Olive Garden Italian Restaurant — Restaurant in Warwick

SHORT AND SWEET: WARM SALAD PLATES, AGAIN!!

*See edit at end

Salad should NEVER be served with hot plates, or even warm plates. It's disgusting, period.

This is the fourth Olive Garden location I've dined at over the last 4-6 months that has consistently served their Salad Bowl with WARM SALAD PLATES (almost "fresh out of the dishwasher" warm...) And that's the entire table, too. Not just a single warm plate. A whole stack of 'em.

Well, I'm here to say they're WRONG. Very Wrong.

No respectable italian (or any) restaurant would serve their salad on anything less than chilled plates. Often very chilled plates. NOT WARM PLATES. NOT HOT PLATES (and really not even room-temperature plates, unless absolutely necessary).

It's a simple and easy concept:

Cold Food gets served on Cold Plates.

Hot Food gets served on Hot Plates.

And make no mistake, their Hot Food was good, and so was the Hot Food at the previous three locations (across 2 states, I might add), however, NOT A SINGLE LOCATION MANAGED TO SERVE THEIR SALAD WITH PLATES THAT WERE ANYTHING LESS THAN WARM-LUKEWARM! DOWNRIGHT HOT EVEN! SERIOUSLY WHY?!?!

Please, I BEG OF YOU (and I think I can speak for really almost everyone when I say):

"CAN YOU PLEASE AT LEAST ATTEMPT TO COOL DOWN YOUR SALAD PLATES BEFORE GIVING THEM TO YOUR GUESTS?"

That would be lovely, thanks.

In summary, The dining experience was good and on par with what I would expect from an Olive Garden. I really enjoyed the food I was served here, as well as all the food that was served at the other locations....... OTHER THAN THEIR WARM SALAD PLATES!!! 😔

*Thank you to the Olive Garden Owner who responded and I will take you up on your offer of emailing you as I am happy to provide you with the multiple locations that all served your delicious Salad on warm plates.

Please note - Make NO MISTAKE - Your Hot Food is DELICIOUS, and I continue to enjoy your cuisine from time to...

We absolutely had to write a review about this. We were shocked and couldn’t believe the service. (We still tipped 15$ on a 35$ tab because we are passed industry people)

Our server took a while to bring our sodas, 5 minutes later, he comes over to let us know he’s sorry that they’re changing the syrup. I said that’s okay, we can have waters in the meantime. He says “oh no, that’s okay. I’ll check on the soda machine.” …. Okay, we can still take waters for now though 😂 Then, after placing the food order, we were waiting 10 minutes before he came over and said, “for dinner are we still going to do soup and salad?” At this point we’re confused.. yes, we already ordered our soup, salad, and 1 meatball on the side. Eventually we got our sodas and salad. We each took a plate of salad, and then asked for Parmesan cheese for our salads. Our server puts cheese on the serving bowl of salad, and then walks away. Leaving our plates of salad cheese-less… okay, I guess…. The soups came. Nice and hot. 5 minutes later, the meatball came. And that’s when we really couldn’t believe it. He brought me a dry, sauce-less meatball on a plate. I mean… who thinks that’s what someone means when they order a side meatball? Maybe if they specifically ask for a dry meatball… but come on. I had to ask for a side of sauce— he said “oh I’m sorry, this is how the meatballs come when we put in for a side meatball.” I genuinely don’t believe that, but okay.

All of these things, aren’t that bad. If just 1 of these things happened through out the course of our late lunch, we would never care. But the entire service was very, very odd. We almost felt like we were getting pranked- like cameras were going to come out. He seemed like a nice young boy, but we felt like we were in the twilight zone. Just confused and almost laughable. The service was definitely juvenile...

Update, have returned to try again given the fact of the whole COVID issue. The service was great, none of the "oh I got you boss" Still wish they would bring back some of the dishes they used to have like the Tuscan Grill.

Basically it is pasta, pasta, pasta and more pasta dishes besides the soups and salad nothing like the original Olive Garden that had more variety. The way Olive garden is now everything seems to be pre processed out of a can or box if not deep fried. Service was terrible, constant "Oh I got you boss, I'm a bartender as well boss, oh I am also a cook boss, I got this boss." Ordered soft drinks that we had to explain how to make an Arnold Palmer, half lemonade and half iced tea, a Roy Rodgers, coke and grenadine, and a Shirley Temple, sprite and grenadine, after he stated he was a bartender. Ended up getting served sprite, coke and iced tea, reason was "oh boss we don't sell lemonade, and we don't stock grenadine here, funny there was grenadine sitting right on the table next to the hostess station when we walked in and in several other areas. When we asked for refills we waited for 20 minutes before he walked by and asked how was everything said we were waiting on our refills. The response was Oh my bad boss, I forgot boss, I have a lot of tables boss. In the entire restaurant there was a total of 15 customers in the restaurant, and there were 2 hostesses, 1 curb side pick up person, 1 bar tender, and 5 wait staff. Some items ordered never received and when asked how much longer on items the response was "oh i forgot boss, but don't you worry I got you boss". Never cleared any dishes or empty cups off the table, when we asked if he could clear some of them to make room for our meal the response, "Oh Boss I'm a union guy here, I don't take dishes...