Jen K.
Yelp
I try to avoid writing reviews for chain restaurants because, let's be serious, if you've been to one you've been to them all. I have a small child and Olive Garden is a family-friendly restaurant. Generally. ....Well, every single other time we've ever visited one it has been. U
Until our visit to the Niagara Falls New York location.
My daughter barely eats anything when we go out to eat as a family, I think she is distracted by all the things to look at in restaurants. So I barely ever order her a kid's meal just to have it left uneaten. We've dined at Olive Garden with our child over a dozen times, and every time I tell the waitress she will just eat off my plate. Never an issue.
Fast forward to this location. Our waitress balked at the idea of my daughter eating from my plate, acted confused, and then when she brought out the salad, refused to give my daughter a side plate, stating that she would have to charge her (a 4 year old)bfull price for an additional salad if she ate anything from the bowl. Uhhhh.... I was shocked. Then, when our meal came out from the kitchen, she brought out two small saucers with my pasta on it. She assured me it was the same portion size as the dinner entree, but was split to be shared, which, it was laughably not as I am very familiar with their portions.
Their meals were satisfactory, however, on my baby sized portion, they put perhaps a tablespoon of alfredo sauce on each plate. When I asked for additional, showing her how dry the pasta was, she said she would have the kitchen bring some out. And then we waited. And waited... and asked her what was going on. And she responded that she didn't know what was taking so long. And then we waited some more. 20 minutes worth of waiting for a little side dish of alfredo sauce. what????? We then had to flag her down and ask yet again what the holdup was, as the rest of my guests had finished eating their dinner while my daughter and I sat there with dry, now cold pasta. Only then did she say that the kitchen seems to have run out of Alfredo.
At that point, I was fed up and asked for a manager. The manager apologized, also admitted that the kitchen was out of Alfredo and they had cleared out Wegmans of all the remaining heavy cream. I told her that they could have at least scooped out the alfredo sauce from one of their buy one take one promotional containers of alfredo rather than having someone wait 20 minutes for an explanation.she seemed baffled at that being a suggestion.
Icing on the cake, of course, was that the receipt was wrong and they tried charging me twice for the entree I shared with my four-year-old daughter. From top to bottom, just bad bad bad. I never expect much from Olive Garden, I expect a mediocre meal, but this fell far short. I guess i will stick to the Maple Road location instead from now on.