure? and we said yes instantly. We then checked the kiosk and the server originally double rang us for drinks and the UNLIMITED alfredo sauce that we only got once. On top of all of this the table next to us had the same problems and spoke to the manager regarding the same things. This is clearly a reoccurring issue. This is the worst place in springfield for food but the best if you want to waste two hours of your life! also the server lied to us multiple times in regards to what she was doing. She told us it took 30+ minutes per refill becuase she was scraping the ice from the bottom! it’s...