Olive Garden Italian Restaurant — Restaurant in Vernon Hills

My wife and I visited this location on Sunday for a late-ish lunch. We both just wanted Diet Coke and the soup, salad, and breadsticks special (bottomless).

When we arrived there were six people at the host stand. One server/host told the host looking at the screen with the available tables to seat us in a specific location. Once the table number was selected, the server/host, grabbed two napkin roles with flatware from their bin, grabbed to menus, and handed them to another server to guide us to our table. Um, weird. Anyway, the server sat us and asked if we wanted anything to drink. My wife, a Diet Coke, and I a Coke Zero. She brought both to the table with straws, placed our drinks on the table and began to walk away. I asked for the straws in her had and she acted like she forgot she was holding them. She gave me the straws and started walking away again. I said, "we'd like to order," and she said okay and pulled out her pen.

My wife said we'd both like the soup, salad, and breadsticks special.

Server: "What soup would you like?"

Wife: "Chicken & Gnocchi".

Server: "And you, sir?"

Me: "The same."

The server then got a weird look on her face and said, "oh, you want the soup, salad, and breadsticks special?"

In unison, we said "yes". It wasn't like we had already told her our order twice.

Server: "Um, it will cost more because the special is cheaper during the week."

No problem. She then leaves and returns with our soup and three breadsticks. The soup is cold to lukewarm. There are two of us. Three breadsticks. Sure, we can share one, but since they are endless, why not bring four?

We ask for our soup to be replaced with hot soup. She leaves and returns with new soup. These are lukewarm to warmer. Then she brings a barely full salad bowl. One of us can have salad. She refills our drinks by bringing new glasses and again is holding straws, but crumples them up in her had with the wrappers from the previous straws. Another server comes by and we ask for straws. She asks if we asked our server for them, we said yes we did, but instead of giving them to us, she crumpled them in her hand. This server shakes her head, gives us straws and asks if everything is okay. We mentioned the soup not being hot. She leaves and returns with two bowls of piping hot soup. We're confused why she can bring hot soup and our server cannot.

Our server was very nervous for some reason. Maybe she was new. However, she was not very good. She would replace cold and lukewarm soup with equally lukewarm soup. She would bring drinks and straws and not give us straws. She brought bowls of salad with barely any salad in it. She would be odd numbers of breadsticks. She'd offer shredded cheese, give a couple turns and walk away before we said we had enough.

We paid through the table unit so we didn't have to wait forever for our check.

It will be a long time before we go back to that location. Service was terrible and food was served in low amounts or not hot.

I hope someone from that location's management team reads this review just s they can properly train their staff and fix the issues out of...

I usually don’t write reviews, but my experience at this Olive Garden was so frustrating that I have to warn others. My boyfriend and I both work in the restaurant industry, so we are very mindful of closing times and being respectful to staff. Before heading in, we even called ahead to confirm the closing time to avoid any issues.

Upon arrival, Gabby Garcia greeted us with one of the worst attitudes I have ever encountered. Instead of a simple greeting, she immediately told my boyfriend, “We close at 9:30. You have 30 minutes.” We acknowledged that and were fine with it, but she followed up with a snarky “Did you want to dine in or no? I’m literally letting you dine in.” Excuse me? Is that how customers are welcomed here?

Thankfully, our actual server, Manny, was the complete opposite kind, attentive, and professional. I ordered Chicken Fettuccine with added broccoli and specifically asked for the broccoli to be firm. Manny assured me that if it wasn’t to my liking, I could let him know.

When my food arrived, the broccoli was mushy. I tried to flag Manny down, but Gabby walked past and asked how she could help. I politely told her I wanted to speak to my waiter, to which she dismissively responded, “He’s not here, but I am.” Again, what kind of customer service is this? Still, I explained the issue to her, and her response was shockingly rude: “That’s the hardest we can do. If we go any harder, it will be raw.” As someone who works in the restaurant industry, I know for a fact that you can prepare firm broccoli without it being raw. The way she spoke to me was condescending and unnecessary.

At this point, I was beyond frustrated, so I asked Manny for her name. Not long after, Gabby suddenly appeared at my table, handed me her business card, and said, “I heard you were asking for me. I’m the general manager. If you have any issues, let me know.” Oh, so NOW you want to act professional? After you’ve already been rude and dismissive?

To top it off, she removed the charge for the added broccoli, which felt more like an attempt to silence me rather than a genuine effort to make things right. While the food was great, her terrible attitude completely ruined the dining experience.

If this is how Olive Garden allows its GENERAL MANAGER to treat paying customers, that’s a huge red flag. Gabby Garcia needs to be evaluated because customer service like this is unacceptable. I genuinely feel bad for the staff who have to work under her leadership.

Do better,...

I love Olive Garden. I never had a bad experience here until tonight. My friend and I are both servers, so when we go out we are very easy going cause we know how it can be serving. But tonight was just horrible. We sat down and maybe 10 mins later our server finally greets us as she is walking by with a tray of food. No big deal. We know how this goes all the time. We ask to move to a booth and she approves. Finally she comes over and takes our drink order and appetizer order. She orders it from the little laptop thing on the table. Which I hate by the way. Then asks if were ready. We said no. Not even two minutes goes by til shes back and asks if were ready, my friend finally decides on her dinner. I get soup, she gets salad. Now this is where I get frustrated. The server brings out the appetizer and our soup and salad at the same time!!! NO! This is a huge turn off when going to dinner. Appetizer first, then soup/salad. Please learn to pace out courses. And the server has no knowledge of prebussing. My friend had 3 sprites. 2 of those glasses sat empty on our small table and I had one empty glass to where we had to put them on a shelf next to our table. Lastly,,, our server needs to learn to expand her vocab. Every time we asked for something she replied with "for sure". Every other word was literally "for sure". It got to a point where it was laughable. Like come on, your trying to be a upscale place please be more proper. One last thing, she never asked us if we wanted dessert, my friend and I had to tell her as she walked away what kind of dessert we wanted. I wanted mine to go, my friend wanted to eat hers there. Server brings it out with a FORK! Ummm this dessert has ice cream with it. Makes more sense to bring a spoon. And usually you bring out extra silverware for sharing. As we ate the apple dessert, we had to stack our plates on the edge of our table. Again were servers so we stack it how it would be easy for her to grab and take away. They sat there for 5-7 mins. Our appetizer dish sat right on the table the whole entire meal. No table space what so ever. One last thing.. Did Darden restaurants do away with boxing table side? Not that I dont have a problem wrapping my own food but usually Olive Garden does it next to the table. In this case it would of been nice since there was barely any room to wrap up the food since it was covered with dirty dishes. Im hoping this was just a fluke, I will be back, but I hope to get a different...