Olive Garden Italian Restaurant

Predictably addictive faux-Italian American fare (fried, glutenous, salty, cheesy...) however, not much in the way of healthy Mediterranean style entrees. The free breadsticks are the gimmick that keeps most people coming back. I wonder how much they would save by doing away with the chocolate mints at the end and offering a wider variety of reasonably priced desserts? I feel this restaurant is WAY overpriced per dish, in general. If you choose a very basic entree, the price isn't bad. If one orders spaghetti with a protein, that protein adds about $5 to the dish, making it nearly a $20 item. This is wrong and deceptive. Good for kids. In fact, I would call this the Red Robin of chain Italian restaurants. Sadly, gone are the days where a family gets dressed up and employs good manners at a restaurant such as this. But that's a societal issue. Service is either amazing or very amiss depending on location.

We started with salad and bread sticks. Good as always! I had the shrimp scampi with gluten free pasta. It was delicious. My companions enjoyed their meals as well. Our server was great when taking my order. She asked if the kitchen staff needed to have fresh gloves when preparing my meal and immediately mentioned croutons on the side for the salad! However she was less impressive when it came to keeping our water glasses filled. She checked on us and said she would bring back water and then passed our table 3 times before bringing the water. It took about 15 minutes.