Olive Garden Italian Restaurant

I hate going to chain restaurants and Olive Garden might be the worst of the bunch.   The only times I ever go to an Olive Garden is when I get dragged there.    I usually order the unlimited soup and salad because the dressing is actually pretty good as is the minestrone and pasta fagioli.  However, this last time, I convinced myself that the food must have changed in the past 10 years.  So I thought to myself, what is the one thing that any place that calls themself "Italian" cannot mess up.   Spaghetti and meatballs.

So that's when it arrived at my table, I was surprised to see that it was served with a meat sauce and not a marinara.   Talk about meat overload when you consider the 2 huge meatballs that accompanied it.   And the excess of meat only accentuated the complete lack of flavor of anything.   The meat in the sauce and the meatballs may have not been meat at all but rather a meat substitute because it lacked any semblance of texture or taste whatsoever.

The only reason it gets 2 stars is because the service is excellent.  Ask for Tamara.   Fast, friendly, accurate.

I normally don't like going to a chain restaurant but there are a couple places I dont mind coming to and this is one of them. The bread sticks are heavenly and if you are a seafood lover I suggest you try the seafood Alfredo.

Have again: the steak gorgonzola was delicious and would have been 4 stars, but the picture and the real dish were not very similar: the 4 steak medallions were quite small. But the dish was very good. Also, the chicken/pasta soup was delicious and rated 4 stars. Three stars because of the inaccurate menu picture.