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I have only been here once before. I didn't remember when it was but it was a long time ago. It must have been some crazy day when my gf and I came. We had to park across the street in front of the golf place.
Anyhow, the wait to get a seat wasn't long at all. We practically told them our name and less than 3 minutes we were being seated.
We decided to order something from the appetizers. We ordered the stuffed mushrooms. Those were awesome. They came out hot, so you should either wait or blow on it. It almost burned my mouth.
My gf ordered the stuffed chicken marsala. I decided on the chicken parmigiana. My chicken parmigiana was ok, it wasn't the best food I have had. I did like the stuffed chicken marsala. The bread they had was nice and they complemented the dinner with some chocolate mint. I was happy. I got full.
Hmmmm. It's been about 15 years since I've been to an Olive Garden restaurant. It just so happens on this Saturday, I was in the moooood for some comfort food. Livin' now in the 'burbs,' I wasn't willing to drive down to Hillcrest for Hash House a Go Go's BIG and SOUTHERN plates. Next best? Italiano!!!
I've seen the adds offering delicious salad and breadsticks. Okay, with Grammy and Baby ... looks perfect!
We sat in a room painted burgundy color with wine racks along an entire wall. We met our waitress, Patty, who was delightful. She had the best personality and was efficient to boot! Right away, she offered us a sample of their house wine. Both my mom and I are not the ones to say 'no thanks' to free wine! Believe it or not, it was actually very good.
I just decided we were having lunch in Italy with our italian table wine and feast! We ordered a kids meal, mac and cheese, for angel baby. My mom and I shared two dishes, mushroom and asparagus risotto and fettucine with steak. Mmmmm mmmm good. Who woulda thunk it? Olive Garden? We ordered dishes designed by a culinary institute in Tuscany. Tasted authentic to me!
Then, we had to splurge on dessert. Pumpkin cheesecake and chocolate melted cake accompanied by an italian Prosecco.
Can you say CAT NAP? Or siesta? After we overindulged, we had to relax at home. What a great family day, thanks to Patty and comforting italiano grub and vino!
Bon Appetito.
OK, so the Olive Garden remains a solid two on the Yelp-o-meter for me.
The only time we go is when my mother-in-law comes into town. She's Italian and yet loves this place... kind of like a Spaniard coming into town and loving Taco Bell. Not likely, but possible.
The food is average and not worth the hour wait we spent there tonight. Regarding the wait, we did have a party of nine and we were right behind a few other big parties that had just come in. It's just that I'd rather have waited that long for Yanni's Bistro, or even In-N-Out before the Olive Garden. But it was my MIL's fav and they're visiting from out of town so...
My MIL was disappointed in her Chicken Fettuccine Alfredo... said it tasted like it had been under the heat lamp for a bit. Here's hoping that she'll choose some other place next time...
Olive Garden, you've proved my wife right when she makes fun of your "authentic italian" tv spots. I… Read more »
The food is great, the prices are reasonable and the atmosphere is great for a family.
Sometimes you want something differenent and Olive Garden doesn't disappoint. Since there are 5 of us we try and get there early on the weekends as there always seems to be a wait and I hate waiting to eat!
I love the salads and the breadsticks are tasty. I had the lasagne and it was delicious. The service was great too. Yeah this place is kind of a franchise feel but you know what, it is tasty. We go back quite often.
Quick trip for average (fast food level it is) Italian meal ? Yes, waiting in line for hrs ? Never....
Review:
Never ending pasta bowl
Stuffed Chicken Masala
Went here with the Sis and found that the NEPB is similar to the quality of noodles u get at a high school lunch.
Noodles were about over-boiled. Too soft for my taste. Give me about another 30 years and I'll let u kno they're easy on my teeth, but until then, pasta NEEDS to be al dente.
The stuffed chicken is what saved the third star cooked very well, mashed potatoes were good. Soup (had the chicken gnocchi) was good, but salad was very subpar. Not very crispy, had floppy lettuce! Eww! Looks like they still use store bought/pre made breadsticks? I could be wrong? Anyways, experience/quality was just aiite. Nothing spectacular.
I LOVE The Olive Garden, especially when they have their never ending pasta bowls. I've been about six times in the two month span they've had the promotion. My favorite combo is the Angel Hair with half meat sauce and half alfredo sauce. I didn't know at first, but they can do half and half with the sauces if you ask. LOVE THAT!
