Olive Garden Italian Restaurant

Waitress Kristi (sp) was great very informative, appetizer was cold I mentioned it to her, entrée was cold I normally don’t complain about and I would never send food back for fear of how it will come back to me mentioned it as well. But the manager came out and took those off my bill which I was not looking for. Will probably never make my way back there.

Came in on Friday, ¹¹⁄₂₇ (Black Friday).
Our waitress took a long time to get to our table, and she didn’t seem interested in making sure that we were doing well: she walked right by while eyeing us at least six times. When my sister’s ravioli came out, the noodles were so hard that we couldn’t cut through them with a knife. The waitress seemed barely interested in doing anything about it, and the manager portrayed the same attitude.
All in all, the worst experience I’ve had at an Olive Garden by far. Spend your dining dollar elsewhere.

I had a waitress named Kristy and she was on the ball. She rocked. I’m not a big Olive Garden fan, but she made my experience so great, this Olive Garden gets 5 stars. Although we waited about 45 minutes to be seated (we went during a very busy time), the service was absolutely impeccable. I was having the endless pasta bowl and not once did I have to ask for a refill on my pasta or water. Before I could even get around to asking, Kirsty was at my table already serving me a new dish. Just an all around great experience.

This place is always great on the prices and the food is not bad at all. Always great with, kids. Tonight I am having the salad with soup a tuscana, (spell check). It’s always good and (I assume healthy). Either way food is always fulfilling and my wallet remains as full as my belly, :).

Arriving at 1pm on a sunday and having no wait to sit down you would think the service wouldnt have been an issue. Unfortunately after 20 minutes of having the waiter/​waitress bring us the wrong food (yeah… before they took our drink order) and watching or server help older groups use the new checkout platform on the tables… we were pretty fed up. We stuck it out just to see how bad it could get. It didnt get better. 15 more minutes to bring a premade bowl of salad to the table. Not to mention, salad must have gone up in price because they only brought enough for 1 person. After 3 bowls of salad (5 to 10 minutes between each request) we left not full of food but of regret. Its not Olive Garden’s fault. We will continue to frequent the one in greentree and south hills village.

Our favorite Italian restaurant when living in Pittsburgh. Food and service was always great.

Ok, so the first thing that comes to mind when walking in and taking a deep inhale: puke. I’m sorry, but it smells like puke to me. The soup and salad deal at lunch is pretty good, if you need to be on a high sodium diet. Bread? This is bread? Since when is a low budget puffed bleached wheat considered Italian bread? Hello, is there anyone listening? Does anyone care? Apparently not. People flock to this place regardless of the quality, bit that’s the case in a lot of the chain-​food establishments. After about 30 minutes or so, the puke smell permeates your clothing and you get used to the smell. Eating the sodium sauce soup n’at for a bargain price does not make me feel much better though. I think I am gonna go vegan. You may pay more, but in the end, you’ll also feel a lot better. I think the smell comes from chlorine cleanser and low-​grade parmesan hear remnants. If you don’t mind the smell of puke, like styrofoam-​like breads, then this is your spot. Two stars because I am feeling nice.

Went to this Olive Garden last Friday when they still had the never ending pasta bowl. The food was good, our waiter was so friendly, and the host was friendly when seating us & greeting other customers. It was an enjoyable experience.

I have to be in the mood for Olive Garden-​meaning afterwards I have to want to sit on my couch all night in a Olive Garden coma. My husband and I love their breadsticks. They make the experience. We always get the Alfredo dipping sauce-​before I met him I ate them without any dipping sauce, but once you go Alfredo, you never go back. However, because we *shocking* don’t like salads or the soup-​we think the dipping sauce should be free! Some waiters have done that for us at the Robinson location, but not all. We stick with our usual meals of cheese ravioli for me and chicken Alfredo for him. Yum. The strawberry mango frozen margarita is also delicious.

I’ve been to my fair share of Olive Gardens across the country, and I must say that this location is by far the cleanest. The service is also wonderful here. You may have guessed what comes along with these great things though… Very long wait times on weekend nights. If possible, try to come for lunch!

Great place to take your family. We ordered from the $ 9.99 menu selections. Fantastic value for money. In my point of view the best dessert was the Salted Caramel Tiramisu. As always, our waitress, Hearher, was very courteous and professional.

Don’t go there when busy. Horrible time management with food and wait staff. Had to wait 30 minutes just for more breadsticks. Food/​app was cold and hard.

