Olive Garden Italian Restaurant — Restaurant in Town of Watertown

It has been three years since I have eaten at Olive garden, we were stationed overseas and I was really looking forward to having my old favorite restaurant again. There was 4 of us, two adults and one child and a baby. The restaurant was busy for 2pm on a Sunday...we were greeted and seated pretty quickly. Our server was young and attentive, her hair was not very professional-a caucasian girl with boxer braids seems more appropriate for the gym. Still she was knowledgeable about the menu and had no issue getting our kids food order in with our drinks so their food came out quick and didnt leave them waiting. As a mother of a gamer 8 year old boy its pretty frustrating when the place has games on the tables tablet flashing but its unclear what is free and whats not. So we just leave it alone until its time to pay. My husband and I ordered the specials...he got the lobster ravioli since he saw the commercial and I got the chicken tortellini al forno. This came with unlimited salad and breadsticks. The kids food came out about the same time as the salad and breadsticks (awesome).The breadsticks were soft and tasted fresh but incredibly over salted. The salad was good but not as good as I remember. It was like they used the bottom of the crouton bag, the salad tasted crumbly...and not mixed properly before being brought to the table. My sons portion of chicken strips, spaghetti and fries was huge and he was very happy. My daughter (1.5yrs) was not really happy with her mac and cheese (also a really large portion)...now when I saw lege portions for the kids lol when our plates finally did come out we have these little plates of pasta we are paying upwards $12-$16 for and my sons plate has way more food—we laughed about it but when his costs $4.99 and our costs that much? My husband isnt hard to please he at all his up quickly...no complaints. My plate of tortellini presented well. It had a nice aroma, but the portion seemed small. Only like 7-8 tortellini and 3-4 pcs of chicken. Now when I order ‘al forno’ I expect it to be covered in cheese alot of it and placed under the broiler until the cheese is bubbly and nice. Real al forno pasta has to sit and cool after you peel the cheesy top off...my cheesy layer was small and didnt cover the pasta or sauce. It looked microwaved not broiled, and sadly my sauce was kind of cold. The taste was like a red vodka sauce made with the lowest possible quality ingredients you could find, then frozen...improperly microwaved and dumped on a plate. A slight foul dairy taste to it. I paid for that and I regretted it. Here’s whats really adorable. I decided I wanted a desert. I asked our server what she suggested...she said the pumpkin cheesecake. I am a avid fan of cheesecake but hate pumpkin flavored things. When i asked about normal plain cheesecake I was told they only have peppermint or strawberry (okay?)...I’ll try strawberry. A few minutes later a nice lady who was not my server brought me a plain piece of cheesecake and said she apologized that the strawberry was seasonal and they didnt have it anymore. Instead of asking if I wanted this plain cheesecake or something else simply walked away. At this point I’ve lost alot of hope for this place, lol. Buttt I have cheesecake! i love cheesecake—man, I wanted to love this cheesecake. Just looking at it the actual slice of cheesecake it appeared to be relieved to finally be out of the freezer. It was sweating or glistening, not a normal trait of cheesecake. It likely hadn’t been covered, you know there is semi-hard gelatinous film that will form on the top of cheesecake like a rough crust when its not covered in the fridge...my fork struggled to get through that top layer leaving indentions. Sad really. I went at it from a new angle, horizontally and just removed that layer and went straight for the center which was surprisingly good! The crust was a little mushy.

Moral of the story. Huge let down. Expensive sad experience. Not a manager in sight checking with tables...will not return....

My wife and I just moved back to the US from Italy. I only went to an Olive Garden once when I was a child. So I thought it would be nice for us to go there and have some Italian food.

The good.. The restaurant looks very nice and was presentable. The service was incredible we were seated almost immediately and our waitress was prompt and made sure we have everything that we wanted. We spend about a $100 ordered a variety of items from the menu And both alcoholic and non alcoholic drinks. The drinks were quite nice a little too sweet but they had just the right amount of alcohol not too much and not too little.

