Olive Garden Italian Restaurant

Another horrible experience at Olive Garden. Here we sit with empty glasses…30 minutes with no food… waiter keeps coming by telling us he will be right back… not happening.

I was with the swim team in Louisville for a big swim meet and we went to Olive Garden for dinner. With being on a strict diet where I can’t eat gluten, lactose, or soybeans, I ate gluten free rotini with a vegetable marinara sauce. It tasted good. The thing is that there isn’t much there for those who have allergies or strict dieting.

Eh.
I was taken here on a date, his choice not mine. Because aside from my once-​in-​a-​while-​fast-​food-​stop and my in-​an-​airport-​with-​no-​other-​choices instances, I can’t recall the last time I visited a national chain restaurant.
I do appreciate the lighter menu items. I got the tilapia piccata. It tasted alright. The zucchini was the best part of the meal.
The big issue is it is very hard to say no to the endless, delicious, breadsticks.
Service was alright, but I am just not a big fan of Olive Garden anyway and this didn’t particularly change my mind.
If someone else really REALLY wanted to go here, I could be alright with joining them. But there are too many other great, local restaurants much closer to my area than this.

We got unlimited soup, salad, and breadsticks and shared the steak gorgonzola pasta dish. Everything was very tasty and affordable. Easy to access location with lots of shopping nearby and a grocery store across the way. It’s a perfect stop for lunch on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, and then walk around after at the nearby shopping center.

Okay I know I gave it 5 stars but they keep messing up my soup every time I order a soup to go it’d be like chicken broth it don’t have nothing in it this is like the third time they have done this but I love their food and I keep going but the people that take the orders to go need to pay attention on what they are doing

Aloha from Hawaii. As I visited this location of Olive Garden in Louisville Kentucky, I just have to say with all the commercials we have about Olive Garden and the hype of bread sticks and soup or their food, I have to say the hype was alright. Unfortunately I was not as pleased as I’d like to be. The chicken Gnnochi soup had more chicken and I had no Gnnochi. The lasagna Fritti was not as tasty and my tour of Italy was with spaghetti and meat sauce, chicken parm, and tortolni was ok as well. The service was good and fast. Drinks were amazing. But for the rating I gave it was due to the quality of service and one star for food.

I guess if you’re coming to Olive Garden you should «dress up» I made the horrible mistake of coming in with my uniform from work, you know like any regular day haha and my server looked at me like I was here begging for food. He wasn’t very polite, he didn’t even ask if we wanted dessert he just brought out check on his way to another table and never bothered to say anything more than the usual here is this and here is that. Food was good like usual but the service wasn’t even average. I really don’t appreciate people looking down at me because I’m not dress up to their standards. Next time if I wanna be judged based on what I’m wearing I’ll go to my mothers.

This Olive Garden is my favorite restaurant to go to when I’m near the mall.
They always have friendly and fast service, and the food is of high quality as well.
My only real complaint is the lack of vegetarian options here; I always order the ravioli de portobello. This is an Italian restaurant, so main course vegetarian options aren’t always readily available, I would just appreciate a wider variety.

Pretty much what you expect from a chain. The service was good. I order soup and salad. It was delivered quickly and made correctly. If you expecting a world class Italian meal this is not the place for you. If you want a good meal at a fair price then you will do ok at Olive Garden. The Olive Garden menu is pretty normal food. Being a chain they can’t get too crazy on the menu, but the service is always good here. If you are looking for s good meal at a fair price then Olive Garden will fit your needs. The endless salad is a huge plus.

Bland bland bland. I love Italian. Used to like Olive Garden. This was my first and probably last visit to this location, if not all Olive Gardens. The salad wasn’t even good. Italian sausage was bland, pasta was mush. It beats That drive thru spaghetti place, but barely.

We always have an amazing meal here. All the staff is very friendly. We had an especially wonderful server tonight, his name was Josh D. Very welcoming and friendly. He was a perfect waiter, our glasses were never empty and everything was on point. He gives us even more reason to keep coming back!