To be honest, I typically avoid these chain restaurants at all costs– I live in the city and love to explore new independently owned restaurants with good food and good character. However, the person I was going on a date with suggested this place and I respectfully accepted. We went here on a Saturday afternoon and I expected everything to take forever. On the contrary, I was seated right when I walked in and even was visited by the waitress twice before my date got there. In fact, the waitress during the entire meal visited our table maybe a dozen times. I would hardly ever complain about a waiter coming to the table too often, but I couldn’t even talk to my date! Anyway, you know exactly what you’re going to get when you go to the Olive Garden– the unlimited breadsticks and salad are addictive, so you’re pretty much full by the time you get your food. Something that seemed quite suburban and a contributor to American obesity is they had a special where you could get two entire meals for the price of one– one to eat in restaurant and one to take home for later. While I cringed at this, my date encouraged me to get it so I got a veggie ravioli in house and could select any other entrée to stink up my car on the ride home (which I unfortunately never ate) — and I chose the ziti. The ravioli was good and I generally had a good experience. I probably won’t revisit this place anytime soon, but it is by no means due to the quality of the food.

Was just at the Olive Garden in Robinson for lunch. Had their Tuscan Chicken w Rice !!! It was very good and our Server was very nice. !!!

Always busy and usually end up sitting at the bar. I was disappointed the last time we sat there because the bartenders and staff were complaining about their jobs. One even went so far as to complain/​engage in conversation with patrons. I find this to be rude, unprofessional and to take away from the meal. No complaints with the food but I suggest that the management staff take a look at either increasing morale or getting a hold of their workers.

I visited Olive Garden at Robinson Towne Center last night and wanted to share with you my impressions
I arrived at 5pm on a Wednesday evening (hardly peak traffic time) and I waited exactly 12 minutes to be seated. Once I was seated, I discovered that the place was nearly empty — and therefore wondered what the 12 minute wait was all about.
Once I was at my table, the waitress asked if I wanted to place a drink or appetizer order. I ordered an Italian Margarita and Hot Artichoke-​Spinach Dip. Both of these items were on the menu… and the drink was horrible. I am not sure of the exact taste, but picture sewer water, with a little white lightening thrown it. The artichoke spinach dip was okay… but nothing too exciting.
At this point I ordered my main dish…“Chicken Parmigiana” which was one of the most expensive item on the menu at $ 15. To be honest with you, I can make something that tastes twice as good (at half the cost) in my own kitchen. It tasted like a microwave TV dinner. To make matters worse, the serving size was very small, more like an appetizer.
At this point, I was pretty frustrated… but wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt. For desert I ordered Tiramisu. It was good, and the portion size was respectable. If anything, Olive Garden does offer a respectable dessert.
I spent a grad total of $ 37 +tip. In the end, I could have made the exact same stuff in my kitchen for $ 12, and it would have tasted better. Olive Garden is the poster-​child of chain restaurants. I am convinced that they simply microwave their food. This is not Italian food… this is American food with a casual-​dining twist… and a hint of fake Italian food thrown in to complete the effect.
Avoid this place like the plague — it is a disgrace to Italians everywhere!
The only reason I am giving this review 2-​Stars in because of the waitress. Despite the horrible drinks and the microwave food… she really did try her best.

Consistently good food and service. Always know we can stop here and get a good quality meal for a fair price and wonderful attentive service. Love it!