When they're not doing the never ending pasta bowl, I love the Tortellini with braised beef. Initially, that did not sound like a great combination, but it's one of the few things I LOVE at Olive Garden. The only other things I love to order there (besides the basic pasta marinara or alfredo) is their Chicken Gnnochi (yo-kee) soup and clams. I like Olive Garden because their pasta sauce is rich, filling and yummy to my tummy.
I'm a chain restaurant fan. I will not lie. Don't get me wrong, I love non-chain restaurants as well. But sometimes I can be a creature of habit and regardless of whether a restaurant is a chain or not, I always have my favorite go to meals. Hope this review helped.
Oh, and the Moscado (sweet white wine) was AMAZING, my friend and I practically drank the whole bottle. It ROCKED! Ask for a sample next time you go in. I think you might love it!
The Olive Garden in Carmel Mountain Ranch is always busy. Most often you have to wait. The service is always great in this location. Being a chain the food consistently taste good.
I don't care for their bread sticks. I really like the salad though, my kids enjoy the minestrone and fagoli soup. And if you have not tried the Torta de chocolate you don't know what you are missing.
Also check out their website they give the recipes for several of their menu items. Some includes videos of the chef teaching some of the restaurant dishes.
Not too bad. I like to get the trio; lasanga, fettuccine, and chicken parmigiana. It's pretty f*cking awesome as long as someone else is paying.
The Olive Garden is one of those places I don't eat at very often, but I decided to take a female companion there this evening.
When we walked in, we were immediately seated at a comfortable table. Not three minutes went by before our waiter with ADD was back asking for our order. Since we were talking, we had not even looked at our menus yet.
Anyways, I ordered the Tour of Italy Classic Recipe, which comes with a bowl of soup (I ordered chicken and gnocci). The soup was brought out by our waiter, who got a little overzealous with the Parmesan cheese. I told him "a little," and he started grading it all over the bowl and table, telling me to say when. Well, I said when. I think he got a little on my companion's lap when he graded hers. The gnocci soup was excellent by the way.
The waiter did the same thing with the Parmesan cheese when he brought our main courses, but this time I think it all landed on the plate. It turned out to be a bit too much cheese for me, but I wasn't complaining when a full plate of lasagna, chicken Parmesan, and fettuccine alfredo was awaiting my mouth. The waiter was very helpful during our meal, almost too helpful. The meal was delicious when all was said and done.
The food was pricey. I think my main course was over $18, but it was a lot of food. The waiter stayed with us and was quick to bring the check.
I would recommend this restaurant for a once a month meal due to the high price. Just don't forget to "say when" to the Parmesan cheese.
Fresh and free...
Wine is free (they offer complimentary white wine at the beginning of our meal).
Breadsticks are free.
Great way to start things off.
Salad is very fresh.
Mushroom filled with ravioli is pretty good.
Choose 3 appetizers for $10 - can't go wrong with this.
Overall, this play is pretty good.
Meals actually have taste, unlike other places (ahem.. Spaghetti Factory).
Went here on a Friday night and there was no line.
I'm actually kinda embarrassed to review Olive Garden. To review it means that I've actually BEEN there. Yes, yes I've been to this Olive Garden. It was a little while back, but I'm sure it hasn't changed much. Pretty much the only thing you want to have is the breadsticks. There are a select group of people that actually enjoy this place so I wont dog it too much because the more they wait in line here, the less people I have in line ahead of me at GOOD restaurants....
Alright alright... what do you want to know about this place? The food is the same you get everywhere so I'm guessing you want to know about the service. Do you want to hear about the girl with the fake accent that got my order right, but annoyed the hell out of me with her voice or the kid Dugan that I think was on some sort of substance. Both of em got my order right, but the food here just doesnt do it for me. Way better italian spots around town.
Great place for a chain, but we're not into chains, especially not for Italian food. Their salads are great and they have good bread sticks, but the dishes are heavy and rather simple, something you would see at any Italian restaurant without much option. And the fact that you can't make a reservation is a turn-off as well.
You know life is non-stop excitement in 92127 land when you are writing a review of Olive Garden...
None-the-less, this Olive Garden was actually nice by OG standards. (There are OG standards?) The people were relatively well-behaved, the wait staff did not overly push the wine, and it general it was a relaxed, quiet evening. Heck, even the wait for a table was not too extreme.
However, as this is actually located in 92128 which was built in the late 80s, THERE IS NO PARKING.
Seriously. At 7:30 on a Saturday we had to park some distance behind the BevMo in the loading dock area next to the sketchy apartments and walk back to the restaurant.
Otherwise, by OG standards(tm) not too bad (I'm scared to admit.).