The bad... 1st and foremost the server did not know what frizzante aqua was... Carbonated water is a staple of Italy you won't find many Europeans drinking natural Water.. The food was absolutely terrible even if I had never eaten a Italian's food in my entire life I would still consider this to be Inedible. An appetizer comprised of an uncooked mushroom with double its weight in molten processed cheese coating it... Bread sticks that were soft and limp soaked full of butter.. So much that we could not even get our bread to absorb the balsamic vinegar and Olive oil. It's simply pushed the balsamick around the plate.. Every dish from the chicken to the beef were indistinguishable from one another the only thing you could taste in any dish was molten cheese oil and salt.... The only item that we tried that had a different flavor was the meatballs but this isn't saying much because they only tasted like baysal you could not taste the meat or anything else only basal and the texture of what would be a meatball... We tried small bites from every dish being hopeful that the next dish would be edible but were disappointed. We packed up everything in to go bags but unfortunately the dogs would not eat it when we got home. But both of our dogs are Italian so I guess I understand. I'm absolutely shocked about the amount of people on here that enjoy this food and it makes me worry about the future of humanity. They honestly could have cooked and fed me anything ( shoe, wood chips, corpse) and I would have not known because I could taste nothing else but cheese and salt the entire time.

I suppose this explains why there is no Olive gardens in Italy.

Close after getting home and letting the food settle for close to an hour we're gonna have to go out to the grocery store and by something to wash the taste out of our mouth. We tried brushing our teeth and using mouthwash but the salt is persistent. Your restaurant is an insult to Italian's everywhere and you should be ashamed.

The owner response to reviews on this is always the same ( We never want to let our guest down in it sounds like we missed the mark on your visit) I don't think this is acceptable your food is desperately in need of improvement and I imagine the only reason you stay in business this long is because of lack of competition.

What was supposed to be a nice date for me and my wife turned into too upset stomachs and my wife trying to get me to move out of the US again...

It was that bad...

How dare you feed this to people...

Shame on you...

I have enclosed a picture of my dog sitting in front of the food looking up at me with disappointment.

(1 year later.) It's been a year now and I'm still mad... I can almost taste the salt in my memory.

(2 years later.) Now it's been well over a year and we are still mad about it we still bring this up every so often.

(3 years later.) I had a conversation with my coworker about the worst restaurants we've ever experienced and it reminded me to update. I bought bad been dip a few months ago and got food poisoning and it was still better than my experience at Olive Garden.

(5 years later) Still...

I don't see where to post another review so I'm just editing mine from 2 years ago. This used to be a 5 star review but that was 2 years ago. Going in now, with a baby was a completly different. First they placed us next to the bar ... With a baby. Than nothing was child proof (feeding her was extremely difficult and more work than just making a meal at home). As children do, she kept wanting to grab the glass plate and throw it on the floor. I also had to choose a suger drink as non suger drinks are not offered and I don't give her water from the tap. Luckily I had my own and that lost you money. Lastly, the waitress was HORRIBLE. She acted as if she didn't want to be there and she was annoyed with my baby acting out. I was so embarrassed by how I was being looked at by her and when I apologized for my 1 year old (which moms should NOT have to do) she just went "whatever" rolled her eyes and walked away. I started crying and had to leave. Now I was not embarrassed by my baby. She is ONE!! i was embarrassed by adults who treated me like I was a horrible mother because my baby was a bit cranky. Oh and I couldn't even change her diaper. The diaper changing station was in the handicap stall and someone was in there. I waited about 20 minutes (while being told off by customers that they didn't want to hear a crying baby) with a screaming baby needing to be changed and had to walk out and had to go to the mall across the road just to take care of my baby. I will do whatever I need to for my child but it's just not a family friendly restaurant. This used to be our favorite place to go in Watertown but Indont think I'll ever pay for an experience like that again so I'll probably just avoid this resteraunt.

Review from 2023: My moms birthday was Sunday and she woke up wanting Olive Garden. We made the 2 and 1/2 hour trip (closest to us) and it was definitely worth it. Every time we go, we are very impressed by the staff. This time was even better. Our waitress was amazing, fast, funny and went out of her way. While ordering drinks, my mom mentioned she loves strawberries. The waitress said she would make sure she got extra. I said that was so sweet because its her birthday. She than said my mom could get a free dessert for her birthday. She brought it out with a handful of staff that sang happy birthday. My mom felt so happy it put her into tears. I think this confused the staff as they were making sure she was okay, but she was definitely happy. She has lived a very traumatic life and to see that people she didn't know, cared to give her a positive experience meant more than words can say. It may have been something small in their eyes but it made a huge impact on our family to see my mom so happy. She is also disabled and the staff gave extra attention to help her, which also made her feel so good. My mom and my daughter are really the only family I have but going to this restaurant made us feel part of a family for a little while. I have...