When oh when was my last Olive Garden experience? It may have been a birthday take-​out meal for a family member at the Green Tree location or an eat-​in at the one in West Mifflin. If I had written Unilocal reviews for those encounters (these were pre-​Yelp adventures and are sadly out-​of-​print. check Ebay), I’d give them a 3; terrif salads, apps, and service, not-​so-​terrif entrees and desserts. *sniff, sniff*
Sorry, I feel guilty slagging them now, even though their commercials are still the most cloyingly contrived ads you’ll ever see on television and must have been dreamed up by an ex-«Charles In Charge» writer.
No, no, no, I am finding myself (under protest since they’re the chain we all love to despise) giving Olive Garden 5 stars. What happened? Has Darren W. been bought off? Has he sold out?
What happened was that the meal started off fine and just got better and better as we dined.
We began with those soft, warm, already-​buttered, utterly hearts-​a-​flutter breadsticks. What else would you put on them? You don’t even need marinara sauce!
You don’t even need it for their brilliantly battered and fried calamari. The breading stays on the squid like clothes stay on a prude on a first date. Plump, firm-​to-​the-​bite, exploding with flavor upon hitting the incisors, these may be the best calamari ever to be coated and plunged into hot oil. This is why I have to fight the urge to order calamari as an appetizer every time I see it on a menu. Blame Olive Garden. Blame a chain.
Oh, back to dipping sauces, they give you two; the aforementioned marinara, and my favorite of the two, the parmesan-​peppercorn which is like ranch dressing but better.
Let’s not forget that salad, that simple, simple Garden Salad they offer with free refills (!) dressed with that amazing and mysterious House concoction of theirs. Emphasis on DRESSED. Yes, they do it for ya, the way I think all salad should be served. It’s all too rare not to find your salad dressing in a plastic cup off to the side.
You mean you’d rather have The Grilled Chicken Caesar Salad? They have it too. But why?
Entrees…you say?
I had the Shrimp & Crab Tortelli Romana, which is new to their menu, and is a rather worthy addition. Read this caption from the website and weep…
«Shrimp, crab and smoked mozzarella-​filled ravioli, topped with sautéed shrimp in a three cheese and sun-​dried tomato sauce.»
The ravioli are slightly understuffed, but they make up for it by being generous with the amount of ravioli they give you and by positively, lavishly applying that oily, cheesier-​than-​a-​B-​movie, sauce to it all. Then there’s that fat little shrimp that burst in your mouth like the calamari which must be prepared by a chef with a supernatural knack for knowing when seafood is cooked to that elusive «just right» stage.
The juicy and thick beef-​medals that were included in the Steak Gorgonzola-​Alfredo that Kay ordered were ever-​so-​slightly gummy with grill marks making them more than presentable and noodles and sauce that won me over as much as my ravioli did.
Someone in Corporate must have found out somehow (spies?) that my father got me an Olive Garden gift card for Christmas as our dinner had been eerily perfect thus far. Dinner would have been enough, really, nut noooo… we had to go and order dessert.
As I said early on, their desserts never impressed me much, not that I can even remember what I ever ordered for dessert.
Well, I got something that suspiciously doesn’t sound all that Italian; Warm Apple Crostata.
It’s an apple crisp/​cobbler thingamajig that you have to wait about 5 – 10 minutes for. While I waited, Kay and I teamed up on her Black Tie Mousse Cake, a Devil’s Food/​cheesecake/​custard chimera that is worthy of its cred as OG’s (Ice-​T would like it here I think) top dessert. It’s cold, it’s fudgy, the chocolate chips on the back are kinky and dangerous like a dominatrix. It adheres to the palate, it ties you up, it makes you like it.
Just as we put the kibosh on that elegant freak of a post-​meal treat, out came the Crostata.
There are certain things that take a foodie to Nirvana; the perfect union of warm and cold being one of them, and the crostata achieved this in spades. It’s a necessity, really; the ice cream cuts the sweetness of the dessert and cools the hot dessert down enough for you to eat it painlessly, blissfully. It’s burnt where it should be, crunchy where it needs to be, soft and sweet where it’s got to be…
If it were a woman walking down the street, traffic accidents due to distracted motorists and neck sprains from turning heads would occur. As a friend of mine would say, «Dahyum!»
Ok, so The Crostata is Betty, and The Black Tie Mousse Cake’s Veronica. Or… ok, The Crostata is Angela Gossow, and the BTM is Christina Scabbia. And yes you can go troika, ya perv.
OG=way above OK. Ask for waiter Eric V. if you can.

The only reason for the 3 stars is for the waitress and not the food. The food would have gotten 4 ½.

My family and I didn’t want fast food. We didn’t want anything too fancy either so we settled for Olive Garden. The three of us just wanted simple meals. The wait wasn’t too bad for a Tues. night either at 6:30pm.
Our waitress took a bit getting to us and getting our orders. We all ordered very simple meals, spaghetti with meatballs, spaghetti with sausage, and chicken alfredo. My mom and I both asked for extra sauce since the spaghetti normally isn’t as saucy as we like. The waitress forgot. no biggie so we ask again. She walked off to get it and 10 minutes later we are still waiting. She returned to another table and saw us and said, «I forgot your sauce.»
My mom wanted to use a coupon for $ 4.00 off the bill. Our waitress did take it off and brought back the bill which showed she took it off. When she came back with the receipt for me to sign, she added the $ 4.00 back onto the bill. When I explained to her that I wasn’t going to sign the receipt because of the mistake, she blamed it on the computer. Who knows? Needless to say, she didn’t get the normal 20% or more I normally leave for food service.
We did have leftovers and my spaghetti with sausage was excellent reheated.

Alicia was our server today and she was great. She was attentive but not overbearing and took our orders quickly with a smile.
I went there for lunch today, with my sister and mother and everything was wonderful. I ordered the Capellini di Mare and it was just right. The desserts were delicious. We got three of the little desserts in shooter glasses. The Limoncella was to die for!
I can’t think of a single negative thing about our experience at the Robinson Olive Garden.
Kudos!