BTW, I've updated the Yelp gods but this is actually San Diego and not Poway and it is 92128 and not whatever other zip is listed, at least according to the Google-gods.
The service was okay, the waitress we got looked like she had been there for over eight hours. The fried zucchini was good, but their pasta, not so much. The bread sticks we got tasted like they were cooked a few days ago and were just reheated for us.
I only gave two stars for their zucchini.
When the baby boomers from Rancho Bernardo want to save a little money and get their pasta on...they all line up to eat here.
Parking can be tough on busy weekends. More spaces in front of Carl's Jr.
Unlimited breadsticks. Garlicky, warm and soft but kinda salty...like my wife. :)
My Seafood Portofino was okay. The noodles were a tad overcooked. The seafood looked like it came out of a seafood grab bag from your local grocery store. Medium sized portions.
Service was friendly but a bit slow (it was Fathers Day). Took a while to get refills on drinks because it was busy, understandable.
Not too expensive, not too fancy. No pretense here.
If IHOP or Sizzler sold Italian/Tuscan style food, this would be it. You get the comparison.
Macaroni Grill would be the next step up, but not by much.
GROSS!! I haven't been to the OG in a while.. so we went and the only thing that was half edible was the breadsticks!
We had the manicotti YUKKKKK and the soup was nasty either.. I would much rather spend money on a frozen dinner than eat here again!!
Oh and their prices have gone THRU THE ROOF!!! give me a break OG
In my extensive experience with San Diego restaurants, I have had a great deal of difficulty finding an exceptional Italian restaurant at a reasonable price, and the Olive Garden continues to fall short of the mark. It's their season of Never Ending Pasta Bowls and feeling like a glutton, I decided that it was a good time to load up on the carbs.
Endless soup, salad, and breadsticks accompany the promotion and I decided to go with the Soupa Toscana, a watery combination of limp greens, potatoes, and scrappy bits of ground Italian sausage. The soup did have a refreshingly spicy bite, but the lack of general substance did not leave the impression of a soup that I would ever order on my own.
Upon our attractive waitress' recommendation, my first pasta selection was the Linguine with Asiago Garlic Alfredo. While very creamy and rich, I found the sauce generally under seasoned. The pasta itself was fine, but I had to add quite a bit of parmesan cheese in order to add any sort of flavor to the dish. While large portions are usually a good thing, consider asking for smaller portions during your visit so that you can try many different flavors combinations.
Thoroughly stuffed from the creamy first selection, I decided to lighten up and go with the Angel Hair with Meat Sauce. My pasta was not topped with enough sauce and, with the copious amount of pasta, each strand had barely any of the acidic meat sauce, more was there much meat to speak of. Speaking of, the sauce was ridiculously acidic, likely coming from the tomatoes. It was so acidic that I couldn't actually finish my meal and pushed it aside. By now I was pretty full and, while I would have liked to sample more pasta and sauce combinations, I was extremely put off by my last course and decided to cut my losses and end the meal here.
While not necessarily serving the best quality Italian food I ever had, Olive Garden certainly served a satiating meal at a bargain rate. In Northern California, Pasta Pomodoro serves up some awesome pasta at a very reasonable price and I wish that they would bring their good eats to America's finest city. If they did, I'm sure that places like the Olive Garden would close their doors unless they improved their overall quality. One of the most important things that a chef can learn is to properly season food. The chef who prepared my pasta today may have slept through the seasoning class at Olive Garden's Tuscan cooking school.
Food: 6/10
Service: 7/10
Price: $
Atmosphere: 5/10
Worthless place with pathetic food, needless snobbery and full of pretenders who think they know fine dining! I recently went to OG after a hiatus of four years, and was quickly reminded of the the cause of my long rejection. The food here is as authentic as Chop Suey is Chinese.
Service was so-so, the ushers were bitchy-snobbish and wore a rubbery smile and flashed cold eyes and then rolled their eyes like a perverse urban Madonna.
First up were free breadsticks. This was an improvement to their earlier super-salty, soggy and oily bread, but it was still too salty and too margariney. You think they use butter? Ha!
The minestrone soup had a distinct taste of canned tomato paste and the kidney beans and garbanzo beans came from cans and were overcooked. The Tuscan sausage soup was the high watermark of our meal, it was creamy with a hint of bacon and contained slices of potato. That would do as a passable appetizer.
The appetizers were fried a million times (mille fois frié, a pun on mille feuille). You could kill with those chicken fingers, even stab. Yep, they were that hard! So dark was the crust that I thought I had fallen into a fresh dug grave. Toasted raviolis were over-toasted, many times over, generating only a slightly lighter hue. The fried mozzarella squares were all right, but how can you screw THAT up?
