| rev:text
| - I love the Olive Garden and I've been a fan for over twenty years now. I will say that my experience at the Northlake location last night was by far the worst experience I've ever had at a restaurant, and I wish I was exaggerating.
The night started off with the waiter telling my parents (who got there before my twin sister and I did) after they asked that the breadstick chicken parmesan sandwich was available at dinner time. The only difference would be that the sandwich would be $10.99 instead of $6.99. I made sure to order it when I heard it was available!
After my family ordered, the waiter came back twice to ask questions about my parents' orders and still didn't seem clear about what they wanted from the "2 for 25" Tuscan dinner items. He never wrote anything down, which was alarming and I believe added to his confusion.
The waiter brought us breadsticks with DIRTY PLATES. When we asked for more plates, he brought us salad with DIRTY BOWLS. What was going on in that kitchen?! My dad is a restaurant owner and we do understand how things happen so we thought it was a one off situation the first time, but multiple dirty plates is inexcusable.
Then the waiter came back and said he was wrong, the breadstick chicken parm sandwich was NOT available at dinner and I'd have to order something else. I asked why he had told us it was after we asked earlier and he said another coworker told him the wrong thing. I thought it was ridiculous they couldn't just make it since it's not like they don't have the ingredients, so I got up and found the manager.
I told the manager I was unhappy and asked why the sandwich was unavailable and he said it is, they just have to clear it with me since it's not on the dinner menu. Olive Garden clearly needs to work on their communication issue about the breadstick sandwiches if the employees don't know what's going on and this has been a huge promotion for them.
We were hoping the sandwich issue would be the last issue, but it was just the beginning of a downward spiral. My dad asked for a beer FIVE TIMES and the waiter didn't bring it - not a refill, but the beer he ordered when he sat down! He finally got it after all of those requests. We never got salad or bread at the same time - it was always one or the other, despite our repeated requests for both.
The table behind us had two kids who were screaming most of the meal. I know that is not on Olive Garden, but it definitely put us on the edge and we didn't ask to move since we knew we'd probably already been written off by the staff as "that table" and we didn't want to make our waiter even more confused.
When our entrees came, it got even worse. Both of my parents' entrees looked disgusting. My mom's pasta looked like it was half cooked and my dad's pasta barely had any sauce on it. They told the waiter that the food wasn't good and he did switch them out for two other entrees.
At the end of the meal, we were all just completely fed up and we asked to talk to the manager about the experience. He seemed patronizing and kept trying to minimize our feedback. At that point, we were just ready to go. We got our bill and it had an extra charge for an antipasti salad that no one ordered. We told the waiter about that (and also gave him our 20% off coupon) and when he came back, he told us the manager decided to comp the entrees and we only paid for two soft drinks and a beer. We did still leave a 25% tip based on the original total because we knew it wasn't fair for us to only spend $13.
We didn't expect the meals to be comped, but we were grateful and appreciative. However, the manager ruined his act of goodwill when as we were walking out, we saw him and my dad thanked him, but also said he didn't have to comp all of the entrees and the manager said it was no problem. After we walked by him and I sat in the lobby waiting for my family members at the end of the night, I witnessed him talking loudly and mocking my family to another employee. I glared at him until he felt the gaze, and he came over to me and tried to laugh it off, but the damage was done. That was unprofessional and should never happen! I was polite since I didn't want to cause a scene and we all just wanted to leave, but are you kidding me?! What a way to add disgusting icing to an already inedible cake!
I'm giving 2 stars because we've had good experiences at this location in the past. I'd give -10 stars based on last night.
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