Olive Garden Italian Restaurant — Restaurant in Tallahassee

Let me start off by saying it was not the servers fault. It was his 1st day on the floor by himself. He had 4 tables and not a soul in sight if he needed help. He also didn't know the menu. He should not have been set up for failure like he was. This was my bday dinner with my family. He took everyone's order, we waited maybe 30 minutes, and he brought out everyone's plate, but mine. He apologized and went back to the kitchen for help. Apparently, he was told my order doesn't get preference, and I would have to wait for my food behind all the other tables. I've worked in restaurants my entire life. Owned my own restaurant, been GM, Assistant GM, Lead, Cook, and a Server. When he said that to me, I was puzzled. Never. Never ever should a person sit while their table eats because of a server error. You damn right, I asked for the manager. Who went to the kitchen, expedited my order, and he brought it out to me in less than 15 minutes. I told him what was told to me. He acted appalled, apologized and comped my meal. Train your people correctly. And don't be so quick to throw them to the wolves. Also found out that had we left a tip on the card, he wouldn't have received it. A different server would. Considering she was no where in sight for the 2 hours we were there, $0. So we tipped him $25 cash in his hand. He teared up. My advice to him was to triple check everything. If you don't know the answer, ask. If it doesn't sound right, ask someone higher. Slow down and breath. Olive Garden, do better. These are humans. If I hadn't been that kid 30 years ago, and understood what he was going thru, it could have been a bad...

My parents had a very unfortunate experience at this Olive Garden location - specifically with server Naomi. As backstory, my parents have been going to Olive Garden for over 27 years for outings. It's always a meaningful experience for them. They sit down, get good service, and share an enjoyable meal with each other. They are such big fans of Olive Garden that they have regular orders - some of which are now no longer even on the menu. They enjoy the unlimited soup, salad, and breadsticks, and even though it's unlimited, they never ask for anything additional. They share exactly one soup, one salad, and have 1, maybe 2, breadsticks each. It's the perfect amount when they share. Unfortunately, this experience was unlike any other. My parents paid for their usual soup and salad, however, server Naomi came to the table and told them they couldn't share the soup with each other. This is not acceptable since they have already bought the soup. At that point, it should be up to them what they do with their soup - whether they want to share the soup, throw it away, take it home - all of that should be up to my parents. Naomi threatened that if she saw them sharing again, she would add a $4.99 fee to the order. A restaurant outing should be encouraging family time and sharing. If the $5 fee was conveyed in a normal tone, it would be more understandable, but because of the rude and threatening tone Naomi used, my always cheerful mom was upset. A restaurant chain as big as Olive Garden should hire workers who know how to talk to and care for their customers, but Naomi was the...

My friends and I tried the endless pasta deal for our first time at Olive garden. We were pretty disappointed. The pasta was super good but unfortunately the way they structured the deal was somewhat underhanded and left is with a bad taste. Getting a "endless topping" on your pasta costs $5. Except it's not endles like the menu says. You get a few peices of your choice of protein and then you have to pay another $5 for the next bowl. The bowls get smaller and smaller every time you order so after your first plate of pasta your $5 of protein is 3 small slices of chicken. It's not a huge deal but it feels weird when a large established chain like olive garden tries to nickel and dime you on a promotion.

The pasta bowls getting much smaller wouldn't be a huge deal because you can just order more but they only brought out the bowls every 30 minutes after you flag down your server. I ended up having to leave, not because I was full but because we had been there for over 2.5 hours and didn't want to wait another 30 min for a saucer of noodles.

The food was very good though.

I don't think I'll go back to an olive garden. When we paid the tab the waitress charged us all wrong and it took a while to sort out. I believe my friends $14.99 pasta came out to $43 until he asked about it several times. My tabb wasn't as bad but there were...