Up for entrees, the lasagna was all right, if a tad too oily and salty. The Fettucine Alfredo Chicken sucked in all three measures. The fettucine were overcooked for 3-4 minutes, so in stead of being al dente, they were al gum. As a matter of fact, at the bottom of my pile of noodles, some were COLD. This means the noodles were boiled, thrown into a colander to stay, and they were not tossed with the sauce! The sauce was floury and lacked the delicacy of fresh grated Parmesan cheese. But what do I expect when I know their sauces are shipped frozen. Eyes wide? Aghast? Tsk tsk tsk. To top it off their chicken was cheap quality and watery, no spring to it. The grilling lines were tasty though.
My wife had "Tour of Italy" which had fettucine alfredo, of which I would say no more. The second item was lasagna, which I have already commented on. Finally, it had what Americans think is true Italian food: Chicken Parmesan. Now once again the crust was hard and dark. And if you pressed the patty, it did not give or spring back: in cooking school, that means you have fucked up a chicken breast, and should be ashamed of yourself. There wasn't much chicken inside either due to heavy use of meat tenderizer. It was an overfried schnitzel with thrice-thick breading.
My daughter wanted a dessert but I vetoed it. I told her I would make the real Zabaglione instead at home. This evening I made Chicken a la Milanese with Sauce Parisienne and we ate well. It however brought to mind what I hated about OG and why I stopped going there.
If you are a gourmet, stay the hell away from here. If you want to impress those who are not foodies or gourmands even, bring them here.
When walked in to be greeted by an angry customer complaining about the wait and no tables being cleared. This was followed by a mess of buzzers that accidentally went off while they were being stacked.
We were sat next to an exit and when we asked to be moved because of the coldness, there wasn't much help. The waitress was unfamiliar with the wines and wasn't very confident in the products she was selling.
The salad was drenched with dressing and made it soggy and too salty. In the entrees, the chicken was pre-packaged and rubbery, while the steak in the other dish was overcooked and chewier than beef jerky. The iced tea, which should be easy to handle, was watered down and flat.
Yah, yah, yah! I'm in San Diego and end up at an Olive Garden. Go figure! It was my grandmother's 83rd birthday and she had wanted to go to a Mexican restaurant on the coast, but unfortunately they were booked ON A TUESDAY NIGHT!
Olive Garden was her second choice.
With that said, great service and great food. Our party of 9 was seated in a room by ourselves and we were waited on by 2 people. My parents and I ordered their new special, the Chicken Milanese. Delicious! Breaded chicken with asiago cheese filled tortellini in a garlic cream sauce. Yummy! Huge portions. I limited myself to ONE bread stick and still could not finish this plate. Gram had the Grilled Shrimp Caprese and said it was the best dish she's had at OG.
She got surprised with a birthday candle in a bunch of their chocolate mint candies!
Happy birthday, Gram!
Overpriced Italian Food. :/
A popular "fancy" spot to bring your prom/homecoming/insert any dance here.
No I didn't come here for my prom,my date knew I was a food snob. :P
i know i know.. i'm crazing for reviewing olive garden but whatever! stopped by around 3:30 so it wasn't busy at all. Plenty of parking in the afternoon. now the food. I order some sort of shrimp pasta and it was mediocre. The breadsticks were alright but nothing fantastic. I actually kinda liked the chicken and gnocci soup! I haven't been here for like 4 years and I remember now why i haven't gone back!
Exactly what you get when you go to any other Olive Garden. I went here to carb load right before both marathons that I ran. The first time I went for this purpose my server was so nice she threw in extra breadsticks and soup to take home. Because this is the middle of a residential area you will get a lot of families here.
I love olive garden, you can get a lot for your money. I guess that only applies in San Francisco, where the wait is usually an hour to an hour and a half. Our wait time was 30 minutes, which wasn't too bad. We came here yesterday, for my birthday. I had a peach bellini, which was extremely delicious, but it does not make up for the poor service. my cousin had to remind the waitress three times to get her some butter. And she didn't even ask my cousins if they wanted soup or salad with their meal. My sisters ordered first and wanted salad for their meal ... with that said ... the waitress made the assumption that we all wanted salad. (Do note that this is my cousins' first time dining at Olive Garden and they did not understand how it works here. ) Slow and sloppy services makes this meal a bust. Save yourself some money and maybe you'll have some better service at Chevy's across the street.
Neighborhood: Clairemont
Category: Chinese
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