Reviews for Olive Garden Italian Restaurant in Sarasota, FL

Food was very good. Salad needed a bit more dressing. Staff was friendly and helpful.

Good restaurant to go to for lunch for the unlimited refills of salad, bread sticks, and soup. Be sure to order a side of... Alfredo sauce for the bread sticks! :). I've always had a good experience here, waiter or waitresses are always friendly, andattentive if you need anything. The entrees are ok, not as good as they used to be back in the day, but absolutely love thesalad and kale/sausage soup. Highly recommend for an inexpensive lunch spot. The parking lot is currently undergoing a remodel,so parking can be a pain if at a busy time, but restaurant is good. Read more

Our waitress was phenomenal! We celebrated my Dad's 98th birthday. She told us he gets free dessert. She catered to him and... just made him feel special. The food was good too. Read more

I am not one to go leaving reviews, but this experience must be shared. I visited Olive Garden with my mom and son today at... opening, 11am. Our drinks didn’t come before or with our salad which was fine. When the salad came we realized there was ahair in it as we distributed across the table. We asked for a new salad. No apologies on the hair. Moved on. The waitress keptpicking my sons sippy cup by the mouth of the cup instead if the body which was gross in itself, but I didn’t say anything.When my sons macaroni kids meal came, it arrived with French fries instead of broccoli. Eventually the manager brought us thebroccoli and told us to to be careful it was fresh out of the microwave so it was hot. The service was already bad at thispoint, but continued to get worse. As we’re checking out on the tablet provided at the table and also finishing our meal, Ifind TWO more hairs in his kids meal macaroni. These hairs were deep inside the food. Not on top. The color of the hair wasdifferent from the waitress so obviously a kitchen issue. We flag down who we assume is the manager as she’s dresseddifferently (the same who brought the broccoli). We explain the 3 different hairs and that someone needs to be wearing a hairnet in the kitchen. She then responds by asking, “have you paid?” To which we respond we already had, and it wasn’t aboutgetting a free meal. We just wanted her to know how gross it was. She then stared at us for a few moments before walking away.She never once apologized. Never once said that’s awful, I’ll make sure that never happens again. Never asked how she couldmake it right for the future. I felt like I was in a twilight zone. Like somehow I was wrong for complaining. Just thought Iwould share. Check your food for hairs! Will never return. Read more

Update: the management reached out to me and tried to make amends. I appreciate that!! Worst experience at Olive Garden ever!!... First I’ll give you the information: we visited 7/1/22 and our server was Lala. We visited at dinner time. We arrived at thetable and it was clean but it took 10-15 minutes to have the server come to the table. The server instantly told us it was timeto order our food. 10 minutes later we get drinks and then 10 more minutes later we get some bread. My friend asked to get awater and the server had told her to “just wait”. Ran out of bread/drinks and would never get a refill. Our food comes outand my friends food was wrong. She ordered margarita chicken and wanted to add just some noodles for the chicken. She was givennoodles with meat sauce on the side. She informs the server and she says “why can’t you just put the noodles in the chickenyourself”!! First of all she was given the wrong thing and second why the rudeness? We keep on eating our food without ourdrinks refilled. Then we ask for some cheese for our food, and the lady told us “this was not a game”. We weren’t laughingof happy about this, we just wanted what we payed for. Later I find a hair in my food which there was no way it was any of oursbecause of the hair color. I will never go back to this Olive Garden again! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!! Worst Olive Garden inAmerica. Read more

Waitress was nice. Was told to wait 5 min to be seated. It to around half hour.a few of us ordered soup and salad deal with some... appetizers. Got the initial bowl of soup then waited almost 40 min for the next one. By the time we had to just wait for thefood to be in a to go box, which opened and spilled on the way back Read more

Chicken Alfredo was hot till the end. Lots of sauce and nice size portion. Just needed a little salt: for my taste. Huge salad... too. Read more

They have plenty of seats but seem to be short of waiters that’s why we have a quite a wait. But as usual my favorite... shrimp/chicken carbonara, Zuppa Toscana and choco brownie lasagna is the best. Read more