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| - If you go to the Olive Garden expecting to get an awesome Italian meal, you're gonna be VERY disappointed. If you go with low expectations (as weird as that might sound) it's really not that bad.
Even though my parents can eat wherever they want, they willingly choose to eat at places like this, Red Lobster, Applebee's, etc., on a regular basis so when I was in town for Christmas we decided to come here for lunch the day I was leaving to go back to SF. When I lived in Scottsdale, however, I did come to this location on a few occasions with the parental units.
I actually think there soups (there's about four to choose from), salad (nothing that will blow your mind, but does tastes fresh), and bread sticks (hot and fresh) are really good. I think they run some sort of special during the week where you can do all-you-can eat of these things for like 5 or 6 bucks. I would definitely take advantage of this if I lived close by, and these items and special alone is worthy of four stars.
The appetizers and entrees here are all pretty meh, however. There's nothing on the menu that's all that inspiring, but the food isn't all THAT bad. When I came here this last time I had portobello ravioli in some sort of cream sauce. The ravioli were overcooked IMO and the sauce was bland (my mom had manicotti, which had the same cream sauce). My dad decided just to get an appetizer sampler, and I tried a stuffed mushroom, and I will admit, Olive Garden or not that was a pretty good stuffed mushroom.
Our server, Cara, was very attentive, but the place wasn't very crowded when we there. Still though, an uncrowded restaurant hasn't stopped some servers I've had over the years from providing crappy service.
I probably wouldn't choose to come here, especially for dinner. However, the soup and salad is good enough where I wouldn't mind coming in for lunch every now and then. Plus, Kendra Wilkinson of "The Girls Next Door" fame freakin' loves this place so it can't be that bad, right?
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