Lauryn and Kevin’s hospitality made a lovely lunch. Food was delicious and prompt! Five cheese sauce was cheery and very pleasing. Good prices and extra leftovers! Coming back for sure.

I have been to numerous Olive gardens across East Coast to down South, this is probably one of the terrible place. Start with Salad, a bag of toss salad dumped in the salad bowl. It was wilted and not crisp. Bread, I say it was not cooked like they should be. Calamari? OMG, I order it for the appetizer whenever I come to the Olive Garden but it had a gooey texture and I did not like it. In addition, I dislike this place perhaps those servers talks too much at the hostess desk and no fault to their own but there were too many unruly children screaming, I am not there to listen to someone’s problem but to enjoy my meal. By the time we left, my son told me that he had a headache from all the baby’s screaming. Someone said it was delicious? Perhaps that person never have been to real Italian food restaurant in Europe.

Ah, Olive Garden, where would we be without you? Well, starving near a mall probably.
The frequent menu changes encourage repeat visits to sample new offerings. I’ve never been at an OG that didn’t do correct calamari, I’m sure this one also cooks it right.
And, though the salad is a bit on the not so fresh side, it was adequate.
Now, for the crux of the review. How does this OG compare to others? Poorly. Lots of excuses for missed orders (even the table next to us, with a different server, was wrong). My marinara was poorly sauced, and given the strength of the house wine, so was I.
I know it is very difficult to find competent people in this area (I can only assume that because every restaurant down here has servers straight from 3^rd grade). Olive Garden is supposed to be a «safe» bet for everyone with no thought required to order and eat. This particular location missed that training as at least three tables in my area were searching for servers for various needs. Seven servers in my area of 14 tables and five were empty. (Tables were empty, though I’ll tell you, if we’re speaking of adequate training, these servers were empty.)
The server brought our check before asking about our desert wishes (we always order at least one desert). So, no coffee, tiramisu or tip above 15%.
Please, train your staff. This is an excellent franchise and a pretty good location. I’d like to say that I’ll not be back to Olive Garden, but we all know that’s a lie.
Note: plates removed without asking, no asking about appetizers, no upsell on wine, no desert offer.
Add it all together and that’s a good $ 25 of missed income. Multiply that by the tables seated near me (who got the same service) and this lack of effort is seriously hindering the earning potential of this location. Step it up.

Tip: The pager I was given while waiting for a table states that customers can call ahead to go on the wait list… cutting the wait time after arriving to little or none.
Atmosphere: 5 stars for this. This location is new (Fall, 2010), so my first visit was in a new restaurant with layout and décor that has been the most improved and refined. Previous OGs I’ve experienced have had more open floor plans. This one is more a collection of small areas… nice and cozy.
Service: 3 stars for this. Our server was nice, but it seemed somewhat forced. Zero personality was displayed. But in his defense, it was very, very busy and we never had to ask for anything. Maybe he was wore out for the day. I could hear servers from other tables laughing it up… it made me wish I had been seated in a different area.
Food: I bought one of the higher priced entrees (couldn’t begin to remember what it was called) and it was excellent. Though, I probably could have chose something less expensive and been just as happy. The house salad and bread sticks are excellent – unfortunately, it is only the side items that I think about or get excited about when visiting an OG. It is a simple, but very tasty salad (and it’s unlimited with most entrees).
Overall, this place is great when you are in the area and want to try something different. And by that, I mean try a different chain when you’ve been to the other chains a gazillion times. Once the newness wears away, I suspect there may be at least ten other places in the area that I will choose before this place… and safe a buck or two.

It’s Olive Garden. Nothing out-​of-​the-​ordinary. The food, pretty good. Service, OK. Seating, crowded, even at 6pm on Sunday. Of course, it helped that I gave my best impression of displeasure when one of the hostesses cheated me of the round table at the bar and mistakenly gave it to a group of 3 when I had a group of 5 and had already requested the table to be cleaned. Apologetically, she promptly moved us up the list and made a 45-​minute wait about 15. Squeaky wheel gets the grease. Or in this case, the extra breadstick.
By the way, I recommend the pork scaloppini.